Pagan Kennedy: The First Man-Made Man

Photograph by Mathew Schwartz

Pagan Kennedy has published seven books and is a pioneer of the ’90s zine movement; her autobiographical zine Pagan’s Head is noted for describing her life in extraordinary detail. Some of her books include Black Livingstone which was named a New York Times Notable Book and her novel Spinsters which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe Magazine, Village Voice, Utne Reader, The Nation and Ms. magazine.
Pagan’s new book, The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth Century Medical Revolution, is a biography that documents the life of Michael Dillon who, in the 1940s, survived the world’s first known female-to-male sex change treatment.
I interviewed Pagan over email. Here’s Pagan…

How did you come to researching and writing about the life of Michael Dillon within the global historical context of science-made sex changes?
Because I write magazine stories and nonfiction books, I’m always trying to ask questions that no one else has thought about. That’s how I find my stories. So, one day I thought, “Who was the first person to transform from woman to man? Why don’t I know about that person?� Of course, I’d heard about Christine Jorgensen, who transformed from a man into the woman in the 1950s. But I had no idea when medical science allowed women to become men. I began doing research, and the answer turned out to be far more interesting than I could have imagined.

In this book, I weave together the story of Michael Dillon—who was the first person to use medicine to go from woman to man—with the larger story of plastic surgery and hormones in the 20th century.
Michael Dillon began life as Laura Dillon in 1915. Laura was an orphan, raised by her aunts in a sort of shabby genteel household. She went to Oxford in the 1930s. In 1939, she became the first woman on record to take testosterone with the intention of becoming male. The testosterone worked very, very well. Within a few years, Laura was living as a male tow truck driver named Michael Dillon. In the 1940s, he endured the female-to-male surgical treatments—these were the first in history as well.
What kind of feedback have you received from The First Man-Made Man?
I received rave reviews in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Sun-Times, Entertainment Weekly and others. That was very gratifying.
Michael Dillon died shortly before he was able to live fully out as a transgendered person. What do you think his life would have been like if he hadn’t died at the moment that he did?
In the 1960s, Michael Dillon was preparing to publish his autobiography, to out himself and to stand up and say that female-to-male sex changes were not only possible but highly effective. If that had happened, he might have become the male version of Christine Jorgensen—a role model who offered proof of the possibilities that medical science offered. He was, after all, a handsome and articulate doctor.
He died just as he was about to release his autobiography. After his death, his brother, a stuffy aristocrat, blocked the publication of the book. Today, the manuscript is still sitting in a warehouse in London. Somebody really ought to publish it.
To not belong in an accepted social group affected Michael Dillon greatly throughout his life. Do you think Michael Dillon would have been satisfied if he had a transgender community to be a part of, or would he still have yearned to be accepted by heterosexual, biologically born men?
Dillon was a fascinating character. He was continually re-inventing himself, even after the sex change. In 1950, he fell head-over-heels in love with Roberta Cowell, who was the only other transsexual then living in Britain. He pursued her madly—it’s quite a wrenching love story. He felt that she was the only woman who could understand him. And when that didn’t work out, he became a ship’s doctor and traveled the world. Then he ended up in India, studying Buddhism. Providentially, he was there in 1959, just when the best and brightest of Tibet were flooding into India. That gave him the chance to study with top intellectuals and eventually meet the Dalai Lama; he ended up becoming the first Westerner ever to be ordained as a novice Tibetan Buddhist. He did feel accepted by the Tibetans and experience his first real happiness among them.
It’s hard to say how his life would have been different had he lived fifty years later—that is, now. One thing is certain: he was a person who was obsessed with self-transformation.
Michael Dillon’s difficulty while in Tibet studying alongside “brown� monks and students poignantly counters the concept of utopian politics within ostracized minority groups. To be such an outsider and yet hold such status-quo views on race says a lot about one’s inability to transcend one’s experience and recognize the similarities within the overall discriminatory paradigm. How do you feel about this and how did you feel about this while you were doing your research for this book?
For a British aristocrat born in 1915, Micheal Dillon actually did a terrific job of transcending his own racism and working toward seeing Indians and Tibetans as his equals. He fought hard to uproot the snobbery and prejudices that he’d learned as a child.
How do you think today’s social climate compares to the social history you document in The First Man-Made Man in terms of the livelihoods of transgender and gender variant or free individuals? And what do you think President Bush feels about transgendered individuals and the right to transgender?
Well, clearly, the president rarely—if ever—thinks about these issues.
In the 1950s, the only option for most people was to live in one role or the other: male or female. The “sex change� was a way to switch from one gender to the other—but it didn’t allow you to live outside the two-gender system. Nowadays, of course, activists are fighting to get beyond the two-gender system.
Do you know of any countries around the world whose governments actively seek out and prosecute transgendered individuals today?
It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on because the press pays so little attention to transgender issues. In fact, there has been so little study of transgendered people that scholars cannot even agree about how many people have changed their sex. Yes, the most basic fact about the world’s transgendered population—how many trans people exist— remains a mystery.

In your Acknowledgments, you mention past writing assignments that had you “interviewing the world’s most educated parrot� and investigating a “soul balancing machine.� Can you talk more about these assignments and your interests?
In the past few years, I’ve done a lot of reporting for The New York Times Magazine and the Boston Globe Magazine. I’ve tried to push the boundaries of science reporting to include politics, pop culture and, well, talking birds.

Do you have an upcoming book project in store?
I’m still looking for ideas. Any suggestions?