4. Michael Dillon: British Transsexual and author of the first book on transgender identity
Michael Dillon was born Laura Maud Dillon, the second child of Robert Dillon, heir to the Baronetcy of Lismullen. Dillon never felt comfortable as a girl although he excelled at sports, winning a University sporting blue for rowing at Oxford. In 1939, Dillon took steps to alleviate some of the discomforts of living in a female body. He consulted George Foss, a Bristol doctor who used testosterone to treat extreme menstrual bleeding. Dillon asked for treatment to stop his periods altogether. So Foss referred Dillon to a psychiatrist- who duly spread the tale around the city, forcing Dillon to flee the scandal.
During the Second World War, Dillon lived as a man, working as a mechanic and air raid warden. One night, Dillon was hospitalized. However, he had the good fortune to encounter a sympathetic doctor who was also one of the world’s first plastic surgeons. The doctor performed a double mastectomy on Dillon and gave him a note so that he could become Laurence Michael Dillon. Between 1946-1949, Dillon had thirteen gender reassignment surgeries. He began to study medicine- and in 1946 wrote the first book about transgender identity: “Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics.” “Where the mind cannot be made to fit the body, the body should be made to fit, approximately at any rate, to the mind, ” wrote Dillon.
