Born into an aristocratic British family in the early 1900s, Michael Dillon grows up feeling fundamentally disconnected from the identity forced upon him. After losing both parents at a young age, he becomes isolated and withdrawn, struggling privately with feelings he cannot explain in a society that has no language for them.
As a teenager and young adult, Michael rejects femininity entirely, gravitating toward traditionally masculine activities, clothing, and behavior. While attending Oxford in the 1930s, he begins living more openly as male, rowing competitively, wearing men’s suits, and quietly testing the limits of how society perceives him. Though some accept him without question, he lives in constant fear of exposure.
During the rise of modern endocrinology before World War II, Michael learns about early hormone treatments and seeks medical help. He begins taking testosterone in secret, experiencing for the first time a sense of alignment between his inner identity and physical self. Determined to fully transition, he undergoes a series of groundbreaking surgeries with pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who had developed reconstructive techniques during wartime.
Over several years, Michael slowly constructs a new life as a man, legally and socially becoming male. He studies medicine and writes Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology, a radical philosophical and medical defense of gender transition decades before public understanding of transgender identity exists.
While studying medicine, Michael becomes involved with Roberta Cowell, another transgender pioneer living under intense secrecy. Their relationship becomes emotionally intimate but complicated, shaped by fear, longing, and the constant threat of public discovery.
After qualifying as a doctor, Michael joins the Merchant Navy as a ship’s physician, traveling across the Atlantic and beyond. Life at sea offers him a rare sense of freedom and anonymity. Far from British society, he is finally able to exist without constant scrutiny, drifting between ports and identities while trying to build a peaceful life.
That peace collapses when British newspapers uncover details about his past through aristocratic inheritance records. The resulting scandal exposes him publicly and threatens everyone connected to his medical transition. Exhausted by years of secrecy and public intrusion, Michael leaves Britain behind entirely.
Traveling to India in search of spiritual meaning, he immerses himself in Buddhism and eventually becomes one of the first Westerners ordained in Tibetan Buddhism, taking the name Lobzang Jivaka. As he moves farther from the world that once defined and persecuted him, Michael shifts from fighting for identity toward seeking inner peace and transcendence.
Near the end of his life, living quietly in the Himalayas, he completes and mails his autobiography before dying in India at the age of forty-seven, having spent his entire life crossing borders between gender, class, medicine, nationality, and spirituality in pursuit of freedom.
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner