Michael Dillon is known as the first transgender man to undergo phalloplasty for the purpose of gender affirmation. He was an author, doctor and surgeon. His book, Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics, was published in 1946 and his findings and assertions on gender and gender affirming surgery and treatments detailed in his book are known now to be “decades ahead of (his) time.”

He worked for many years after graduating from Oxford as a petrol pump attendant as his gender expression did not match clearly with his gender and severely limited his employment opportunities despite his education. It was during this time he medically transitioned using recently invented, synthesized testosterone. As he became socially read as male, he left this employment and went to Trinity College where he later graduated and subsequently then performed the first known orchiectomy for the purpose of gender affirmation for Roberta Cowell.

He later served in the British Military in the Merchant Navy as a doctor until leaving when he was outed by the Press and fled to India, planning on staying a few years to avoid the hostilities of the press about his gender and trans status.  He was outed because his family had a nobility title and changing his gender/sex legally (and unfortunately publicly) put into question the succession of the title. Whilst in India he was directed to stay at a Buddhist monastery and later took on the name of Jivaka and became a practicing Buddhist. During this time he wrote several books, the last of which was published many years after his death after the manuscript was recovered by author Pagan Kennedy. This autobiographical book, “Out of the Ordinary” is split in two sections, titled, “The Conquest of the Body” and “The Conquest of the Soul.”