First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution
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In the 1920s when Laura Dillon felt like a man trapped in a woman's body, there were no words to describe her condition; transsexuals had yet to enter common usage. And there was no known solution to being stuck between the sexes. Laura Dillon did all she could on her own: she cut her hair, dressed in men's clothing, bound her breasts with a belt. But in a desperate bid to feel comfortable in her own skin, she experimented with breakthrough technologies that ultimately transformed the human body and revolutionized medicine. From upper-class orphan girl to Oxford lesbian, from post-surgery romance with Roberta Cowell (an early male-to-female) to self-imposed exile in India, Michael Dillon's incredible story reveals the struggles of early transsexuals and challenges conventional notions of what gender really means. The New York Times - Mary Roach Pagan Kennedy, the author of Black Livingstone and other books, does for Dillon what he never succeeded in doing for himself. She makes us see him as an ordinary, sane Englishman, worthy of respect and acceptance. Her compassion and restraint are laudable. She had access to before-and-after close-up medical photographs of Dillon but omits them. Her description of the surgeries is brief and devoid of graphic detail. She resists the temptation to highlight the comically surreal nature of her material. If you read this book, you will not gawk or laugh at Michael Dillon.
Make the BodyHe Proposes 3When There's No Word for It 19Magic Pills 41Sir Harold's Scalpel 59With Girls One Has to Be Careful 69Orchid 85A Passport into the World of Women 97Fit the MindThe Third Eye 117The Calling Card 129Becoming Jivaka 143A New Age 161Rizong 171Epilogue 191Acknowledgments 195Notes 199Bibliography 206Index 210
