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Michael Dillon
Born in 1915 to an aristocratic family, Michael Dillon was an Oxford-educated doctor and the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty.
In the 1930s he began receiving testosterone treatments from a sympathetic physician, who also enabled Dillon to change his birth certificate and enroll in medical school at Trinity College under his new legal name, Laurence Michael Dillon.
In 1946 Dillon published Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics, an early book about transsexuality, which he considered a medical condition.
“Where the mind cannot be made to fit the body,” he wrote, “the body should be made to fit, approximately at any rate, to the mind.” Between 1946 and 1949 he underwent a series of procedures to complete his transition.
Dillon didn’t discuss his own experiences in Self, but they came to light in 1958 during a routine background check. Facing unwanted attention, he fled to India and spent years studying Buddhism.
Before his death at age 47 in 1962, Dillon published several books, including Growing Up into Buddhism, a primer for British youth.
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