Book-It '10! Book #8
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution by Pagan Kennedy
Details: Copyright 2007, Bloomsbury USA
Synopsis (By Way of Inside Flap): "In The First Man-Made Man, critically acclaimed author Pagan Kennedy tells the remarkable story of Michael Dillon, the first person to undergo a sex change from female to male. During a time when plastic surgery and synthetic hormones were in their infancy, Dillon pursued a course of action that was both socially unheard of and potentially life threatening. His dramatic life tells the story of more than just one man and his bid to feel comfortable in his own skin; it heralds medical breakthroughs that have forever altered the rules of living in a human body.
Dillon started out as a baby girl named Laura in 1915. By the time she reached her twenties, Laura had tried every trick she could to pass as a man: dressing in trousers, cutting her hair, binding her breasts. Then she seized upon brand-new technologies including testosterone pills and 'impossible' surgeries to remake her body-- and metamorphosed into Michael. Years before the term transsexual had entered the popular lexicon, Michael Dillon was living as one. Bearded and broad shouldered, with a pipe tucked into his jacket pocket, he was a quintessential British gentleman.
In the 1950s, Michael Dillon met and fell in love with Roberta Cowell, a preoperative male-to-female, and the only woman he thought would understand him. After a failed love affair-- and attempts to help Roberta realize her dream of fully becoming a woman-- Dillon fled first to the sea as a doctor in the merchant marine and then to India, forlorn and alone, where he began a spiritual quest through Buddhism to come to terms, once and for all, with the identity he had spent a lifetime chasing.
From upper-class orphan girl to Oxford lesbian and Trinity medical student, from public pariah to post-surgery romance and self-imposed exile, Michael Dillon's incredible story is full of heartbreak and intrigue. Ultimately, Dillon's courageous challenge to the strict biology of sex not only changed the idea of what gender really means but also helped usher in the common use of hormone therapy and plastic surgery, two twentieth-century treatments that have revolutionized modern medicine."
Why I Wanted to Read It: It seemed like an interesting story and I'd liked Pagan Kennedy's work before in Confessions of a Memory Eater.
How I Liked It: All too often, an incredible biography can be ruined by a poor writer. Thankfully, Pagan Kennedy tells the fascinating story of Michael Dillon and keeps it fascinating.
She opens with his meeting of Robert Cowell and then reverts to his birth and does circumnavigate around a few stubs of biographies central to the story (revolutionary surgeon Harold Gillies for one) which make for a slightly scattered read at times, but for the most part, Kennedy keeps the narrative strong and along the way manages to educate about the history of transgender surgery (what little there was), the history of plastic surgery, shifting sexual attitudes during the first half of the twentieth century, and medical miracles made possible by the War. She inputs transgender history post-Dillon (and more well known, post-Christine Jorgenson) and the changing availability of hormones (in pill form) post-war.
Kennedy manages to pack a lot of story in a scant 214 pages and creates (with spotless cited references and notations) a memorable cast of characters, particularly Dillon.
This is a must-read for anyone interested in trans issues/history, medical history, the history of plastic surgery, or post-war sexual mores.
Notable: Amongst the complex process of changing one's gender, a key factor is often overlooked (which Kennedy explores in her book): gender inequality. Women were still inarguably (it's just the amount of people willing to argue) treated as inferior to men in the post-War period. To become male was to experience an "upgrade". Dr. Harry Benjamin, a pioneering sexologist and social reformer mused thusly:
"The F-to-Ms often enjoyed greater status and earning power after their transition than they had before; the mid-1960s was still the era of businessmen and secretaries, of men in skyscrapers and ladies in the home. To transform into a man was to suddenly be pegged at a higher value. Benjamin wondered why more women didn't do it: he mulled over a Gallup poll that had found that surveyed women would rather have been born men by a margin of twelve to one; most of those women were tired of being treated like second-class citizens, but surely at least a few of them had a deeper itch for a male identity. And yet, in the 1960s, few women came into Benjamin's office begging to be made into men. Benjamin had a theory for this: [the popularity of Christine] Jorgensen. No trans man had become a superstar, showing off what testosterone and surgery could do, and making the metamorphosis seem possible.
In fact, those few transsexual men who did exist in the sixties seemed to have a talent for disappearing into the mainstream, for joining the three-piece-suit march of executives down the sidewalk. Of course, they had even more to lose than did M-to-Fs if they were exposed- not just their status as 'normals' but also their male privilege." (pg 168)
Certainly an interesting and very overlooked angle in the rich complexity of trans issues.
Less notable but worth mentioning: I have a fondness for Pagan Kennedy's style and narration both with this and with Confessions of a Memory Eater. However, the word "vertiginous" appears no less than four times in the text. Somebody got a Dictionary Word-of-the-Day calender for Christmas?
Title: The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution by Pagan Kennedy
Details: Copyright 2007, Bloomsbury USA
Synopsis (By Way of Inside Flap): "In The First Man-Made Man, critically acclaimed author Pagan Kennedy tells the remarkable story of Michael Dillon, the first person to undergo a sex change from female to male. During a time when plastic surgery and synthetic hormones were in their infancy, Dillon pursued a course of action that was both socially unheard of and potentially life threatening. His dramatic life tells the story of more than just one man and his bid to feel comfortable in his own skin; it heralds medical breakthroughs that have forever altered the rules of living in a human body.
Dillon started out as a baby girl named Laura in 1915. By the time she reached her twenties, Laura had tried every trick she could to pass as a man: dressing in trousers, cutting her hair, binding her breasts. Then she seized upon brand-new technologies including testosterone pills and 'impossible' surgeries to remake her body-- and metamorphosed into Michael. Years before the term transsexual had entered the popular lexicon, Michael Dillon was living as one. Bearded and broad shouldered, with a pipe tucked into his jacket pocket, he was a quintessential British gentleman.
In the 1950s, Michael Dillon met and fell in love with Roberta Cowell, a preoperative male-to-female, and the only woman he thought would understand him. After a failed love affair-- and attempts to help Roberta realize her dream of fully becoming a woman-- Dillon fled first to the sea as a doctor in the merchant marine and then to India, forlorn and alone, where he began a spiritual quest through Buddhism to come to terms, once and for all, with the identity he had spent a lifetime chasing.
From upper-class orphan girl to Oxford lesbian and Trinity medical student, from public pariah to post-surgery romance and self-imposed exile, Michael Dillon's incredible story is full of heartbreak and intrigue. Ultimately, Dillon's courageous challenge to the strict biology of sex not only changed the idea of what gender really means but also helped usher in the common use of hormone therapy and plastic surgery, two twentieth-century treatments that have revolutionized modern medicine."
Why I Wanted to Read It: It seemed like an interesting story and I'd liked Pagan Kennedy's work before in Confessions of a Memory Eater.
How I Liked It: All too often, an incredible biography can be ruined by a poor writer. Thankfully, Pagan Kennedy tells the fascinating story of Michael Dillon and keeps it fascinating.
She opens with his meeting of Robert Cowell and then reverts to his birth and does circumnavigate around a few stubs of biographies central to the story (revolutionary surgeon Harold Gillies for one) which make for a slightly scattered read at times, but for the most part, Kennedy keeps the narrative strong and along the way manages to educate about the history of transgender surgery (what little there was), the history of plastic surgery, shifting sexual attitudes during the first half of the twentieth century, and medical miracles made possible by the War. She inputs transgender history post-Dillon (and more well known, post-Christine Jorgenson) and the changing availability of hormones (in pill form) post-war.
Kennedy manages to pack a lot of story in a scant 214 pages and creates (with spotless cited references and notations) a memorable cast of characters, particularly Dillon.
This is a must-read for anyone interested in trans issues/history, medical history, the history of plastic surgery, or post-war sexual mores.
Notable: Amongst the complex process of changing one's gender, a key factor is often overlooked (which Kennedy explores in her book): gender inequality. Women were still inarguably (it's just the amount of people willing to argue) treated as inferior to men in the post-War period. To become male was to experience an "upgrade". Dr. Harry Benjamin, a pioneering sexologist and social reformer mused thusly:
"The F-to-Ms often enjoyed greater status and earning power after their transition than they had before; the mid-1960s was still the era of businessmen and secretaries, of men in skyscrapers and ladies in the home. To transform into a man was to suddenly be pegged at a higher value. Benjamin wondered why more women didn't do it: he mulled over a Gallup poll that had found that surveyed women would rather have been born men by a margin of twelve to one; most of those women were tired of being treated like second-class citizens, but surely at least a few of them had a deeper itch for a male identity. And yet, in the 1960s, few women came into Benjamin's office begging to be made into men. Benjamin had a theory for this: [the popularity of Christine] Jorgensen. No trans man had become a superstar, showing off what testosterone and surgery could do, and making the metamorphosis seem possible.
In fact, those few transsexual men who did exist in the sixties seemed to have a talent for disappearing into the mainstream, for joining the three-piece-suit march of executives down the sidewalk. Of course, they had even more to lose than did M-to-Fs if they were exposed- not just their status as 'normals' but also their male privilege." (pg 168)
Certainly an interesting and very overlooked angle in the rich complexity of trans issues.
Less notable but worth mentioning: I have a fondness for Pagan Kennedy's style and narration both with this and with Confessions of a Memory Eater. However, the word "vertiginous" appears no less than four times in the text. Somebody got a Dictionary Word-of-the-Day calender for Christmas?