Photograph by Mathew Schwartz
Pagan Kennedy has published seven books and is a pioneer of the '90s zine movement; her autobiographical zine Pagan's Head is noted for describing her life in extraordinary detail. Some of her books include Black Livingstone which was named a New York Times Notable Book and her novel Spinsters which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine, Village Voice, Utne Reader, The Nation and Ms. magazine.
Pagan's new book, The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth Century Medical Revolution, is a biography that documents the life of Michael Dillon who, in the 1940s, survived the world's first known female-to-male sex change treatment.
I interviewed Pagan over email. Here's Pagan...
How did you come to researching and writing about the life of Michael Dillon within the global historical context of science-made sex changes?
Because I write magazine stories and nonfiction books, I’m always trying to ask questions that no one else has thought about. That’s how I find my stories. So, one day I thought, “Who was the first person to transform from woman to man? Why don’t I know about that person?� Of course, I’d heard about Christine Jorgensen, who transformed from a man into the woman in the 1950s. But I had no idea when medical science allowed women to become men. I began doing research, and the answer turned out to be far more interesting than I could have imagined.
In this book, I weave together the story of Michael Dillon—who was the first person to use medicine to go from woman to man—with the larger story of plastic surgery and hormones in the 20th century.
Michael Dillon began life as Laura Dillon in 1915. Laura was an orphan, raised by her aunts in a sort of shabby genteel household. She went to Oxford in the 1930s. In 1939, she became the first woman on record to take testosterone with the intention of becoming male. The testosterone worked very, very well. Within a few years, Laura was living as a male tow truck driver named Michael Dillon. In the 1940s, he endured the female-to-male surgical treatments—these were the first in history as well.
What kind of feedback have you received from The First Man-Made Man?
I received rave reviews in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Sun-Times, Entertainment Weekly and others. That was very gratifying.
Michael Dillon died shortly before he was able to live fully out as a transgendered person. What do you think his life would have been like if he hadn’t died at the moment that he did?
In the 1960s, Michael Dillon was preparing to publish his autobiography, to out himself and to stand up and say that female-to-male sex changes were not only possible but highly effective. If that had happened, he might have become the male version of Christine Jorgensen—a role model who offered proof of the possibilities that medical science offered. He was, after all, a handsome and articulate doctor.
He died just as he was about to release his autobiography. After his death, his brother, a stuffy aristocrat, blocked the publication of the book. Today, the manuscript is still sitting in a warehouse in London. Somebody really ought to publish it.
To not belong in an accepted social group affected Michael Dillon greatly throughout his life. Do you think Michael Dillon would have been satisfied if he had a transgender community to be a part of, or would he still have yearned to be accepted by heterosexual, biologically born men?
Dillon was a fascinating character. He was continually re-inventing himself, even after the sex change. In 1950, he fell head-over-heels in love with Roberta Cowell, who was the only other transsexual then living in Britain. He pursued her madly—it’s quite a wrenching love story. He felt that she was the only woman who could understand him. And when that didn’t work out, he became a ship’s doctor and traveled the world. Then he ended up in India, studying Buddhism. Providentially, he was there in 1959, just when the best and brightest of Tibet were flooding into India. That gave him the chance to study with top intellectuals and eventually meet the Dalai Lama; he ended up becoming the first Westerner ever to be ordained as a novice Tibetan Buddhist. He did feel accepted by the Tibetans and experience his first real happiness among them.
It’s hard to say how his life would have been different had he lived fifty years later—that is, now. One thing is certain: he was a person who was obsessed with self-transformation.
Michael Dillon’s difficulty while in Tibet studying alongside “brown� monks and students poignantly counters the concept of utopian politics within ostracized minority groups. To be such an outsider and yet hold such status-quo views on race says a lot about one’s inability to transcend one’s experience and recognize the similarities within the overall discriminatory paradigm. How do you feel about this and how did you feel about this while you were doing your research for this book?
For a British aristocrat born in 1915, Micheal Dillon actually did a terrific job of transcending his own racism and working toward seeing Indians and Tibetans as his equals. He fought hard to uproot the snobbery and prejudices that he’d learned as a child.
How do you think today’s social climate compares to the social history you document in The First Man-Made Man in terms of the livelihoods of transgender and gender variant or free individuals? And what do you think President Bush feels about transgendered individuals and the right to transgender?
Well, clearly, the president rarely—if ever—thinks about these issues.
In the 1950s, the only option for most people was to live in one role or the other: male or female. The “sex change� was a way to switch from one gender to the other—but it didn’t allow you to live outside the two-gender system. Nowadays, of course, activists are fighting to get beyond the two-gender system.
Do you know of any countries around the world whose governments actively seek out and prosecute transgendered individuals today?
It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on because the press pays so little attention to transgender issues. In fact, there has been so little study of transgendered people that scholars cannot even agree about how many people have changed their sex. Yes, the most basic fact about the world’s transgendered population—how many trans people exist— remains a mystery.
In your Acknowledgments, you mention past writing assignments that had you “interviewing the world’s most educated parrot� and investigating a “soul balancing machine.� Can you talk more about these assignments and your interests?
In the past few years, I’ve done a lot of reporting for The New York Times Magazine and the Boston Globe Magazine. I’ve tried to push the boundaries of science reporting to include politics, pop culture and, well, talking birds.
Do you have an upcoming book project in store?
I’m still looking for ideas. Any suggestions?
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I just read this book on a recent trip! I really enjoyed it. It was interesting to see a popular history volume address this subject. I appreciated reading Ms. Kennedy's interview here for the extra insight. I really, really felt for Michael Dillon and not only should someone definitely publish his autobiography, but I really wish he was better known.
However, I have minor complaint with the actual book itself. It was more like a "book club edition" than a "normal" hardcover. And there was no specific section for pictures, with a scant handful scattered throughout the text, none larger than a few inches. Presentation could have been much more engaging for subject matter and content as interesting as this.
(especially considering Dillon's work Self! That was definitely the biggest reveal in the book. And the section with Roberta was just heartbreaking.)
I also recommend How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States by Joanne Meyerowitz.
I'll have to read this, it sounds very interesting.
It sound interesting, but am I the only one who has a problem with the phrase "Man-Made Man?"
"It sound interesting, but am I the only one who has a problem with the phrase 'Man-Made Man?'"
It's a problem even if I do read "man" in the gender-neutral sense*.
We all know where babies come from, right? Dillon wasn't the first person-made man because the men before him sure came from people too instead of storks or cabbage patches. ;)
* see http://abstractnonsense.wordpress.com/2006/10/07/gendered-language/
"...woman is a derivative of man, indeed - it’s a contraction of wifman or wyfman. In Old English, 'wyf'/'wif' meant woman, and now survives as 'wife'; 'man' was completely gender-neutral; and 'wer,' as in 'werewolf,' was strictly masculine. Over time, 'man' acquired the dual epicene/masculine meaning it has now, displacing 'wer,' and 'wifman' contracted to 'woman.'...
Good point, Mina. I was, however, thinking more in the sense that the phrase reinforces the idea that transgender individuals are "unnatural" and not "real" men or women.
Cara-
I mean the reality of the situation is that Michael Dillon became a man through the efforts of mankind. So this "man" is "man-made." It's an accurate description regardless of what it reinforces, no?
Why did you feel the need to put the word man in quotation marks?
Because I was isolating those words from the phrase "Man-Made Man."
"I mean the reality of the situation is that Michael Dillon became a man through the efforts of mankind. So this 'man' is 'man-made.'"
Yeah, but he's hardly the first one.
The men before him weren't exactly delivered by storks and raised by wolves either. It was efforts of human beings that made all those babies and raised even a lot of the male ones to adulthood. ;)
Well, we can parse it all we want, but the phrase has my vote because it has alliteration and good rhythm.
And, y'know, unless any of the surgeons were women, which give the time period in question seems highly unlikely, I'd say it's accurate.
I'm a bit interested in the class shift that seems to have gone along with the sex change--Laura Dillon went to Oxford and was from a shabby-genteel household and the brother was an aristocrat, Michael Dillon drove a tow-truck. I suppose I should read the book and find out if the shift was chosen, or if the family cut him off, or what.
The fact is that this man most likely felt that he was a man long before he had surgery that gave him a penis. Regardless of surgery, he was not "biologically" a man. He was a transman. And one can be a transman with or without surgery. I feel like the surgeons may have given him a penis, but they did not make him into a man. He did that for himself.
It may seem like I'm quibbling here, but I do think that language is particularly important when it comes to trangender issues, because language is a big way in which transgender individuals are insulted, discounted and illegitimated.
I see your point, but what makes Michael Dillon a "first" is his use of testosterone and surgery to transition. Women had been living as men, and perhaps identifying as men prior to him--it is his decision to use medicine and surgery to do so that no other transman had done before.
Right. I'm not denying the legitimacy of the book. I haven't read it, and Feministing did decide to interview the author, so it may in fact be incredibly respectful of transgender people. I agree that this surgery was in fact a landmark and I see the reason to document that. The "first" isn't my issue nearly as much as the "man-made." I also get that it's a catchy title, but LOTS of insulting, inaccurate things can be catchy.
I get that, but I don't see that this title is particularly insulting or inaccurate. Dillon's firstness has to do with him constructing his manhood through hormones and surgery, provided him most likely by men. Clearly, he felt that such steps weren't just a frill, but utterly necessary for him to claim his identity as a man, or he wouldn't have taken the risk of being the first person to go through them. So "first man-made man" seems accurate to me, rather than insulting.
Oh, and did anyone else find the title "Pagan Kennedy: The First Man-Made Man" a little confusing? It seems to imply Kennedy was that first man-made man, rather than her subject.