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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of five

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Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles Chuck. Brian over there,

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Speaker 1: look at all stern and serious with his glasses on.

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Speaker 1: Oh now he took him off. He's all good. And

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Speaker 1: then there's Jerry over there. He's not sure where she is.

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Speaker 1: Serie always sets her classes on. I know she looks

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Speaker 1: weird with her classes off. She is a four eyes

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Speaker 1: that's what they call him in sixth grade. That's right, Well,

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Speaker 1: that's what they used to. I don't know. Sixth grades

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Speaker 1: are probably way more mature than they were when we

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Speaker 1: were young, huh, or way more advanced in their digs

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Speaker 1: and insults. Yeah, just a lot smarter than four eyes. Right,

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Speaker 1: Like your mom gives you no screen time each tweet

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Speaker 1: to you on that. That's a good one, is it? Sure? So, Chuck,

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Speaker 1: I'm glad we're here in the hot box. This was

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Speaker 1: a really good pick on your part. Thanks. You basically

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Speaker 1: yanked an unsung or probably sung now, but for many years,

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Speaker 1: unsung hero of UM the trans community. Yeah, give all

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Speaker 1: the credit to me. You really did a great job here, Chuck.

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Speaker 1: You did a good job finding this one because I

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Speaker 1: hadn't heard of Michael Dillon yet. But that's who we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today, that's right. Uh, and it's just the

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Speaker 1: most macro view. So you know what we're talking about

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Speaker 1: is Michael Dillon very much overlooked over the years as

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Speaker 1: a trailblazer in the trans community. Period. Yeah, that's enough

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Speaker 1: of an overview. Okay, you're like one of the first

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Speaker 1: people to undergo surgery, one of the first people to

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Speaker 1: like write about it and write books, but not not

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Speaker 1: necessarily even just one of They believe that Michael Dillon

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Speaker 1: was the first female to male um gender confirmation surgery ever. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you know there are different terms in this article.

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Speaker 1: We should say they call that gender confirmation surgery now.

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Speaker 1: They used to call it sexual reassignment. Before that, it

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Speaker 1: was sex change. Yeah for sure. And uh, the pronouns

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Speaker 1: in this are going to shift too, because I think

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Speaker 1: we're just going to follow the timeline of the story

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Speaker 1: pronoun wise, right, Yeah, yeah, that kind of makes sense. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because for significant Porsche, well the first several years now

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, I don't know how old he was,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, he spent like a lot of his formative

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Speaker 1: life as a girl. UM. And there's a the waters

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Speaker 1: are a bit muddied, but they were kind of purposefully

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Speaker 1: muddied historically. UM. And it's not entirely clear whether Michael

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Speaker 1: Dillon born Laura Dilon, Laura Maude Dilon, um, whether Laura

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Speaker 1: Maud Dillon was born intersex um, or if that was

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Speaker 1: just kind of draped over the public um presentation of

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Speaker 1: this gender confirmation journey um, in order to kind of

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Speaker 1: gain public sympathy, which is something you had to do

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Speaker 1: back then for sure. Yeah. I mean it's the waters

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Speaker 1: were very throughout history and still are very much muddied. Um.

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Speaker 1: I mean you can go back and look at examples

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Speaker 1: in history of people that we don't know because the

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Speaker 1: world wasn't set up for recognition or acceptance of any

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Speaker 1: kind of alternative lifestyle or anything on the gender spectrum.

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Speaker 1: And so we don't know about Joan of arc or

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Speaker 1: we don't know for sure about uh emperor what is

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Speaker 1: his name, Alla Elagabulus, Like he he tried to get well,

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Speaker 1: I guess I don't even know what they called that

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Speaker 1: surgery back then in like Roman times, who knows, But

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Speaker 1: he tried to have the surgery way back then. Even

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Speaker 1: oh I didn't find anything like that. Okay, yeah, all right, Um,

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Speaker 1: well we just don't know, like you said, because history

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Speaker 1: didn't acknowledge this kind of thing, so it's hard to

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Speaker 1: sort of, uh categorize it today. Yeah, absolutely right. Um.

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Speaker 1: It actually wasn't until about the early twentieth century, like

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Speaker 1: the first fifth of the twentieth century, that the medical establishment,

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Speaker 1: just tiny little pieces and dots here there of the

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Speaker 1: medical establishment, especially in the kind of newly burgeoning um

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Speaker 1: discipline of plastic surgery, began to see like, oh, wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, wait a minute, there are people out there

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Speaker 1: who feel like that they were born the wrong gender,

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Speaker 1: like their their their sense of self, their identity of

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Speaker 1: their gender doesn't match their biology, and we can do

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Speaker 1: something about that. Uh. And at first it was extremely

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Speaker 1: radical for the first several decades, Um, it was extremely radical.

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Speaker 1: I mean now even it's it's definitely gained much more acceptance,

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Speaker 1: this idea that some people are born, um they identify

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Speaker 1: with a different gender than what they were born with.

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Speaker 1: Um that at the at the in the like nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 1: it was very very radical, but it did exist in

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Speaker 1: some parts of the medical community. Yeah, And I also

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Speaker 1: get the feeling that plastic surgeons, especially like a some

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Speaker 1: of them were probably out to like assist people, but

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of them were just like it

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Speaker 1: was such a new discipline period. They were they liked

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Speaker 1: the challenge. They were like nip tucking it. You remember

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Speaker 1: those renegades on that show. I forgot about that show.

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Speaker 1: It was a good show at first, Yeah, but I

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Speaker 1: got I never saw it. Oh, it was a good

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Speaker 1: show first. It went off the rails, maybe even more

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Speaker 1: than Dexter did, but it was a good show at

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Speaker 1: first for the first several seasons. No, but I get

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Speaker 1: the feeling that plastic surgeons back then we're just like, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: this like is probably the ultimate challenge, right, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: have I have that feeling too for sure. So this

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Speaker 1: is just a means of setting up the world that um.

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Speaker 1: Laura Mall Dillon found herself born into in Ireland in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen as a h and I've never heard this term,

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Speaker 1: but his family um had a title of baronet, which

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Speaker 1: is apparently the lowest hereditary titled order. It's a teeny baron.

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Speaker 1: So you're a you're a commoner, but you are required

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Speaker 1: to be called sir really yeah, okay, um, And even

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Speaker 1: if it wasn't like kind of the teency version of

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Speaker 1: the baron the um, the Dylan's were not like wealthy.

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Speaker 1: They had an estate, but it was kind of an old,

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Speaker 1: kind of crumbling estate. They weren't poor or anything, but

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Speaker 1: they were certainly not well off right. And then by

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Speaker 1: Downton Abbey times shin Fain came along and burned the

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Speaker 1: place to the ground, the estate to the ground, because

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Speaker 1: it was kind of a reminder of English intrusion into Ireland,

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Speaker 1: like you know, landed and gentry kind of thing. Um.

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Speaker 1: I'm rewatching Downton Abbey by the way, are you? Yeah? Uh?

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Speaker 1: How is it? It's comfort food, which is what I

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Speaker 1: need right now, so that's why we're watching it. Is

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Speaker 1: it better the first time or the second time around?

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Speaker 1: Well the first I don't know. Right now. It's just

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Speaker 1: like kind of what the doctor ordered. So it's kind

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Speaker 1: of great, just like all my old pals. Plus the

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Speaker 1: movies coming out this fall that's so neat, So maybe

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Speaker 1: this is a primer. I don't know what they're they're

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Speaker 1: making a movie. Yeah, has there let me ask you this? Sorry, everybody,

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Speaker 1: has there ever been a movie version of a TV

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Speaker 1: show that was better than the TV show. I'll have

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Speaker 1: to get back to you on Okay, I can't think

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Speaker 1: of one. A movie version of a TV show. I

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Speaker 1: cannot think of one. I think the Fresh Prince movie

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Speaker 1: was pretty great what they did. No, I'm just kidding.

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Speaker 1: I was like, we have to stop for two hours

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Speaker 1: called Independence Day, right, Yeah, I guess it kind of

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Speaker 1: was alright. So, Um, Laura mau Dylan, Um, the family,

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Speaker 1: like you said, the state was burned down. He had

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Speaker 1: gotten or I guess she see there we go. Um

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Speaker 1: at the time, she had gotten a um, an inheritance

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Speaker 1: a little bit, not a ton, yeah, because she was

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Speaker 1: young when she would have gotten this inheritance. Yeah. But

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Speaker 1: her brother got the actual you know, estate, which, as

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Speaker 1: it turned out, wasn't that great of a yet. So

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Speaker 1: he was burned down. He Robert, her brother, became the

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Speaker 1: eighth Baronet of Liz Mullen. And I guess when he

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Speaker 1: was handed the title he was like thanks, Yeah, I guess.

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Speaker 1: But young Laura knew very early on that she was different. Um.

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Speaker 1: She especially when she got to puberty. Um, she didn't

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Speaker 1: like wearing girl's clothing. She never thought of herself as

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Speaker 1: a female. Yeah. I think that's a good point, Like

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Speaker 1: that comes through and everything I've read about her for

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Speaker 1: him that he never thought, he never identified as female,

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Speaker 1: like basically his entire life. Yeah, And apparently there was

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Speaker 1: even a incident when she was a teenager where like

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Speaker 1: a boy held open the door for her, and that

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Speaker 1: just sort of it was a symbol I think of

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Speaker 1: all the confusion that she was feeling and really kind

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Speaker 1: of wrecked her identity, you know, in a lot of ways. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it was the first time she was really

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Speaker 1: confronted with what people saw her as and it was

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Speaker 1: a girl. And she was like, I don't feel like

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Speaker 1: a girl. That's not me. I'm I'm a man. Um

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Speaker 1: that's a that's I. I didn't grow up that way.

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Speaker 1: But I can't imagine how rough it is to to

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Speaker 1: feel out of sync like that, and especially at a

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Speaker 1: time where what do you do You don't even have

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Speaker 1: words for it, let alone procedures to follow or people

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Speaker 1: whose footsteps who pioneered the way, which is one reason

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Speaker 1: why Michael Dillon was a pioneer. So she gets that inheritance,

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Speaker 1: which allows her to go to Oxford and this sort

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Speaker 1: of begins a trend of going somewhere else to try

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Speaker 1: and find herself and figure herself out. She tried at Oxford,

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Speaker 1: she joined the rowing team. Um, she was an award

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Speaker 1: winner for the women's boat club and was successful and

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Speaker 1: then and it's hard, well, I guess it's not too

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Speaker 1: hard to believe. But there was a photo of her

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Speaker 1: in a tabloid as a student rower that was titled

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Speaker 1: man or woman because she had like a boyish haircut. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I just can't imagine back then, Like I mean, now

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Speaker 1: it's awful too, but they were doing this kind of

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Speaker 1: thing back then. Yeah, like outing college students. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: think it was more like, um, the commoners poking at

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Speaker 1: the the titled people. Oh any chance they got That's

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Speaker 1: the impression I have, correct me if I'm wrong. In

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Speaker 1: Great Britain. Uh, And this is about the time where

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Speaker 1: we should mention a novel UH publishing night by Marguerite

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Speaker 1: Radcliffe Hall called The Well of Loneliness, which was a radical,

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Speaker 1: radical book because it depicted a lesbian and there wasn't

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Speaker 1: even a name for that at the time. Like you said, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I looked that up and I was like, like, there

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Speaker 1: really wasn't like the word lesbian wasn't in use it

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Speaker 1: and there was no word whatsoever. And from what I

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Speaker 1: saw on etymology online, it just says, with zero explanation lesbian. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I can't find any other thing. I find no

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Speaker 1: other data or whatever. So it's possible that it was

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Speaker 1: in use right around this time, but I hadn't spread.

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Speaker 1: But from what I saw, I think I think the

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Speaker 1: point is there wasn't a concept, not just a word.

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Speaker 1: There wasn't a concept for women who were interested or

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Speaker 1: who were who were sexually oriented towards other women. That

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Speaker 1: was that kind of fell under an umbrella term as

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Speaker 1: far as society went for women who were sexually uninhibited,

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Speaker 1: like they would do that, but then they would also

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Speaker 1: have sex with guys and they would like walk around

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Speaker 1: parties naked or whatever. Is that kind of like it

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Speaker 1: all it was all one big personality. There wasn't like

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Speaker 1: the idea that there were there was a sexual orientation

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Speaker 1: of women who were oriented towards women. That just that

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Speaker 1: it was I think what really didn't exist, and that

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Speaker 1: what the the well of loneliness really kind of put

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Speaker 1: out there like hey, this does exist, and um, you

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Speaker 1: could say that it wasn't well received by British society. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it was I mean a lot of ways. It

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Speaker 1: was a great thing because it gave people uh like

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Speaker 1: uh young Laura, the you know, it's something to look

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Speaker 1: at and identify with. But it also put forward ideas

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Speaker 1: about um lesbians being very mannish and like they want

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Speaker 1: to be men and look like men and dress like men,

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Speaker 1: which is of course not the case, but it was

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Speaker 1: also right. And so the the British the British government

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Speaker 1: decided that this book was obscene and had a huge

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Speaker 1: trial over it and banned the book, and it had

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Speaker 1: a complete streisand effect. Everybody's like, wait, what book is this?

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Speaker 1: What what are you talking about? Everybody right, right exactly,

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Speaker 1: and so everybody wanted to know about it, and it

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Speaker 1: like made this huge impact. It is totally backfired by

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Speaker 1: banning it and going to the trouble of of taking

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Speaker 1: it to trial and everything. It became kind of a

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Speaker 1: big deal and so it kind of informed um, how

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Speaker 1: a lot of British lesbians viewed themselves. It gave them like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I'm not the only one. This is a real thing.

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Speaker 1: It was, it was, It was helpful in a lot

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Speaker 1: of ways to well I mean one way it was

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Speaker 1: helpful to young Laura Dylan was realizing, well, wait a minute,

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Speaker 1: I'm not a lesbian either, so uh there, I have

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Speaker 1: no idea how to think about myself other than the

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Speaker 1: fact that I was born into the wrong gendered body. Right,

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Speaker 1: Because at first she was like, okay, maybe this is it.

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Speaker 1: And I supposedly she fell in love as a teenager,

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Speaker 1: so Air quotes um with two women who were straight

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Speaker 1: and they rejected her and it had a big impact

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Speaker 1: on her. But from that experience, and I think having

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Speaker 1: been guided by this book, like you said, she realized like,

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Speaker 1: I'm not a lesbian. That's not that's not what this

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Speaker 1: is about. She was a man, and what superseded all

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Speaker 1: other desires and what drove her more than anything else,

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Speaker 1: was to be the man that she felt she was physically,

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Speaker 1: so that she could be accepted into male society. That

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Speaker 1: was her goal. It wasn't to have sex with women.

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Speaker 1: If she could have had a kid with a woman,

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Speaker 1: she would have loved that, but inasmuch as it would

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Speaker 1: confirm her identity as a man, and so that's what

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Speaker 1: drove her to undertake um hormone procedures, surgery and basically

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Speaker 1: everything that that pushed her toward confirming her identity as

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Speaker 1: a man. It was the desire to be accepted as

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Speaker 1: a man. Yeah, and and that process kind of started

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Speaker 1: at Oxford when she started dressing as a man. Uh,

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Speaker 1: kind of presenting outwardly as a man, going to evince

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Speaker 1: as a man. And it was sort of a double

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Speaker 1: edged sword. There was a little bit of freedom to that,

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Speaker 1: um and a little bit of you know, work towards

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Speaker 1: self realization. But um, you know, she graduated as a woman,

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Speaker 1: still had a female name on her birth certificates, still

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Speaker 1: still had to you know, got a job and had

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Speaker 1: to wear skirts and dresses a woman at work. So

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Speaker 1: it's sort of just still trapped between two worlds. Uh.

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Speaker 1: When she comes in contact with a man named Dr

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Speaker 1: George Fosse, I think we should take a break. I agree. Okay,

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Speaker 1: all right, Jim, sorry, all right, Chuck, you're setting everybody

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Speaker 1: up for the doctor Fosse bomb Drop. Let's hear about Fosse.

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Speaker 1: Not a bad band name, the doctor Boss bomb Drop.

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Speaker 1: That's like a doctor teeth in the electric what electric mayhem?

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Speaker 1: That's right, the right nice for work that foss was

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Speaker 1: speaking of, double edged swords. He was a doctor who

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Speaker 1: was experimenting with testosterone on patients, like the first yeah,

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Speaker 1: and injections. Uh. Then this was in like the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: and what this was to help reduce unpleasant heavy periods

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Speaker 1: for women. But it had the side effect, the obvious

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Speaker 1: side effects that would happen when a woman takes testosterone.

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Speaker 1: And Laura Dillon gets word of this and volunteers and says,

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Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested in the side effects, if you

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Speaker 1: know what I mean. Right. He's like that, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: since this is I have no idea what you're talking about, right,

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Speaker 1: So he's like, oh, okay, all right, Well you would

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Speaker 1: be the absolute first as far as anybody knows, since

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Speaker 1: synthetic hormones were very, very new. Um, Laura Dillon was

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Speaker 1: the first to try to undergo hermone therapy UM for

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Speaker 1: gender confirmation. No one had ever tried that before. I

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Speaker 1: did even call it hormone therapy. But Foss was like,

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Speaker 1: all right, I'm not quite sure about this. How about

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Speaker 1: I've heard of people like you. You go see a

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Speaker 1: shrink and talk to a shrink first, and then come

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Speaker 1: back afterwards, and then I'll talk about treating you or whatever,

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Speaker 1: and so Laura UM went to a shrink and they

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Speaker 1: didn't call them shrinks back then either. No, they call

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Speaker 1: them psycho words for anything, psychotherapists. That guy over there,

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Speaker 1: I think that's what they said. Um and then came

293
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Speaker 1: back and said, Hey, the shrink said whatever, and how

294
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Speaker 1: about we do this hormone therapy. Fause said, you know what,

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Speaker 1: I've changed my mind. But here's a bottle of testosterone tablets.

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Speaker 1: Good luck. I'm just gonna leave them on this table

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Speaker 1: and walk out of the room. I was thinking we

298
00:17:51,240 --> 00:17:54,440
Speaker 1: should fully in the sound effect of a bottle of

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Speaker 1: pills being tossed from one person. Who I know, what

300
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Speaker 1: does that sound like? It's kind of a silent act,

301
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Speaker 1: A little yeah, Well these are really good mis thof

302
00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:08,800
Speaker 1: so um. And we should also point out that that's

303
00:18:09,040 --> 00:18:13,560
Speaker 1: uh psychiatrist or psychologists who spoke with Laura then gossiped

304
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Speaker 1: about this to other people, and that got back to

305
00:18:16,320 --> 00:18:19,200
Speaker 1: the research facility where Laura worked. So just one of

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Speaker 1: many betrayals in her life, and such a betrayal that

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Speaker 1: that she said I'm out of here. She had to

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Speaker 1: actually leave work this this research lab because the the

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00:18:29,280 --> 00:18:31,720
Speaker 1: heat had been turned up on her, And yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: a There are a string of betrayals that that popped

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Speaker 1: up throughout his Michael Dillon's life. Um and and this

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Speaker 1: is one of the first significant ones. But also um,

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Speaker 1: he was also a very lonely person and just because

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Speaker 1: of his situation and because there there was no community

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Speaker 1: for him. And he had some like real friends here

316
00:18:51,760 --> 00:18:55,280
Speaker 1: and there, but they were kind of random, surprising people.

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Speaker 1: Like one of the big influences on his life was

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00:18:58,160 --> 00:19:01,159
Speaker 1: the town vicar from him where he grew up as

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00:19:01,240 --> 00:19:05,880
Speaker 1: a girl, really kind of connected and understood him. Um.

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Speaker 1: And he his family was not very supportive. His brother

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00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:14,840
Speaker 1: Robert disowned him at one point. His aunt Toto. Have

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00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:18,040
Speaker 1: you ever seen a picture of aunt Toto. If there's

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00:19:18,040 --> 00:19:20,359
Speaker 1: ever been a woman named aunt Toto that looked like

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00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:24,120
Speaker 1: an aunt Toto, it's this lady. Um. She was obviously

325
00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:27,159
Speaker 1: supportive because in the picture she's walking around with Michael Dillon,

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00:19:27,280 --> 00:19:31,520
Speaker 1: full full dress, beard and everything. Um. But aunt Toto

327
00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:36,400
Speaker 1: was supportive. She was inasmuch as she would be out

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00:19:36,480 --> 00:19:39,480
Speaker 1: in public pictured with him. But I don't have the

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00:19:39,560 --> 00:19:43,480
Speaker 1: impression that she was like supportive supportive. I think maybe

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00:19:43,520 --> 00:19:46,000
Speaker 1: she tolerated it. That's the impression that I have or

331
00:19:46,480 --> 00:19:51,200
Speaker 1: it probably chided him, who knows, but um, he he

332
00:19:51,320 --> 00:19:53,080
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of friends, but the ones that

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00:19:53,160 --> 00:19:56,280
Speaker 1: he did have really helped him in some profound ways

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00:19:57,280 --> 00:20:00,280
Speaker 1: and helped kind of. He did have a the kind

335
00:20:00,320 --> 00:20:07,399
Speaker 1: of mountain mountain chain of support throughout his life, but

336
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:10,359
Speaker 1: never a bunch of people at once, gotcha, you know

337
00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:13,200
Speaker 1: what I mean, So mediocre support dabbled here and there

338
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:16,000
Speaker 1: throughout his life. He had to do it on his own,

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00:20:16,040 --> 00:20:20,080
Speaker 1: I guess. So this is where, uh, you know, the

340
00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:24,359
Speaker 1: pronoun definitely shifts at this point because, um, Laura fully

341
00:20:25,240 --> 00:20:29,399
Speaker 1: starts using testosterone, fully starts living life as a man,

342
00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:32,679
Speaker 1: took on the name Michael, became Michael, grew a beard,

343
00:20:34,040 --> 00:20:37,000
Speaker 1: his voice, you know, because the hormone treatments worked, like

344
00:20:37,480 --> 00:20:40,800
Speaker 1: his voice dropped and became lower pitched. He got a

345
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:43,879
Speaker 1: job as a mechanic. Of course, he got made fun

346
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:48,320
Speaker 1: of their some, but um, it was working well enough

347
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:52,000
Speaker 1: to where like customers started to um, he started to

348
00:20:52,080 --> 00:20:55,080
Speaker 1: kind of pass as a man among people that didn't

349
00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:57,280
Speaker 1: know who he was very much. So as long as

350
00:20:57,359 --> 00:21:00,359
Speaker 1: he was clothed, he was a man. It's just what

351
00:21:00,480 --> 00:21:02,600
Speaker 1: he looked like to everybody is, like you said, the

352
00:21:02,680 --> 00:21:05,359
Speaker 1: voice of the beard, UM, the demeanor. He was a

353
00:21:05,480 --> 00:21:08,399
Speaker 1: very he was a large man, UM, very well built

354
00:21:08,560 --> 00:21:11,560
Speaker 1: from all those years of rowing. UM. And then you know,

355
00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:14,800
Speaker 1: a decade of testosterone pills are coming, you know, half

356
00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:18,600
Speaker 1: a decade. By this point, UM had really taken effect.

357
00:21:19,080 --> 00:21:20,760
Speaker 1: And this is in Bristol. I don't think we mentioned

358
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:25,200
Speaker 1: another like move to try and start over, right because

359
00:21:25,320 --> 00:21:29,480
Speaker 1: of that gossipy headshrinker who basically got him driven out

360
00:21:29,600 --> 00:21:33,080
Speaker 1: of his job at the research lab. Right. So, Um,

361
00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:37,080
Speaker 1: he's working at the garage and he's he's there is

362
00:21:37,119 --> 00:21:43,440
Speaker 1: a certain bitter suite UM confirmation or affirmation from interacting

363
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:46,680
Speaker 1: with customers who leave thinking that they just interacted with

364
00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:50,280
Speaker 1: the man, making him feel like himself, the person he's

365
00:21:50,280 --> 00:21:52,439
Speaker 1: always wanting to be. UM. But like you said, he's

366
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:55,680
Speaker 1: getting mocked by coworkers. UM. But one of the things

367
00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:59,239
Speaker 1: that he does is he takes on extra work as

368
00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:03,040
Speaker 1: a firewak. True because this is during the Second World

369
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:06,919
Speaker 1: War and Um, Britain was getting bombed during the Blitz

370
00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:11,119
Speaker 1: by the Germans and Michael Dylan would sit up and

371
00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:14,680
Speaker 1: watch for fires that broke out and would you know,

372
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:17,399
Speaker 1: call the fire brigade, you know, tell him where to

373
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:19,760
Speaker 1: go because the bomb had just set some building on fire,

374
00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:22,680
Speaker 1: which meant very long hours awake in the dark, sitting

375
00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:25,840
Speaker 1: around doing nothing. And he took this time to write

376
00:22:25,880 --> 00:22:30,840
Speaker 1: a book called Self, and Self was a really interesting

377
00:22:31,520 --> 00:22:35,000
Speaker 1: tone from what I can tell, where there was kind

378
00:22:35,040 --> 00:22:41,840
Speaker 1: of a scientific treatise on endocrinology, psychological treatise on UM

379
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:47,040
Speaker 1: basically what would come to later be known as trans identity,

380
00:22:47,440 --> 00:22:51,360
Speaker 1: well and everything, gender identity, homosexuality. Like he was kind

381
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:54,960
Speaker 1: of tackling it all, except not saying like this is

382
00:22:55,000 --> 00:22:57,640
Speaker 1: who I am, right, He was approaching it like I'm

383
00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 1: a scientist and this is this is what's what. Yeah,

384
00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:05,480
Speaker 1: And it got published in ninety six. It was obviously

385
00:23:05,600 --> 00:23:10,119
Speaker 1: not some huge bestseller because it was n UM. I

386
00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:13,879
Speaker 1: would say it was probably tucked away in certain corners

387
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:17,280
Speaker 1: of certain bookstores, but not widely you know, acknowledged and

388
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:20,280
Speaker 1: available at the time now looked upon as a landmark,

389
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:24,439
Speaker 1: sure piece of work. But in and the people who

390
00:23:24,560 --> 00:23:28,199
Speaker 1: were in this you know UM scattered trans community at

391
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 1: the time who were lucky enough to find it, found

392
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:33,159
Speaker 1: a lot of solace in it because it argued on

393
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:37,000
Speaker 1: their behalf at the time, there was a the medical

394
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:41,760
Speaker 1: community was like, if you're born intersex, where it's unclear

395
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: what your gender is, you are you're morally in the clear,

396
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:48,920
Speaker 1: Like we can feel bad for you, there's things we

397
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,400
Speaker 1: can do, We'll do surgeries. No one's going to really

398
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:57,240
Speaker 1: judge you if you're If you're born biologically one gender

399
00:23:57,359 --> 00:24:00,080
Speaker 1: but you want to be the other gender, you're what

400
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:02,840
Speaker 1: everybody considered back then, a freak like that was the

401
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:05,879
Speaker 1: word they tossed around, was freak. And you deserve scorn

402
00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: and plenty of it. Whatever anybody wanted to do to you,

403
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:12,840
Speaker 1: that's what you deserved at the time. Um, And it

404
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 1: was up to the medical community to dole out judgment

405
00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: of who deserved what. And Michael in this book self argued, no, No,

406
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 1: it's up to the person to decide. If that person

407
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,200
Speaker 1: decides that it's their head that they want changed to

408
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: match their body, or their body they want changed to

409
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:32,320
Speaker 1: match their head, it's up to them to decide. And

410
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 1: this was the complete opposite of what the medical community

411
00:24:35,560 --> 00:24:37,840
Speaker 1: held at the time. Well yeah, and also the point

412
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 1: was like there needs to be a physical change, like

413
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 1: we can't be quote unquote fixed right psychologically. Um, this

414
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 1: is real, so we need to be able to physically

415
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:51,679
Speaker 1: change our bodies. Um that and that was radical at

416
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:53,359
Speaker 1: the time. Well it was. And it was also a

417
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 1: time where, um, it's important to point out that transitioning

418
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: from male to female believe me, nothing was like super accepted,

419
00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 1: but that was slightly more accepted in uh England and

420
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:11,240
Speaker 1: in the West at least. Uh, And there were famous cases.

421
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 1: There was one transgender person named Christine Jorgenson who um,

422
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: and and ironically too, if you're transitioning male to female

423
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:25,360
Speaker 1: and you transition into this beautiful woman, then uh, it's

424
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 1: more accepted and written about as like, well, you know,

425
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:31,719
Speaker 1: but look what happened, Like the chrysalis turns into a butterfly, right,

426
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:34,159
Speaker 1: Like everybody's like, why can't you be more like Caitlyn

427
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: Jenner exactly? But this is why can't you be more

428
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 1: like Christine Jorgensen. Yeah. So the whole point of all

429
00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: that is Michael Dillon. Uh, it was sort of in

430
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:48,160
Speaker 1: one of the roughest positions to be transitioning the other way,

431
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 1: which was not accepted at all, um and the least

432
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: sort of like understood even but ironically, at least legally

433
00:25:56,520 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: it was easier for Michael Dillon too undergo an actual

434
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:06,440
Speaker 1: surgical transition going from female to male than it was

435
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:09,159
Speaker 1: for somebody who wanted to go male the female, at

436
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:11,680
Speaker 1: least in Great Britain, because in the UK at the

437
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 1: time there were laws against um surgical castration of healthy

438
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:23,440
Speaker 1: male genitalia. It was illegal to do because uh, I

439
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 1: don't know if this is confirmed, but one of the

440
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: thoughts is to get out of the army, right, they

441
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: didn't want men having the surgery to get out of

442
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:35,440
Speaker 1: the army. But also at the time homosexuality was outlawed

443
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: and have been since that little fact as well, which

444
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: we talked about. So here we are with Michael Dillon, um,

445
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: still very much in between worlds, still very much in

446
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: pain and not living like a full true life as

447
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: is true self, but much happier than say, uh, during

448
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 1: the time when he was working at the research lab.

449
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,880
Speaker 1: At the very least the hormones have like given him

450
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 1: a certain amount or confirmed his male identity much more

451
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:15,239
Speaker 1: than it had before. UM. So we should add here

452
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: that Dylan had diabetes, which turned out to be an

453
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:22,240
Speaker 1: interesting sort of um good thing in some ways because

454
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:27,160
Speaker 1: he's at the doctor because he has diabetes and really

455
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 1: loved his cake in Bristol, and uh, I couldn't tell

456
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 1: if it was type two or type one. I never

457
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:35,919
Speaker 1: saw that either. So at the hospital in Bristol, Um

458
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 1: Dylan seen by a plastic surgeon who says, wait a minute,

459
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:41,680
Speaker 1: here's a diabetic man from the doctor's point of view

460
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: who has breasts, and I bet you probably want those removes,

461
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: so let me put you in touch with this plastic surgeon.

462
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,120
Speaker 1: His name is Dr Harold Gillies. I think that guy

463
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:56,560
Speaker 1: actually performed him assectomy first. Yeah, so well he put

464
00:27:56,680 --> 00:27:59,080
Speaker 1: him in touch with Gillies because like this this guy

465
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:01,879
Speaker 1: is the real deal. Like, if you want a penis,

466
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: this is your man. Do you remember you know that's

467
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: what it said on his card? Um, Are you do

468
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: you remember Gillies from the War Masks episode. Yeah? He

469
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 1: was like the hero surgeon from that episode. Yeah, so

470
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 1: that I mean his specialty was um helping physically repair

471
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: people who were mangled in a factory or burned or

472
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:28,000
Speaker 1: blasted up at war. And he got a reputation. Like

473
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: I said, if you were in battle and you lost

474
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: your penis, go to Dr Gillies because he can make

475
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 1: you a new one. Do you remember that part in

476
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: Big Red One or I think Mark Camill gets his

477
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: penis blown off? How do you remember that? It's Mark

478
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: Camill right, Um, that was my first rate to movie.

479
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 1: And Lee Marvin we have had the same convers but

480
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:53,400
Speaker 1: years ago, yeah, many years ago, so weird. Anyway, Gillies

481
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 1: could have helped him probably put it back on. So

482
00:28:57,160 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 1: uh al right, So that's where we are at. Dr

483
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 1: Gillies um and said, you know what I can. I

484
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 1: can make you a penis. It's an interesting procedure. What

485
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: I do is I cut a flap of skin, um,

486
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 1: allow that skin to grow, and I'm rolling this thing

487
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: and forming it into a tube shape the whole time.

488
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: And then effectively I can take that tube of skin

489
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: and we can talk about what you want out of it.

490
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: What do you wonder you got a tube of skin,

491
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: It's up to you go crazy with whatever you want

492
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: to do with it. Yeah, but I mean those are

493
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 1: some of the questions, like do you want to urinate

494
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: out of this? Do you want to have sex? And

495
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: have you know, uh, have sex that actually feels good?

496
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: And this was, believe it or not, all possible thanks

497
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: to Gillies at the time. I don't think it was

498
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: like like success rates, but for the time inventing fallow plasty,

499
00:29:50,840 --> 00:29:52,400
Speaker 1: it was some you know, at least there was a

500
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 1: glimmer of hope. So so yeah, I believe Gillies did

501
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: invent fallow plastic and Michael Dillon was the first rest

502
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 1: being of valoplastic in the world. So that's not to

503
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: say that there weren't UM gender confirmation surgeries that happened prior,

504
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: but by the time Gillies had come along, UM he

505
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 1: really managed to UM standardize these and figure out like

506
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: the best practices for him Before the first ones they

507
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,719
Speaker 1: started to take place Back in I think nineteen nineteen

508
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: in Berlin, there was a guy named Dr Magnus Hirschfeldt

509
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: who were in the Institute for Sexual Weissenschaft or Sexual

510
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 1: Sciences and UM under under UM Dr Hirschfeld's watch, some

511
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: of the earliest gender confirmation surgeries took place, including UM

512
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 1: a radical surgery for the the Danish painter Lily Elbi. Yeah,

513
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 1: they made the movie in the book is that the

514
00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: Dutch girl? The Danish Girl? Yeah? Okay, all right, I

515
00:30:55,840 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: gotta see that. Then is it saddle? But it's sad.

516
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 1: I never saw it. Well, I can tell you Lily

517
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:04,239
Speaker 1: l Elbi's UM story is sad, but in a very

518
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: bittersweet way. Um, she she transitioned into a woman, and um,

519
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: all she wanted was to be able to have a baby,

520
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: and actually got a uterine transplant. Well that's how she died,

521
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 1: and a vaginal plastic right, But she didn't die for

522
00:31:23,040 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 1: like I think fourteen or eighteen months later. Yeah, it

523
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: was an infection that eventually led to cardiac arrest. But

524
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:32,000
Speaker 1: she wrote like, you know, she knew she was she

525
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: was dying, and she wrote towards the end, she said,

526
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 1: you know, some people would say that fourteen months isn't

527
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: a very long life to live as the person you

528
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: you know, you were born to be, But to me,

529
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: it's it was a whole lifetime. So it was like

530
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: she got, she got what she wanted. Finally she got

531
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: to be the woman that she had always felt she

532
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: was and lived that way for fourteen months. I gotta

533
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:57,200
Speaker 1: check that out. But that was, you know, the idea

534
00:31:57,320 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: that she died from the surgery. Like they were just

535
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: practicing basically at this point, but they were practicing on

536
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 1: live patients. And in their defense, UM, at the institute

537
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: they weren't doing this because they were man sciences. They

538
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 1: were doing this because they were These were people coming

539
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:13,680
Speaker 1: to them saying like, if you don't do this, I'm

540
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,120
Speaker 1: gonna do this myself, right, because that was kind of

541
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:20,040
Speaker 1: your option, do it yourself or go totally nuts, um

542
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: banging your head against the wall, trying to find some

543
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: other alternative for it. So by the time Gillies came

544
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: along in the forties actually World War One, and then

545
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:31,680
Speaker 1: onward into the fourties, he really figured out how to

546
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:33,520
Speaker 1: do this, and he was the guy who laid the

547
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: groundwork for everything that came after. Yeah, and he was

548
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: actually um another like, he was not only a talented surgeon,

549
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: but he could provide a medical reason that would um

550
00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 1: be acceptable to the bureaucrats, which was, uh, there's a

551
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 1: condition called hypospadia. That's when a man's urethra exists further

552
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,080
Speaker 1: down the penis rather than at the tip of the penis,

553
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: and so a boy might be miss gendered at birth, mislabeled,

554
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: and so this surgery would I guess correct that. So

555
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:08,960
Speaker 1: he had sort of a I guess, sort of a

556
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 1: I guess legal standing, no for sure to stand on. Remember,

557
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: like the surgeons and so the community at large. It said, Okay,

558
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: if you're born intersex, hypospadia um qualifies as intersex, right, um,

559
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 1: you deserve to be taken care of. Like it's fine,

560
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 1: legally you can do it all that stuff. So if

561
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:31,000
Speaker 1: you have a surgeon who saying this patient has hypospadia,

562
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: you're in all right. Should we take a break? Oh yeah,

563
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: I think we should? All right? Sorry, Okay, So where

564
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: we left off was Dr Gillies has been introduced to

565
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: Michael Dillon. Michael Dillon and hormone therapy has worked. Michael

566
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: Dilon has been living pretty successfully for the time as

567
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 1: a man and said, all right, I'd like to have

568
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:12,359
Speaker 1: this surgery. And Dr Gilly said, that's great, but get

569
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 1: in line, pal, because I got a lot of war masks. Now,

570
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:18,359
Speaker 1: I got a lot of injured men in the war

571
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 1: that I have to treat that in my mind take

572
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:23,919
Speaker 1: priority over you. And so it took a little while,

573
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:27,640
Speaker 1: um to actually, you know, go under the knife for Dylan.

574
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. And he and also like it wasn't like

575
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 1: this is just one surgery, you know, this was a

576
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: oh no series. Sure. So Gillies in his notes later

577
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:41,880
Speaker 1: on said that he performed thirteen surgeries on Michael Dilon.

578
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: Dylan in his autobiography said that it was seventeen, but

579
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:49,920
Speaker 1: it was a lot either way over like a three

580
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 1: year period during which time Michael Dillon goes to medical school, Yeah,

581
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 1: at Trinity in Dublin. Yeah, so he's kind of taking

582
00:34:57,400 --> 00:34:59,319
Speaker 1: his life into his own hands in a big way

583
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:01,239
Speaker 1: by saying, like I want to go be a doctor

584
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: and potentially a surgeon even right. But he's going and

585
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,040
Speaker 1: doing like his studies during the term, and then after

586
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 1: the term he's going to England to visit Gillies at

587
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 1: Gilly's Hospital, the one we talked about in the war

588
00:35:12,800 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: Masks episode. And you remember remember how we said like

589
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,040
Speaker 1: this hospital was kind of like a refuge for people

590
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: who like had trouble existing in the outside world. Well,

591
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:26,479
Speaker 1: Michael Dillon was finally for the first time in his life,

592
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: like he felt like accepted there and he could thrive.

593
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: And he did thrive in this hospital with all these

594
00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 1: other patients. It was like a really happy time for him.

595
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:39,400
Speaker 1: Actually when he would go spend time there, you know,

596
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:42,280
Speaker 1: getting surgeries and recuperating while he was out of school,

597
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,080
Speaker 1: he felt good, like he he called it the country

598
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:48,440
Speaker 1: club is where he was going. Yeah, and then weirdly though,

599
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: it was also a time where Michael Dillon developed this um,

600
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:56,040
Speaker 1: I guess, sort of a defense mechanism and survival technique

601
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:01,800
Speaker 1: relationship wise, where he was sort of I mean in

602
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:05,759
Speaker 1: the article here that it was labeled misogynistic. I don't know,

603
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:07,840
Speaker 1: that's a tough word, but at the very least it

604
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: was sort of like, well, who needs women? Women belong

605
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:14,719
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, which is all clearly a defense, you know,

606
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,800
Speaker 1: of self preservation. Well even wrote later on that it

607
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: was it was to keep women at arms length. Then

608
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:24,120
Speaker 1: it was purposeful. They didn't really actually mean it. Well, absolutely,

609
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: because if even if this surgery, and you know, we're

610
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: going to get to that in a second, even if

611
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:31,799
Speaker 1: it went off without a hitch um when push comes

612
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:33,839
Speaker 1: to shove, if he got in a relationship with a woman,

613
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:37,360
Speaker 1: while he may have a functioning penis, it's still not

614
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 1: one that's like uh like they would be able to

615
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: tell and he would have to have some sort of

616
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 1: conversation which he did not want to have. Right. But

617
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: it's even more nuanced than that, chuck, because remember how

618
00:36:49,239 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: Laura Dillon was befriended by the town Vicar as a

619
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: young kid. Well that Vicar is credited by Michael Dillon

620
00:36:56,520 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 1: as really instilling like the set of ethics and values

621
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:01,919
Speaker 1: into him. And one of the things that he said

622
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 1: is if I can't give a woman a baby, I

623
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:08,960
Speaker 1: have no business leading or on. So it wasn't just

624
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: self defense. It was also in a very strange way,

625
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: looking out for other women. He didn't want anyone to

626
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:17,839
Speaker 1: fall in love with him or expect something from him

627
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: that he couldn't give. And I can't get whether he

628
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: actually was okay with being denied love like that or

629
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: um if you know that in itself was a defense

630
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:32,399
Speaker 1: mech and is not not talking about it. But from

631
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:34,800
Speaker 1: what I gathered, what he was really interested in, he

632
00:37:34,840 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 1: would much prefer have just been hanging out with the guys.

633
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 1: He wasn't after love or a baby or a wife.

634
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 1: He was after hanging out with the guys. That's what

635
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: he wanted, and that's to him, is what what Gillies

636
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: gave him by creating this penis for him was that

637
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:53,400
Speaker 1: was it, That was the key, that was the final

638
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: ticket into the male world. Now he could be anywhere

639
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,799
Speaker 1: men were, including a dressing room or a locker, locker

640
00:37:59,880 --> 00:38:02,800
Speaker 1: room and still be accepted as a man. That was it.

641
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:07,320
Speaker 1: And so finally, by nineteen fifty, after these years of surgery,

642
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:11,720
Speaker 1: after more than a decade of testosterone therapy, Michael Dillon

643
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: was Michael Dillon, the man. He had been confirmed in

644
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 1: his in his gender identity. Yeah, so this is where

645
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: someone named Roberta Cowell comes into Dylan's life. Um, I

646
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,320
Speaker 1: don't even think we talked about Roberta earlier on, did we? No,

647
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: we didn't mention her yet, because she really does just

648
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:32,360
Speaker 1: kind of come in now. So I think it's okay,

649
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 1: So Roberta cow we should go back and started over.

650
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:40,720
Speaker 1: ROBERTA cow was born male but began that hormone treatment

651
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:44,360
Speaker 1: and when it was in that transition period that's so difficult.

652
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: When Roberta read Dylan's books self, which again not some

653
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:52,919
Speaker 1: huge book, but got a copy of it and said

654
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 1: I would like to meet you and talk to you. Yeah,

655
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: because she wanted info on like how how to get

656
00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: you know, how to get a surgeon to do this

657
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: that was might as well have been magic at the time. Well,

658
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: and he was a doctor at this point to Dylan

659
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:08,920
Speaker 1: was so Roberta thinks like I'm meeting with this doctor,

660
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: which was true, UM, but it was all a ruse.

661
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:17,080
Speaker 1: I'm no doctor, I'm a mechanic. Well he was all

662
00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:21,320
Speaker 1: those things. UM. So at the very first meeting, Dylan

663
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:24,400
Speaker 1: just sort of spills it. And this was something that

664
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 1: Dylan didn't talk about openly with people, always kept it

665
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: very guarded and just basically says, here's my whole life history,

666
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 1: here's who I am. And at last I found someone

667
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: who understands me. And by all accounts, they they sort

668
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: of felt like they were meant to be together in

669
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 1: some way. He felt they were meant to be together.

670
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:48,279
Speaker 1: She did not feel that, well, not in that way,

671
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:50,320
Speaker 1: but she was very close to him. It's not like

672
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: she shunned him or anything like that. No, she didn't.

673
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that he well, actually I know

674
00:39:55,920 --> 00:40:00,080
Speaker 1: he UM had a little more of a future in

675
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: mind for them than she did romantic future UM. And

676
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: he also, at the very least he he served as

677
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: her guide to UM transitioning. She he knew Gillies, he

678
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 1: knew how to do this UM and like just was

679
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: a really great resource for her as well well, and

680
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:23,840
Speaker 1: not just emotionally helped with the transition. But literally with

681
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: a scalpel. That's a big one. Dylan as a doctor,

682
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: actually performed an orchidectomy on cowl, right, which is the

683
00:40:33,080 --> 00:40:37,359
Speaker 1: removal of the testicles, which was illegal at the time,

684
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:40,040
Speaker 1: and so they found it was he even like and

685
00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: then he went to medical school, but I don't even

686
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:45,920
Speaker 1: it was he a I'm not sure graduated yet. He

687
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,719
Speaker 1: had definitely performed an appendectomy by that point. He did

688
00:40:49,800 --> 00:40:51,800
Speaker 1: that in medical school for sure, and I could do

689
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:55,960
Speaker 1: that though like tomorrow probably right, we actually are scheduled

690
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 1: for surgery tomorrow. Um. But he did it illegally, and

691
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: they found out about this because they meaning historians um

692
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:08,000
Speaker 1: in there either Michael's letters or Roberta's letters, there is

693
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: a document that was found that said, I, ROBERTA. Cow

694
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 1: will understand that Michael Dillon is a doctor, but is

695
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 1: not an experienced surgeon. I also know that there are

696
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: a lot of risks involved in this and that it's illegal,

697
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:24,240
Speaker 1: but I hereby remove any responsibility should I not survive

698
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 1: this orchidectomy that Michael Dillon's about to perform on me.

699
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: And so with ROBERTA. Cow's testicles removed, now all of

700
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: a sudden, she is a candidate for um gender confirmation

701
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 1: surgery because from gillis who can do it legally now

702
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: because there's no testicle removal, which again is illegal, And

703
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 1: so Gilly's who has been introduced to Roberta by Michael

704
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: Um performs a not not a um. Is it a penectomy?

705
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:58,480
Speaker 1: I believe, not a penectomy, but a vaginal plastic the

706
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 1: very first one, the very first one in Great Britain.

707
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:06,280
Speaker 1: Number um I think um uh was the first vegino

708
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 1: plastic recipient. Yeah. Yeah, but this is the first one

709
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:11,319
Speaker 1: in Great Britain. It's not like they were a dime

710
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 1: a dozen by this time. It was. It was groundbreaking

711
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: surgery for sure, and it was successful too, that's right.

712
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: So um. He did get his medical degree, Dylan did,

713
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: didn't get a job for a little while, but eventually

714
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,800
Speaker 1: got a job as a ship's doctor. And this is

715
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,200
Speaker 1: in the Merchant Navy, so we didn't say um. He

716
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 1: asked Roberta to marry him, and remember was like he said, fine,

717
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: I'm done with relationships. I'm going to join the Merchant Marines.

718
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,520
Speaker 1: That's right. And was a doctor and very much living

719
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: as doctor Michael Dillon on these ships, bearded pipe smoking doctor. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

720
00:42:48,160 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: I mean you can find pictures on Google Images and

721
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 1: all that stuff, like all kinds of good pictures. Look up,

722
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 1: Look up, Michael Dillon and aunt Toto. Seriously, aunt Toto

723
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 1: looks like aunt Toto. I don't even know. I can't.

724
00:43:00,719 --> 00:43:03,000
Speaker 1: You will know what it means when you see aunt Toto.

725
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: I can't stress this enough. So if you go back

726
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:07,319
Speaker 1: to the beginning of the show, remember where we talked

727
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 1: about the inheritance and the lineage and all that. This

728
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:12,640
Speaker 1: is where Michael Dylan says, you know what I want

729
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 1: to get my I want to get back in the

730
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:19,360
Speaker 1: family lineage as a man uh for my birthright. And

731
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 1: there are two, um, two ways that this is done

732
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:25,880
Speaker 1: in Britain, which this is also fascinating to me. Uh

733
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:28,799
Speaker 1: de Brette's peerage and Burke's peerage. There are the two

734
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 1: books that track the Thoroughbreds that of British aristocracy. You

735
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:37,919
Speaker 1: should have used air quotes. Um. So Dylan uh makes

736
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: this change in one of them in Debretts. Doesn't make

737
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 1: the change in Burke's because Debrett's assured him that if

738
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: the change was made into in Debrett's, Burks would follow

739
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:51,959
Speaker 1: suit automatically. Just about to say that, So that didn't happen,

740
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: and uh, this is when things go really Uh this,

741
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:58,359
Speaker 1: I mean, you think, what a journey this man has

742
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: been on to this point. This sends him to like

743
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:07,160
Speaker 1: down the philosophical spiral where or maybe up the philosophical spiral?

744
00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:10,359
Speaker 1: Can you spiral up? Sure, it's like a cork screw,

745
00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 1: all right, an inverted corkscrew. So uh starts getting into Buddhism. Uh,

746
00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:18,799
Speaker 1: specifically a book called The Third Eye, which is I think,

747
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:21,839
Speaker 1: like about Tibetan Buddhism, but how they can like fly

748
00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 1: around and do stuff. Yeah, I mean that book is

749
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: definitely one that's been taken issue with over the years.

750
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,839
Speaker 1: So uh, he goes back to Britain. He's very much

751
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: in this mindset of Buddhism and philosophical introspection. Uh. This

752
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: is when it's he's basically exposed in the press as

753
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: this scandalous uh person who had a sex change and

754
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:51,839
Speaker 1: is trying to like get the family fortune when he's

755
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:54,840
Speaker 1: not even entitled or they probably used the she pronouns

756
00:44:55,200 --> 00:45:00,359
Speaker 1: I imagine again and uh, he basically finally comes out

757
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:03,759
Speaker 1: does an interview, fully outing himself in the press, even

758
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: though he did say he suffered from hypospadia, which in

759
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: in order to gain sympathy, which was not true. No,

760
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: apparently it wasn't true. Yeah, that's what we were saying

761
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 1: at the beginning, Like the historical record has been muddied

762
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:18,840
Speaker 1: by by stuff like that, like during that interview. But

763
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be true. But he's exposed. He's

764
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 1: He's basically like, I can't go anywhere in England, I

765
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: can't go to America. All the press is gonna follow

766
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 1: me wherever I go, except probably to India. I want

767
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 1: to go meet some of these Tibetan monks. So he

768
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:39,280
Speaker 1: headed off to India. Um after one of the voyages

769
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: in the Merchant Navy, and Um started studying Buddhism. He

770
00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:48,000
Speaker 1: found he sought out a guy another Britain who had

771
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:54,480
Speaker 1: been um Uh transformed under uh Theravada Buddhism, the Thera

772
00:45:54,600 --> 00:46:00,439
Speaker 1: Veda tradition, who had become known as let me see

773
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:02,400
Speaker 1: if I can get this right, chuck right out of

774
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 1: the gate Um sanghar Ak dah. Yeah, pretty good. Right,

775
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:12,320
Speaker 1: So Sangharaka was a British guy. Um I can't remember

776
00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: what his born name was, but he Um had become

777
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:22,400
Speaker 1: like a pretty well respected renowned Theravada Buddhist teacher in India.

778
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: And so Michael Dillon sought him out and Um started

779
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:29,880
Speaker 1: studying under him well and as but gave him his

780
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:32,279
Speaker 1: whole story and said this is who I am. Right. So,

781
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:36,240
Speaker 1: so at this point, like not only has he become

782
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:39,640
Speaker 1: a man, now he's becoming a Buddhist. And so to

783
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:43,719
Speaker 1: kind of undergo this further transition from Michael Dillon to

784
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: this new Buddhist practitioner, he takes a name sraman Era Javaca.

785
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 1: Javaca was Buddha's doctor. Um he throws his pipe off

786
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 1: the mountain, he shaves his beard, shaves his head, and

787
00:46:56,520 --> 00:47:03,360
Speaker 1: starts learning Buddhism, and Um sangharak Sheetah takes him on

788
00:47:03,560 --> 00:47:06,040
Speaker 1: and says, I will I will let you be a novice.

789
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:10,279
Speaker 1: You can study under me. And so Michael had Um

790
00:47:10,520 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: or I should say, uh. Sraman Era at this point

791
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:17,879
Speaker 1: had like this sudden idea that that he was going

792
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:20,520
Speaker 1: to become a Buddhist monk, that this was, this was

793
00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:22,759
Speaker 1: in the cards firm in the future, and he dared,

794
00:47:23,120 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: he dared to dream. Yeah, this this was to me

795
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 1: maybe the saddest thing of all this, like at towards

796
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 1: the end of this man's journey finally says, you know

797
00:47:32,040 --> 00:47:33,919
Speaker 1: what is going to bring me peace is to become

798
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: a Buddhist monk, and they're accepting me in my story.

799
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:41,720
Speaker 1: And that's when they said, actually, you can't really become

800
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 1: a monk. Yes, sorry about that, but you uh it

801
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:49,360
Speaker 1: filed it's it falls under one of these bands and

802
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: you can't be ordained as a monk because only men

803
00:47:52,160 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: can be monks. And it was just like, I can't

804
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:58,839
Speaker 1: imagine how crushing that was. There was also a prohibition

805
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:04,239
Speaker 1: against the third sex becoming monks, and apparently nobody knew

806
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,759
Speaker 1: exactly what third sex meant, but everybody was like, it's

807
00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: probably you. You're there's probably referring to you. So if

808
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:13,759
Speaker 1: you're if you're born a woman, you can't be uh

809
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: a monk. If you're third sex, you can't be a

810
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 1: monk either. So Michael had these things going against him,

811
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:22,120
Speaker 1: but he still kept that, he still kept trying. He

812
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: left the Theravada tradition and he found acceptance with Tibetan monks,

813
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 1: and it was the Tibetan monks that he he felt

814
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:32,880
Speaker 1: most at home with. He was accepted on as a novice.

815
00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:37,080
Speaker 1: And he was a novice who at age like forty five,

816
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: I think Um was at the same level as ten

817
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,920
Speaker 1: year old boys living in this Buddhist monastery up in

818
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,759
Speaker 1: the Himalayas, but was happier than he's ever been in

819
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 1: his life, just for this period of three months. And

820
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: so he's he's found where he thinks he belongs, but

821
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:54,960
Speaker 1: he has to leave because his visa runs out. So

822
00:48:55,000 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: he goes back to India to wait the prescribed amount

823
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: of time, and Um fully leaves that he's going to

824
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 1: be able to go back to become a confirmed monk

825
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:07,320
Speaker 1: what he would be ordained and and Um start to

826
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:10,479
Speaker 1: become a monk under the Tibetan tradition, which probably would

827
00:49:10,520 --> 00:49:14,359
Speaker 1: have happened had sang har Akheda not intervened. Again. Yeah,

828
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: and at this point he had fully was living this

829
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:20,839
Speaker 1: monastic lifestyle. He wrote home and said give away all

830
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 1: my possessions, and Aunt Toto was like, you know that, Um,

831
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 1: there's more money coming your way, like twenty pounds. He's like,

832
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:30,479
Speaker 1: I don't want it, just give it away, give it away,

833
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: and I guess Aunt Toto did so said thanks, thanks

834
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:37,680
Speaker 1: for the pounds. So, like I said, he thinks he's

835
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:41,239
Speaker 1: going to be ordained because the Tibetan monks had had

836
00:49:41,320 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 1: said we're going to ordain you, um when you come back.

837
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:49,279
Speaker 1: But saying har Akheda, the original guy from the Thera

838
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:53,239
Speaker 1: Veda tradition found out about this and send a letter

839
00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: in triple kate to Michael, to the Tibetan monks until

840
00:49:56,520 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 1: like the to the Buddhist Central Office. I gues us

841
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:03,360
Speaker 1: and basically said, who doo doo do doo dude, Here's

842
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:07,400
Speaker 1: here's everything that Michael Dillon told me about himself. He

843
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: was born a woman, he had he underwent surgery. Um,

844
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:15,880
Speaker 1: he is in no way up a candidate for the

845
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:19,680
Speaker 1: monastery for the monk could um and just shot down

846
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 1: is his chances. And I read a Tricycle magazine article.

847
00:50:23,160 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 1: It's like the Buddhist magazine UM where they interviewed saying

848
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 1: hark sheeted. Years later, this is like in two thousand seven,

849
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 1: and he said, I still stand by it. He's like,

850
00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:35,840
Speaker 1: I I don't think he had any business in my

851
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: mind being a Buddhist monk, which is pretty rough man,

852
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:41,400
Speaker 1: even all these years later, as zero regrets over it.

853
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 1: It's sad. Yeah. Um. So the sad sad ending for

854
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: Michael Dillon is he died at a very young age.

855
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:52,319
Speaker 1: He was had no money because he gave it all away.

856
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:56,920
Speaker 1: I was traveling and malnutrition sets in and they're not

857
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: really sure what sickness originated, uh, sort of the downward slide.

858
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:04,360
Speaker 1: But he ended up in a hospital in India and

859
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:07,440
Speaker 1: died the age of forty seven in nineteen sixty two,

860
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 1: and had written an autobiography called Out of the Ordinary,

861
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:16,799
Speaker 1: which did not get published until two years ago. Yeah.

862
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:20,840
Speaker 1: He sent it off to his UM publisher, who he

863
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:23,840
Speaker 1: had written a couple of other books for UM, like

864
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:27,759
Speaker 1: just right before he died, and his brother found out

865
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: about it and wanted to get his hands on the

866
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:32,239
Speaker 1: manuscript so he could burn it, and his publisher hired

867
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:35,320
Speaker 1: lawyers to keep the family off of the manuscript and

868
00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 1: was successful, and finally in two thousand and seventeen it

869
00:51:39,760 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: was published. And now the world knows about Michael Dillon

870
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:44,640
Speaker 1: and his contribution. There's got to be a movie in

871
00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 1: the works. It's coming. Yeah, it is coming, for sure.

872
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 1: So that's Michael Dillon. Chuck good Pick. Thanks, I'm glad

873
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:52,920
Speaker 1: we know more about this guy. Because he deserves to

874
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 1: be known about UM And if you want to know

875
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:58,200
Speaker 1: more about Michael Dillon, will go check him out. He

876
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:00,839
Speaker 1: has an autobiography out there, and I'm sure he would

877
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: be very happy from Nirvana smiling down on you for

878
00:52:04,640 --> 00:52:07,239
Speaker 1: reading you. That's right, Okay, I said that. So it's

879
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:13,279
Speaker 1: time for listener mail, Chuck. I'm gonna call this a rowboater. Hey, guys,

880
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: my name is Jacob writing from a rowboat on the

881
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:18,920
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean. Yah. I've been alone at c for two

882
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:22,760
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy days on an attempted record setting journey.

883
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: My oars keep talking to me. You know it's funny?

884
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:29,759
Speaker 1: Is I just watch that? There's a documentary about obituary

885
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:34,399
Speaker 1: writers UM called oh Bit, and in it they kind

886
00:52:34,440 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: of um talk about some of their favorite obituaries over

887
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:39,360
Speaker 1: the years, and one of them was about the initial

888
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:43,720
Speaker 1: guy who rode the Atlantic and the Pacific um Ocean,

889
00:52:44,120 --> 00:52:45,359
Speaker 1: which I had never heard of. I was like, Man,

890
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:46,920
Speaker 1: we gotta do one on this guy. And then we

891
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 1: get this email from Jacob all these years later. Who's

892
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 1: doing it again? Crazy? Did that set in everyone rowing

893
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:57,760
Speaker 1: a boat across the ocean? That's big? No sales rowing

894
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: all right. I hadn't listen to your podcast are to departing,

895
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:03,239
Speaker 1: but luckily he I guess he was just like Jeez,

896
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:06,839
Speaker 1: who has a thousand episodes of something. We're the only ones.

897
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:09,400
Speaker 1: I hope it's good. I hadn't listened to your podcast

898
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:12,520
Speaker 1: prior to departing, but luckily chose your show um in

899
00:53:12,600 --> 00:53:16,399
Speaker 1: an audio entertainment download Frenzy before leaving. I've now been

900
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:20,719
Speaker 1: through many episodes, though sometimes drift away staring at oncoming

901
00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: waves and have to rewind, which is more difficult than

902
00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 1: it should be since saltwater has destroyed most of my electronics.

903
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:35,879
Speaker 1: About the way there, hoping to reach Australia from Washington State. Wow, man,

904
00:53:36,360 --> 00:53:37,799
Speaker 1: I just want to say thanks for all you guys.

905
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:40,799
Speaker 1: DO appreciate your show and I value you. The next

906
00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 1: for me are far from certain, but you'll be with

907
00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 1: me all the way until the end, wherever that may be.

908
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:53,720
Speaker 1: And that is from Jacob from somewhere over the Melanesian Basin. Okay, Jacob,

909
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:58,759
Speaker 1: we need weekly dispatches from you, please, just at the

910
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:02,799
Speaker 1: very least to say, hey, still live, still rowing toward Australia. Well,

911
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: he won't hear that. I don't think he's able to

912
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: download stuff from the meds, so maybe he'll hear this

913
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 1: at the end of his journey there satellite in or

914
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,759
Speaker 1: not out there, so maybe Well, Jacob, if you hear

915
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,439
Speaker 1: this in you're still on your journey. It doesn't even matter.

916
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:20,960
Speaker 1: Whenever you hear this email is back. Okay. Yeah, if

917
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:23,520
Speaker 1: it's in twenty years, everybody crushed your fingers in your

918
00:54:23,560 --> 00:54:26,800
Speaker 1: toes for Jacob, that's right. Okay. If you want to

919
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: be like Jacob and get in touch with us from

920
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 1: a robot somewhere and some ocean, you can do that.

921
00:54:31,520 --> 00:54:33,600
Speaker 1: You can go to our website Stuff you Should Know

922
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:36,000
Speaker 1: dot com and look up our social links and you

923
00:54:36,080 --> 00:54:38,240
Speaker 1: can send us a good old fashioned email to stuff

924
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:44,400
Speaker 1: podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should

925
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works

926
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:48,880
Speaker 1: from more Podcasts for my Heart Radio because at the

927
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever he listened to

928
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.