It was huge, and in a constant state of semi-erection." In 1950, Michael Dillon, a dapper, bearded medical student, met Roberta Cowell, a boyish-looking woman, for lunch in a discreet London restaurant. Laurence Michael Dillon (born Laura Maud Dillon; 1915–1962) was a British physician and the first female-to-male transsexual to undergo phalloplasty. And all she could do was snigger. In Laura Dillon's teenage and university years, she had fallen in love with at least two straight women. She wore her hair short and a sports jacket hid her breasts; a skirt, her only concession to femininity, flapped around her calves. Pumping petrol at the garage where he worked, greasy in his coveralls, Dillon easily passed as just another workingman. Robert Cowell's decision to become Roberta (pictured) was sparked by a meeting with Michael Dillon - the first woman in the world to become a man - whom he fell madly in love with. A penis, along with the beard and the pipe, would hide his history, keep his secret that much safer. She knew herself to be a man, a man who was disappearing inside a ridiculous body, underneath breasts and hips. In 1958 she appeared in bankruptcy court where she said she had no assets and significant debts, owed mainly to her father. Her body was found on Oct. 11, 2011, in her small apartment in southwest London by the building superintendent. Then they parted. He mailed her letters brimming with advice and tender confessions. Michael Dillon, the medical student, had authored what was then one of the few books in the world to delve into the subject. Directed by John Hayes Fisher. Burn victims, a platoon of shot-up soldiers, children with cleft palettes and survivors of factory accidents - Dillon joined this small society of the mutilated and maimed. At the post office or on the street, Dillon and his friends could expect smiles and hallos from the villagers. Within days, Cowell and other British captives had been flown home aboard American Flying Fortress bombers. 'd twice from a wheelchair, thus making my debut into the social world from which I had been so long debarred.". This had been reinforced by a book called “Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology” (1946) by Michael Dillon, a medical student whom she sought out in 1950. Only in 2013 — two years after her death — was her passing reported, by the British newspaper The Independent on Sunday. If the rumor got out that Michael Dillon, brother to a baronet, had once been a girl, the gossip would surely be trumpeted in every low-class newspaper in Britain. He'd unzipped for her; he'd showed her the evidence of his excruciating pain, all those operations and infections. He returned to Dublin, where he was finishing up the last year of medical school, but Roberta continued to haunt him, to tug at his heart. He became bland-looking, unremarkable, ordinary - which was what he'd always wanted. . But now, he shared a table with the first person he'd ever met who entered that blur of hormones, who planned to transform her body just as he had. Her transition — and all of the yearnings and hopes that came with it — involved hormone treatments and surgeries despite what some regarded in strait-laced 1950s Britain as flouting contemporary laws. His brother, Sir Robert Dillon, was the eighth Baronet (of Lismullen in Ireland). By several accounts, Dillon fell deeply in love with Cowell, but she ultimately rejected his proposal of marriage. Transas City . The flight, she said, had been scheduled as the “very last trip of my second tour of operations.” In fact it was her last flight of the war. When her story appeared in a newspaper, “I received 400 proposals. The local people had grown used to seeing to patients without noses or jaws walking around town. Serving the Kansas and Missouri Transgender Community. Rather, a penis would serve as a membership card into the world of men, their bathrooms and their gentlemen's clubs in London. In her autobiography, she described the surreal elements of wartime life, relating perilous adventures with ironic detachment. In 1950, Roberta struck up a friendship with Michael Dillon, Britain’s first female-to-male transsexual and a physician, who believed that individuals should have the right to change gender. The encounter was “so shattering that the scene will be crystal-clear in my memory for the rest of my life,” she wrote. Michael Dillon, a bearded medical student, fiddled with his pipe and then lit it nervously. Laurence Michael Dillon (born Laura Maud Dillon, 1 May 1915 - 15 May 1962) was a British physician and the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty. “So complete was her withdrawal from public life that even her own children did not know she had died,” the article said. Roberta Cowell's surgical transformation and friendship with the female-to-male transsexual Michael Dillon, also operated on by the plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, is documented in the book The First Man-Made Man by Pagan Kennedy. Cowell wrote in her autobiography “ Roberta Cowell’s Story ,” that during their meeting, over lunch, Dillon revealed that he had himself changed his gender identity through doses of testosterone and gender-affirming surgery. The children and old ladies were the cruelest, shouting insults or demanding Laura explain herself. Towards the end of her school days, she visited Belgium, Germany, and Austria with a school friend. Over a period of several years, the hormone therapy transformed her into a muscular, deep-voiced man with fuzz on his cheeks. Whenever Dillon traveled to London, he made sure to call on her. Yet by the time Cowell died in 2011 at 93, her voyage across the lines of gender and social norms had faded into obscurity. Dillon gestured with his pipe as he lectured her about the differences between the male and female brain. Contents. In the blur of Roberta Cowell's face, he could see the lovely ingÈnue she would become. It was 1951 now, Cowell had turned herself into a va-va-voom peroxide blonde; she'd begun venturing out onto the streets of London in a wig, skirt, make-up. Whether her views would have changed over time will never be known; in 1972 she said she was writing a second autobiography, but it was never published. He befriended a man with plastic ears, the girl who'd been scalped by a factory machine, and the Navy officer who'd had his genitals ripped off by the gears of a machine - "the nature of his operation was similar to my own." Still, he loved the way he looked in his tie and tails; he enjoyed a night of dancing, and an evening of playful flirting eased his loneliness a bit. At any rate, he didn't care to risk finding out. Cowell participating in the women’s race car competition in Sussex, England, when she was 39. Furthermore, if Dillon fell ill, a penis would allow him to check into a hospital without having to explain why his genitals did not match the rest of his body. "I don't really see why I shouldn't tell you. Excerpted by permission. “It became quite obvious that the feminine side of my nature, which all my life I had known of and severely repressed, was very much more fundamental and deep-rooted than I had supposed.”. More than passed. She made a joke about the thing being rough-hewn. During the lunch, Dillon announced that five years earlier he was a woman named Laura, and Roberta stated she was on her way to full womanhood from being Robert. Ethics weren't the half of it. He'd wanted her to see how he'd turned that suffering into a handsome piece of flesh. in 1942, flying combat and aerial reconnaissance missions in Spitfires and other aircraft. With no idea how to push her transformation further, Cowell was stuck in a no man's land between the sexes - a terrible place to find yourself in 1950. After all, if she was ever to emerge from the awful limbo of her body, she would need his help. In fact, he possessed startling proof of exactly what medical science could do. Excerpted from The First Man-Made Man by Pagan Kennedy Copyright © 2006 by Pagan Kennedy . At one of these early meetings, "He ... whipped out the penis, which he was very proud of," wrote Cowell. . He had decided, from the logic of his own profound isolation, that Cowell must be his soulmate. When they came toward her, Laura froze her face into a mask. Evening gowns terrified her - they invited young men to slide their arms around her waist. But the attempt never came about. Together they agreed that he would help her transition by performing a procedure that was prohibited under so-called “mayhem” laws, forbidding the intentional “disfiguring” of men who would otherwise qualify to serve in the military. Dillon had learned this early on. He puffed smoke and fidgeted with his coffee cup but did not drink. From an early age, she wrote, she felt conflicted about her gender, compensating for feminine “characteristics” with an “aggressively masculine manner” that persuaded gay men to take her “for one of themselves.”, Physically, she was sensitive about being overweight, displaying what she called “feminoidal fat distribution.” In her teenage years, other pupils nicknamed her “Circumference” and “Bottom.” She left school at 16 to work briefly as an apprentice engineer until she joined the Royal Air Force in 1935. This had been reinforced by a book called “Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology” (1946) by Michael Dillon, a medical student whom she sought out in 1950. Early life and transition. Although Cowell enjoyed some publicity, she dropped out of the public eye after writing her autobiography. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. His brother, Sir Robert Dillon, was the eighth Baronet of Lismullen in Ireland. The immediate postwar years confronted Cowell with the practical problems of earning a living, variously building and racing cars and renovating houses to sell at a profit. Despite his progressive attitude about sex-change treatments, Dillon "appeared to have a very low opinion of women." Dillon claims that his misogyny was all an act, one of the tools he used to keep women from falling in love with him. Laurence Michael Dillon (born Laura Maud Dillon; 1 May 1915 – 15 May 1962) was a British physician and the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty. Now, finally, they sat across from one another. Laura Dillon attended St Anne's College, Oxford, became president of the Oxford University Women's Boat club, and won a blue for rowing. “It seemed to do the trick and the angry growling died down,” she wrote in her autobiography. More than a decade earlier, an athletic blonde named Laura Dillon roared through the streets of Bristol on her motorbike. She refused to let them see how they got to her. Such patients had to be encouraged to relearn the art of happiness, which is why Sir Harold banished many of the rules that make hospitals such grim places and coaxed his charges into dancing the foxtrot, growing zinnias in the garden, or venturing out into the town surrounding the hospital for a beer. She was transferred to Stalag Luft I, a prison camp for Allied aircrews in north Germany near the Baltic Sea between Lübeck and Rostock. Roberta Cowell had discovered Michael Dillon's book and decided she had to meet the open-minded scholar. Gillies had operated on Michael Dillon, but vaginoplasty was then an entirely novel procedure, which Gillies had only performed experimentally on a cadaver. How many women would be willing to risk the scandal of marrying the first artificial male? The interwar idea of ‘sex change’ implied that sex or gender fluidity was possible, and that individuals might choose their sex. “Since May 18th, 1951, I have been Roberta Cowell, female,” she pronounced in her autobiography. By age 35, he had vowed never to fall in love. As Dillon saw it, a penis would help to safeguard his privacy and his family's honor. And then Roberta Cowell slid into the seat across from him at that London restaurant, and he dared to hope again. Some of them of marriage,” she said in an interview for The Sunday Times of London in 1972. They had two daughters, Anne and Diana. Roberta Cowell attended Whitgift School, a boys' public school in Croydon and was an enthusiastic member of the school's Motor Club, along with John Cunningham, who would later be famous as an RAF night fighter ace and test pilot. After they'd eaten, she lingered at the table to debate the issue of women's intelligence. As soon as Dillon could looked entirely male, he became invisible. Laura Dillon as a teenager, left, and Michael Dillon with his aunt in 1950. "I felt resentful that I should always be alone and never have a wife and children," he wrote. There have been attempted suicides.”. "He was a good deal younger than I had expected and wore a full beard. All rights reserved. Dillon, too, had endured the torment of the in-between period when the hormones began pushing his body toward androgyny; he knew what it was like to stumble through a city street where passersby stared at him. People, she wrote, would speculate openly on her gender. She persuaded them “in my halting German” that she was not a bomber pilot and told them the untruth that her mother and father had been killed in a German raid on London. With the help of hormones and plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, Michael got a male body and genitals. None, probably. This had been reinforced by a book called “Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology” (1946) by Michael Dillon, a medical student whom she sought out in 1950. “I have become woman physically, psychologically, glandularly and legally.”. But Dillon didn't go on second dates. It was now possible for surgeons to entirely re-shape the human body, he claimed. I had never seen anything like it. Not bad-looking, he was a very masculine type.". She began to live a double life, taking hormone treatments to enhance her femininity while still living as a man. "This was no ordinary place," Sir Harold wrote, with typical understatement. It was Dillon who secretly performed an illegal inguinal orchiectomy on Roberta. But hormones could only take Dillon so far. He sent her long confessional letters about his girlhood and his years at Oxford. Her cheeks flamed pink, so soft below the short man's haircut. The word "transsexual" had yet to enter common usage. She had begun dosing herself on massive amounts of estrogen - enough to melt away her muscles and put a blush in her cheeks. They ordered coffee. They separated in 1948 and divorced in 1952. She wrote about her transition — and all of the yearnings and hopes that came with it — in an autobiography, “Roberta Cowell’s Story.”. Food supplies were so meager, she wrote, that inmates ate stray cats raw and she lost 49 pounds. His brother, Sir Robert Dillon… By the end of lunch, he'd poured out his story to her - surprising even himself with his openness. The boy and the girl in question were Michael Dillon and Roberta Cowell, but I’m willing to bet most people have never heard of either of them. That was the basis of my ethics," he wrote later. Laura Dillon had managed to get hold of testosterone pills in 1938, soon after she'd graduated from college. Soon afterward, Cowell became a patient of Harold Gillies, a pioneer of plastic surgery who had performed gender-affirming surgery on Dillon, according to the book “The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution” (2006). His brother, Sir Robert Dillon, was the eighth Baronet of Lismullen in Ireland. She was indeed a trailblazer and her life illustrates how vulnerable so many trans people are and also how many of us need therapy and support even when we seem to be in a “good place”. A handful of friends attended her funeral, but, apparently at her request, there was no fanfare for the woman who had helped pioneer gender reassignment at a time when it was virtually taboo. In the mid 20th century, Michael Dillon underwent the world's first gender correction from woman to man. The worst part was that these would-be sweethearts had regarded her as a lesbian rather than as the man she wanted to be. figures. She'd written to him care of his publisher and they'd exchanged a … Cowell played along. And so he trusted Roberta immediately. At least the operation would be legal. I could walk past anyone and not fear to hear any comments for no one looked at me twice," he wrote about his earliest, testosterone-fueled transformation. rights. She crash-landed the stricken warplane and was taken prisoner. Still, this passing came at an emotional cost; a rigidly moral man, he had to lie constantly. Though Dillon was not yet a licensed physician, he himself performed an orchidectomy on Cowell, since … When the term ended, Dillon would ride a train through the English countryside to small town called Basingstoke, home to Rooksdown House, the hospital overseen by Sir Harold Gillies. Near the end of his studies, Dillon met and fell in love with Roberta Cowell, a race-car driver born Robert Cowell, who had sought out the author of Self for help transitioning from male to female. Dillon had one advantage over most of the other patients: in that world beyond Basingstoke, he could pass as an ordinary man as long as he kept his clothes on. She achieved fame — and received several marriage proposals — when her story was told in newspapers and in Picture Post magazine. For the first time in his life, Dillon allowed himself to believe that one person might be able to understand him. "We felt that Rooksdown was more of a country club than anything else. Women had hurt him, over and over again, even before the sex change. In 1972, Cowell explained in an interview that this surgery was justifiable because she had a chromosomal abnormality, XX male syndrome. As a result, Rooksdown became the kind of place where, even in the middle of the night, you might come across a one-eyed man teaching himself to ride a bicycle down the hall. Not necessarily for sex. It was not until the 1950s that transitioning became medically possible and eventually available in Britain. Though, really, how could he have laughed? He'd dared to confide in so few friends, and even the kindest of them had never really understood. Now and then he asked young women out to dances and swooped around the floor in his white tie and tails. It would be a grueling process, and Gillies could not guarantee the results. Here, men in military uniforms - their heads swaddled in bandages - lolled on park benches, putting cigarettes to the holes where their mouths should have been. He glanced up at Roberta, and then, finally, spoke. Then, in 1972, she reappeared when she gave an interview to justify her gender reassignment. Despite her earlier dismissal from flying duties, Cowell was allowed to return to the R.A.F. Dillon turned out to be handsome, Cowell reported in her autobiography. Cowell wrote in her autobiography “Roberta Cowell’s Story,” that during their meeting, over lunch, Dillon revealed that he had himself changed his gender identity through doses of testosterone and gender-affirming surgery. Eventually, Cowell (a former Royal Air Force captain) would garner fame as a … “If it gives real happiness,” Gillies wrote of his procedures, “that is the most that any surgeon or medicine can give.”. But blink again and Laura was nothing but a cross-dressed girl. She developed an abiding interest in cars and racing. Dillon was lonely in the way we can all recognize, and he also suffered from a brand-new, 20th century solitude too, one that had never existed before - the loneliness of a medical miracle, of the person who has experienced unique states of mind and body. By the early 1940s, Dillon had mustered the courage to leave the garage for medical school - under his male name. Then, Michael Dillon fell silent. He clearly liked to throw his opinions around, especially with a lady present. Maybe too masculine. Some of the patients at Rooksdown were so disfigured that, even with the best care, they would remain outcasts for the rest of their lives. In fact, Roberta Cowell had been born male, but she could not live as a man anymore. During the university term, he shadowed doctors on their hospital rounds, assisted in the surgical theater, and even performed an appendectomy. 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