Michael Dillon

For other people named Michael Dillon, see Michael Dillon (disambiguation).

Laurence Michael Dillon (1 May 1915 – 15 May 1962) was a British doctor, author, Buddhist monk and the first transgender man to undergo phalloplasty. Born in Ladbroke Gardens, Kensington, he and his elder brother moved to Folkestone as children following the death of their mother and were subsequently looked after by their two aunts. Their father, heir to the Dillon baronetcy of Lismullen in Ireland, died in 1925. As a child, Michael Dillon was interested in theology and traditionally masculine activities. Although he had been assigned female at birth, Dillon never thought of himself as a girl, and later wrote about his despair at being perceived as such.

Michael Dillon
Dillon in the Merchant Navy, pictured in the mid-1950s.
Born	(1915-05-01)1 May 1915 Kensington, England
Died	15 May 1962(1962-05-15) (aged 47) Dalhousie, India
Other names	Sramanera Jivaka Lobzang Jivaka
Known for	First trans man to undergo phalloplasty Author

In 1934, he began studying at the Society of Oxford Home Students at the University of Oxford and became captain of the women's rowing team. After graduation, he started working in a laboratory near Bristol. Around this time, Dillon became aware of a doctor who had been studying the effects of testosterone on female patients and was interested in taking the hormone for personal use, driven by a desire to become physically male. After a psychological evaluation, the doctor gave Dillon testosterone pills but was unable to continue with any further treatment. Dillon was outed to his colleagues at the laboratory and felt forced to move, eventually finding work as a petrol pump attendant in a garage in Bristol during World War II. Whilst working at the garage, he began writing what would become his 1946 book Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology, considered to be a pioneering work in the field of transgender medicine. He also received a gender-affirming double mastectomy whilst in hospital for hypoglycemia and heard of the work of surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, who agreed to perform a phalloplasty on Dillon after the war.

In 1945, he enrolled at Trinity College Dublin to study medicine, in part inspired by his own research into endocrinology and sexuality. During the holidays, Dillon travelled to Rooksdown House in Basingstoke to undergo a series of phalloplasty surgeries by Gillies. As a medical student, Dillon performed an orchidectomy on Roberta Cowell, the first British trans woman to receive male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. Dillon fell in love with Cowell and proposed to her, believing she would say yes, but Cowell turned him down. After graduation, Dillon began working as a Merchant Navy doctor. His transition became a subject of public attention when it affected his listing as the heir presumptive for the baronetcy of Lismullen. Inspired by reading the works of George Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky and Tuesday Lobsang Rampa while at sea, he resigned from the Merchant Navy and moved to India and to devote his life to Buddhism. He changed his name to Lobzang Sramanera and then to Lobzang Jivaka. In 1960, he became the first Westerner to be ordained in the Rizong Monastery in Ladakh. Between 1960–1962, he wrote four books on Buddhism, including Imji Getsul: An English Buddhist in a Tibetan Monastery. He also wrote an autobiography titled Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions, which was completed in 1962 and published posthumously in 2016. Dillon died in May 1962, just two weeks after finishing his autobiography.

Early life

Dillon was born on 1 May 1915 in Ladbroke Gardens, Kensington. Assigned female at birth, he was the second child of Robert Arthur Dillon (1865–1925), a Royal Navy Lieutenant and heir to the baronetcy of Lismullen in Ireland. His mother, Laura Maud McCliver (née Reese) (1888–1915), died of sepsis when he was less than two weeks old. Robert Dillon suffered from alcoholism and left the Navy before he could be cashiered. He did not take up any subsequent profession and was unable to look after Michael and his older brother Robert 'Bobby' William Charlier Dillon. The two children were therefore sent to be raised by their two paternal aunts, Toto and Daisy, in Folkestone, Kent. The children's aunts lived in self-imposed economic hardship despite their wealth, but still sought to divide themselves from people of lower classes.

Robert Dillon died in 1925, making his son Bobby the immediate heir to the baronetcy of Lismullen. Less than a month later, the baronet—Sir John Fox Dillon—also died, thereby passing the title onto Bobby, who at the time was eleven years old. With the title, Bobby inherited the family estate in County Meath. The estate had been burned down by Sinn Féin in 1922 and only the servants' quarters remained, but the building of a new house was arranged by Robert Dillon's widow, Mrs Hearn. Michael a spent his summer holidays at the estate, learning to fish and to shoot, until he was 14 years old.

Michael Dillon was educated at Brampton Down Girls' School. He enjoyed learning about theology and spirituality, a passion he would retain throughout his life. He was brought up in the Church of England and had close relationships with the local vicars. He later recalled that one in particular, Reverend C.S.T. Watkins, helped him further his philosophical knowledge and practice. Dillon also enjoyed sports and masculine-oriented activities and wished to present himself in a more masculine way, such as asking for his hair to be cut in the same style as his brother's. Later in his life, he claimed that as a child and teenager, he never thought of himself as a girl. He envied his brother for being able to attend an all-boys' school and his exclusion from the boys' games and activities. He recalled a particular incident from his teenage years when a boy held open a gate for him and he realised for the first time that others perceived him as a woman, which jarred with how he felt internally. Dillon also felt physically uncomfortable as a girl, recalling that he had tried to bind his breasts with a belt until a classmate found out and warned that it was dangerous.

Education at Oxford

Dillon was encouraged by the local vicar, Mr Whyte, to study theology at Oxford. In 1934, he enrolled in the Society of Oxford Home Students (now St Anne's College, Oxford). Dillon initially had ambitions of becoming a Deaconess post-graduation, but decided to switch his course to Greats (also known as Classics) after persuading the university and securing further tutoring from Mr Whyte during the holidays. At university, Dillon struggled socially but discovered a passion for rowing. He became the president of the Oxford University Women's Boat Club and fought for greater recognition of the women's sport and increased parity between men's and women's rowing. At the time, women's rowing involved rowing downstream, unlike the men, and the women wore clothing unsuitable for more strenuous action. The women's teams did not race against each other but were timed individually. Dillon changed these practices to align more with the men's sport. As captain and he achieved blues in 1935 and 1936, and the rowing team went on tour to Amsterdam and Frankfurt in 1938. His advancement of the women's sport gained him press attention, and he featured in a Daily Mail article in November 1937 titled "How unlike a woman!"

Whilst at Oxford, Dillon began to question his gender identity more intently. He continued to feel as if he were not a woman. This led him to present more masculine; he began smoking a pipe, riding a motorcycle and donned an Eton crop. He confided in a close friend who helped him buy men's clothing and took him to boxing matches where women were not permitted. Despite the difficulties of having to live as a woman whilst not feeling like one, there is evidence to suggest that Dillon remembered his time at Oxford fondly, later describing himself as an "Oxford man". He graduated in 1938 with a third.

Bristol and initial gender transition

After graduation from Oxford, Dillon began working as a laboratory assistant in Stapleton, Bristol. The work, which involved dissection of brains, fostered his growing interest in the connection between the mind and the body. He volunteered for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force territorials when World War II began in 1939, but was told by the Commandant that he did not seem to be suited to the work. Dillon was also put off by the discovery that he would have to live in dormitories exclusively with other women, and returned to laboratory work.

At this time, Dillon heard about the work of Doctor George Foss who was experimenting with the recently synthesised hormone testosterone; initially intended to ease severe menstrual symptoms, the drug caused the female patients to experience masculinising side effects. Dillon approached Foss and asked to be prescribed the hormone for personal use. Foss was willing to help Dillon on the condition that he spoke to a psychiatrist first. After this condition was fulfilled, Foss began to worry that he would be called up to fight in World War II and thus leave Dillon's treatment unfinished, so he provided Dillon with testosterone pills to try out on himself. Dillon therefore became the first recorded person to take testosterone exclusively for the purpose of gender reassignment. Although Dillon had only confided in Foss and the psychiatrist about his desire to become a man, the psychiatrist betrayed his trust and told another doctor at Dillon's laboratory. Dillon felt forced to leave his job after more colleagues found out and gossiped about him.

After leaving the laboratory, Dillon began volunteering for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, but a motorbike injury forced him to leave. Dillon moved from the outskirts into the city of Bristol. His desire to be a man and uncertainty on what profession to pursue restricted his job opportunities, and he ultimately found employment as a petrol pump attendant at a garage called College Motors. Whilst at the garage, Dillon continued to self-administer testosterone. He faced frequent taunting from his colleagues who would inform customers about how Dillon was a woman who wanted to be a man. Over the four years he spent at the garage, Dillon's physical transition became more apparent and he was able to present more confidently as male. Eventually, his gender was accommodated by the garage staff and customers would immediately assume he was male. It was whilst working at the garage that Dillon started using the name Michael. He felt more accepted after volunteering to become the garage's firewatcher during heavy bombing of Bristol during the Second World War. Whilst working as a firewatcher, Dillon wrote his first book Self: a study in ethics and endocrinology. Written from the perspective of a neutral third party, the book argues for greater empathy for patients who wish to change their sex and advocated for a patient-informed basis of treatment whilst not revealing Dillon's own personal interest in the matter. Despite the growing acceptance of his gender, Dillon later recounted that he did not enjoy his time at the garage, describing it as "The Darkest of Days".

Dillon suffered from hypoglycaemia and would sometimes end up in hospital after passing out. During one admission to Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1942, he received a double mastectomy from a sympathetic plastic surgeon. The surgeon encouraged Dillon to legally change his name and sex, and informed him of the work of renowned surgeon Sir Harold Gillies. Gillies was a surgeon who had become well-known partly for his pioneering surgeries on intersex patients and injured soldiers which included reconstructing penises. Dillon contacted him that same year, asking whether he could undergo a similar treatment. Dillon officially changed his name to Laurence Michael Dillon in 1944. He was able to change his birth certificate with a medical certificate authorised by a doctor and his cousin as a family member.

Trinity College and surgeries

Trinity College Dublin pictured in 2021.

Whilst working at College Motors, Dillon's research on hormones and sexuality, and his correspondence with Gillies, had fostered an interest in medicine. In 1945, after completing initial training at Bristol’s Merchant Venturer’s Technical College, he enrolled in the Medical School of Trinity College Dublin. Dillon was able to enrol under his new name thanks to assistance from a former oxford tutor who changed the university records to show that Dillon had studied at Brasenose College, which only accepted male students at the time.

Gillies was willing to perform a phalloplasty on Dillon, but only after World War II had concluded. At the time, the standard medical view of gender-affirming surgery was that it amounted to a mutilation of a healthy body. Gillies, however, believed that performing such surgeries was necessary and morally correct if it brought happiness to the patient. Dillon shared this belief, believing that patients should have the agency to decide if the "mutilation" would end their psychological distress. Because operations to change gender were deemed controversial, Gillies falsified Dillon’s condition in order to be able to perform surgery without scrutiny, diagnosing Dillon with acute hypospadias. From 1946, during his holidays from medical school, Dillon travelled to visit Gillies at Rooksdown House in Basingstoke for a series of surgeries. The phalloplasty surgery involved using flaps of skin from Dillon's legs and stomach to form a penis. The surgeries led to infections and difficulty walking, which Dillon would falsely claim were wounds suffered during the bombing raids of Bristol. Gillies made an effort to foster a positive atmosphere at Rooksdown, and Dillon enjoyed his time there, twice acting as master of ceremonies for the Christmas parties and in general feeling as if he were finally becoming wholly male.

At Trinity, Dillon again became a distinguished rower, this time for the men's team. He achieved a blue, therefore very likely becoming the first person to have won the accolade as both a man and a woman. Dillon was reported to be misogynistic and was careful to avoid romantic advances with women, later saying that he felt it was unfair to court women if he was not able to have children with them. He felt great comfort, however, in knowing that he could be in public and automatically perceived as a male by passers-by. His aunts grew to accept him as a male, and eventually Dillon felt comfortable visiting them back in Folkestone. His brother, however, never accepted Dillon, and forbade him from ever revealing his relation to the baronetcy.

Roberta Cowell

Dillon's book Self brought him to the attention of Roberta Cowell, a racecar driver who wished to transition from male to female. They corresponded and first met in 1950 while Dillon was studying at Trinity. Cowell had been taking estrogen but was unable to be recognised officially as female. Dillon, who was not yet qualified as a doctor, performed an illegal orchiectomy on Cowell with her permission. This surgery allowed her to receive further gender reassignment surgery from Harold Gillies and register as a woman in 1951. As Dillon and Cowell got to know each other better, Dillon assumed they were in a relationship. He wrote love letters to Cowell revealing his infatuation with her. There were indications that Cowell was not interested; Dillon, for instance, assumed that Cowell would assume a traditional feminine submissive housewife role after they were married, at which she expressed dissatisfaction. She recalled that Dillon made patronising remarks about her lack of education and had a limited sense of humour. Furthermore, author Mary Roach suggests that Cowell thought it was necessary to maintain the pretence of their relationship in order for her to receive on orchiectomy. Cowell later recalled that she was not comfortable with the idea of them being together on account of Dillon's own transition, saying "as far as I was concerned, it would have been two females getting married, and I was certainly not interested in him in that kind of way." Dillon proposed to Cowell in 1951 after graduating and made plans for a wedding, but he was turned down. Cowell wrote that "although I liked and respected him very much as a person, there was no possible way I could ever think of marrying him."

Medical career and Merchant Navy

Dillon graduated from Trinity in 1951 and began working as a physician in a north Dublin hospital. Dillon was inspired by the holistic care he had received at Rooksdown House and decided to implement some of the elements in his own workplace: these included taking the patients on picnic trips, installing a library, providing patients with personal radios, practicing occupational therapy, and engaging the patients in crafts. He started donating 10 percent of his income to a grant scheme facilitated by Arthur Millbourne, Canon of Bristol Cathedral, which helped disadvantaged students pay for university.

In 1952, he started working as a doctor for the Merchant Navy and worked at sea until 1958. Throughout his career he took contracts for P&O, British India Steam Navigation Company and the China Navigation Company. Lau and Partridge write that it was whilst in the Navy that Dillon’s entrenched imperialist and xenophobic views became more apparent. He did, however, write about his experiences of seeing racial integration at The Mission to Seafarers and feeling the injustice of exploitation of people in India. Dillon also tried to escape his prior conditioning by reading widely, including the works of George Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. Dillon discovered that Rampa, author of The Third Eye, lived in Dublin and decided to visit him for a fortnight in 1957 to seek mentorship in Buddhism. Although Rampa was later discovered to be a fraud, Dillon still claimed that he had learned a lot from him. Dillon was inspired by Rampa to spend time in India and pursue the religion further.

In early 1958, Dillon’s ship stopped in Calcutta and Dillon used this as an opportunity to learn more about Buddhism. He travelled to Bodh Gaya to visit the Mahabodhi Temple, where he met Dhardoh Rimpoche. Although Dillon was not initially interested in converting to Buddhism, he started to feel at home in the culture. Rimpoche urged Dillon to visit Kalimpong the next time he came to India.

Outing in the press

Since he joined the Merchant Navy, Dillon had not had to explain his gender transition to any new acquaintances and he was living fully as a man. In 1953, he decided to request to change his name in the Debrett's and Burke's Peerage genealogical guides, which still listed his old name and sex in the Dillon baronetcy lineage. Dillon, now officially listed as the brother of the Baronet Lismullen rather than the sister, became the immediate heir to the baronetcy. In May 1958, news of Dillon’s past life as a woman was uncovered in the press. A discrepancy had been discovered between the two peerage books: Debrett’s had recorded Dillon’s current name, but his old name and sex were still included in the Burke's. Dillon's ship had docked at Baltimore when he received a cable from the Daily Express, asking whether he intended to claim his aristocratic title since his "change-over". Dillon told the press that he was a male born with a severe form of hypospadias and had undergone a series of operations to "correct" the condition after he began to display masculine features. The editor of Debrett's told Time magazine that Dillon was unquestionably next in line for the baronetcy, saying: "I have always been of the opinion that a person has all rights and privileges of the sex that is, at a given moment, recognized." Dillon found the sudden reveal of his transition distressing and retreated from his colleagues for ten days after the news broke. He felt that he needed to travel to India and remain there for a few years in order to let the negative attention subside.

Buddhism

Theravada Buddhism

Sangharakshita pictured in 2002.

When Dillon's ship travelled back to India, he stayed in the country and travelled to Kalimpong, as suggested by Rimpoche. When Dillon returned to visit Rimpoche, however, he found that the monk was unwilling to meet him. This was due to an incident involving a former Catholic nun who had been ordained by Rimpoche and subsequently made sexual assault allegations against monks and laymen, and was allegedly a Communist spy. Because of this, Rinpoche was unwilling to admit any other Europeans into the monastic order. Rimpoche suggested that Dillon stayed at a monastery of the Theravada tradition which was directed by an English monk named Sangharakshita. Dillon and Sangharakshita did not get on well; the monk found it difficult to teach Dillon and found him gullible, and Dillon thought he was being over-charged for his education. Despite their disagreements, Dillon revealed the details of his transition to Sangharakshita and the reason that he left the Navy. Dillon assumed that this information was under strict secrecy, but Sangharakshita later claimed that this was not the case. Wanting to avoid the attention that came with his current identity, Dillon decided to change his name. He was given the name Jivaka by Sangharakshita—the same name as the Buddha's doctor.

Jivaka stayed for a period at the Theravada Vihāra in Sarnath. For the first few months there, he was unable to access the library or read the dharma. It was only when Sangharakshita left on business that he was able to access the materials. While Sangharakshita was away, Jivaka decided he wanted to ordain as a novice monk (a samanera). Although feeling uncomfortable with the situation, knowing that Jivaka had been born a woman, Sangharakshita initially did not intervene. Jivaka decided to leave the monastery as he found the environment to be difficult and he found Sangharakshita to be unsupportive of his ambitions.

Jivaka assumed a life of poverty and gave away his estate of £20,000, consisting of savings and inheritance, to charity and the people he deemed most in need. He also renounced his peerage. He was interested in pursuing higher ordination but learnt that the Theravada tradition did not allow anyone from the so-called ‘third sex’ to ordain. Jivaka’s interpreted the rule to mean that he should not necessarily be prohibited from ordaining. He wrote to Sangharakshita to explain his reasoning and informing him of his upcoming ordination, but the monk did not share his views. When Sangharakshita found out about Jivaka’s intentions to further pursue ordination as a bhikkhu, he wrote to the monks at the Vihāra and told them Jivaka used to be a woman. He decided he should let the monks make the final decision on whether Jivaka could be ordained, and they ultimately forbade Jivaka's ordination. Jivaka's essay A Critical Study of the Vinaya, published by the Sarnath Maha Bodhi Society in 1960, does not reveal Jivaka’s own personal experiences of discrimination but argues for greater acceptance of “deformed people”, “hermaphrodites” and eunuchs, who were not allowed to be ordained. Jivaka argued that Buddhism was meant to be a religion of tolerance and that people who were in some way disabled had a lot to offer to the religion. José Ignacio Cabezón writes that “there is no question that A Critical Study of the Vinaya is in part biographical”.

Tibetan Buddhism

Jivaka entered the Rizong Monastery as a novice monk in 1960.

Following this setback, Jivaka turned to the Tibetan branch of Buddhism. In Sarnath, he became the first European to be ordained as a Tibetan novice monk (a getsul). The senior monk, Denma Locho Rinpoche, did not see Jivaka’s transition as an issue, and suggested Jivaka could achieve full ordination. Jivaka next decided to travel to the Gelug Rizong Monastery in Ladakh. Because Ladakh was an area disputed between India and China, prolonged access to the area by foreigners required a specific permit. He got in touch with a diplomat there and was granted both entry and ordination as a novice into the Rizong Monastery in 1960—the first person from the West to do so. Despite his low rank as a monk, he was granted entry into the monastery’s library. Jivaka felt welcomed and secure at the monastery, writing that he felt "at home among strangers who were no strangers at all". Despite this, Jivaka struggled to afford food and was often on the verge of starvation.

Jivaka was not able to renew his visa and had to leave the Rizong monastery after three months. He returned to Sarnath and published two books, including Imji Gestul, which recounted his residency at the monastery. He wished to return to Ladakh, but without wanting to reveal his gender transition, he struggled to secure entry. He was accused by a communist newspaper of being a British spy, and a different newspaper revealed his transition, calling him a “lady-doctor”. Jivaka assumed that Sangahrakshita was behind the rumour. He wrote to the monk asking to be sent his incomplete autobiography, driven by a wish to write his life story in his own words.

Jivaka published Growing Up into Buddhism, a primer on Buddhist practice for teenagers, in 1960. Two additional books by him were published in 1962: The Life of Milarepa, about an 11th-century Tibetan yogi, and Imji Getsul.

Death and legacy

On 1 May 1962, Jivaka completed the manuscript of his autobiography titled Out of the Ordinary and mailed it to his literary agent. Whilst Jivaka was walking across on a mountain on his way to Kashmir, he collapsed and was taken to the Civil Hospital of Dalhousie. He died in the Hospital on 15 May 1962. His death was unexplained, but he was suffering from malnourishment at the time and had been hospitalised for typhoid fever the previous year. His body was cremated in a Mahayana ceremony. After Dillon's death, it was reported that his brother wished the manuscript for Out of the Ordinary to be burned, but Jiavka’s agent did not comply. It remained in storage until it was published in 2016, entitled Out of the ordinary: a life of gender and spiritual transitions.

Publications

Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics (1946)

Dillon began writing Self in 1939 whilst working at College Motors. It was published in 1946 under the Heinemann Medical imprint. In the book, Dillon argues that people should be able to receive medical treatment which altered their bodies to match with their internal feeling of their sex. He makes the case that these feelings cannot be cured purely through psychological means. Dillon does not reveal his personal involvement with the matter, narrating as if he were an interested third party—in this regard, Susan Stryker describes the book as a "cryptoautobiography".

Dillon makes the case that sex is on a spectrum between male and female with a gradient of intersex individuals in between. Dillon writes that treatment can be given to those patients if their gender identity does not match their assigned sex—for instance, he writes about people with hypospadias and how they can be incorrectly assigned female at birth. A particular group of intersex people, which Dillon calls homosexuals, are those who have the genitalia of one sex but the characteristics of the opposite. He distinguishes between the exploration of one’s “homosexuality” during their younger years, compared to a permanent state of homosexuality which is innate. Dillon primarily discusses the different types of “female homosexuals”: “mannish inverts”, Dillon argues, have acquired their "mannish" characteristics, whereas “masculine inverts” have innate male characteristics. Dillon writes that this latter group require medical treatment in the same manner as intersex people, and they should not have to pay for it. He concludes by advocating for tolerance and understanding of people who do not align with the traditionally-understood notion of sex. Many of the arguments in the book mirror those made by Harry Benjamin in his book The Transsexual Phenomenon (1966). In her biography of Dillon, author and journalist Liz Hodgkinson describes Self as "well written, scholarly, intelligent and decades ahead of its time."

Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions (1962; published 2016)

Dillon's autobiography was written and published under both of his names, Michael Dillon and Lobzang Jivaka. It was completed in 1962 and Dillon’s agent, John Johnson, received the manuscript not long after Dillon had died. He was contacted by Dillon’s brother Robert who wished to acquire the manuscript in order to destroy it. The manuscript was retained by Johnson, who refused to destroy it, but he was unable to find a publisher. Andrew Hewson took over care of the manuscript after Johnson and it was kept in a storage facility in London. The lack of an interested publisher may have been due to disputes regarding Dillon’s will, the actions of Dillon’s brother, the niche subject matter, or the style of prose itself.

The manuscript was shared three significant times: Liz Hodgkinson was writing a biography of Dillon and, in the 1980s, approached Hewson for the manuscript. She would eventually publish her book Michael nee Laura (1989). She feared that Dillon’s surviving relatives might seek out the manuscript if she made it too obvious that it was still available. Author Pagan Kennedy also was working on a biography which would eventually become The First Man-Made Man (2007), and was granted access to the manuscript. Out of the Ordinary was eventually published after two transgender theologists, Cameron Partridge and Jacob Lau, attended an event with Kennedy and heard that the manuscript still survived but was unpublished. Lau and Partridge were presented digital copies of the manuscript by Kennedy and set about publishing the book. The book includes a foreword by Susan Stryker and an introduction from Lau and Partridge which summarises the key events of Dillon’s life, including aspects which were not included by Dillon himself. Dillon splits his autobiography into two sections: "Conquest of the Body" and "Conquest of the Mind".

Other works

• Poems of truth (1957), a collection of poetry inspired by Ouspensky and Gurdjieff.
• Practicing the Dhammapada (1959).
• Growing Up into Buddhism (1960), a guide to Buddhism aimed at a younger audience.
• A Critical Study of the Vinaya (1960l), an essay arguing for greater acceptance of people according to the Vinaya texts.
• The Life of Milarepa (1962), an updated English translation of a text about the yogi Milarepa.
• Imji Getsul: An English Buddhist in a Tibetan Monastery (1962), an account of Jivaka’s time in the Rizong monastery in Ladakh.

References

Sources

Books and chapters

• Cabezón, José Ignacio (2017). Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism. United States: Wisdom Publications. ISBN 9781614293507.
• Hodgkinson, Liz (1989). Michael née Laura. Great Britain: Columbus Books Limited. ISBN 0-86287-872-1.
• Lau, Jacob; Partridge, Cameron (2017). ""In His Own Way, In His Own Time": An Introduction to Out of the Ordinary". Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions. By Dillon/Jivaka, Michael/Lobzang. Lau, Jacob; Partridge, Cameron (eds.). (First ed.). New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823280391.
• Rubin, Henry (2006). "The Logic of Treatment". In Stryker, Susan; Whittle, Stephen (eds.). The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. pp. 482–498. ISBN 978-0-415-94708-4.
• Stryker, Susan (2017a). Foreword. Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions. By Dillon/Jivaka, Michael/Lobzang. Lau, Jacob; Partridge, Cameron (eds.). (First ed.). New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823280391.
• Stryker, Susan (2017b). "Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka: A Timeline". Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions. By Dillon/Jivaka, Michael/Lobzang. Lau, Jacob; Partridge, Cameron (eds.). (First ed.). New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823280391.

Journal articles

• Anderson, Carol S. (1 August 2019). "More Questions than Answers in Out of the Ordinary". Transgender Studies Quarterly. 6 (3): 455–461. doi:10.1215/23289252-7549626.
• Collins, Aiden (March 2017). "Laurence Michael Dillon of Lismullen: World's first transsexual man". The British Journal of Psychiatry. 210 (3): 179. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.116.196642.
• Gailey, Nerissa; Brown, AD (2016). "Beyond either/or: Reading trans* lesbian identities". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 20 (1): 65–86. doi:10.1080/10894160.2015.1076233.
• Griffiths, David Andrew (17 January 2018). "Diagnosing Sex: Intersex Surgery and 'Sex Change' in Britain 1930–1955". Sexualities. 21 (3). doi:10.1177/1363460717740339. PMC 5836525.
• Lewis, Penny (20 December 2017). "The Lawfulness of Gender Reassignment Surgery". American Journal of Legal History. 76 (4): 392–416. doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrab037.
• Vicente, Marta V. (23 September 2021). "The Medicalization of the Transsexual: Patient-Physician Narratives in the First Half of the Twentieth Century". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 76 (4): 392–416. doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrab037.

Newspapers

• Anonymous (1 July 1962). "The Three Tormented Lives of Dr Dillon". The Sydney Morning Herald. pp. 66, 71.
• Anonymous (26 May 1958). "A Change of Heir". Time (magazine). Archived from the original on 30 September 2007.
• Roach, Mary (18 March 2007). "Girls Will Be Boys". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 5 March 2022.
• Roach, Mary (25 March 2007a). "The World's First Man-Made Man". St Petersburg Times. p. 6.
• Wordsworth, Christopher (13 April 1962). "Far Out And About". The Guardian. p. 8.

Websites

• Partridge, Cameron (2015) [2008]. "Dillon, Michael (1915-1962)" (PDF). glbtq.com.
• Taylor, Clare L. (23 September 2004). "Dillon, (Laurence) Michael". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/76743. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Ward, Lauren; Jones, Duncan. "Michael Dillon: A Biographical Exhibition". St Anne's College, Oxford. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
• White, Lawrence William; Evers, Liz (June 2023) [October 2009]. "Dillon, Michael". Dictionary of Irish Biography. doi:10.3318/dib.002610.v1.

Further reading

• Michael Dillon, The World's First Transsexual Man, Transgender Zone Media Archives.