Now available for the first time-more than 50 years after it was written-is the memoir of Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka (1915-62), the British doctor and Buddhist monastic novice chiefly known to scholars of sex, gender, and sexuality for his pioneering transition from female to male between 1939 and 1949, and for his groundbreaking 1946 book Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology. Here at last is Dillon/Jivaka's extraordinary life story told in his own words.
Out of the Ordinary captures Dillon/Jivaka's various journeys-to Oxford, into medicine, across the world by ship-within the major narratives of his gender and religious journeys. Moving chronologically, Dillon/Jivaka begins with his childhood in Folkestone, England, where he was raised by his spinster aunts, and tells of his days at Oxford immersed in theology, classics, and rowing. He recounts his hormonal transition while working as an auto mechanic and fire watcher during World War II and his surgical transition under Sir Harold Gillies while Dillon himself attended medical school. He details his worldwide travel as a ship's surgeon in the British Merchant Navy with extensive commentary on his interactions with colonial and postcolonial subjects, followed by his "outing" by the British press while he was serving aboard The City of Bath.
Out of the Ordinary is not only a salient record of an early sex transition but also a unique account of religious conversion in the mid-twentieth century. Dillon/Jivaka chronicles his gradual shift from Anglican Christianity to the esoteric spiritual systems of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky to Theravada and finally Mahayana Buddhism. He concludes his memoir with the contested circumstances of his Buddhist monastic ordination in India and Tibet. Ultimately, while Dillon/Jivaka died before becoming a monk, his novice ordination was significant: It made him the first white European man to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Out of the Ordinary is a landmark publication that sets free a distinct voice from the history of the transgender movement.
Now available for the first time-more than 50 years after it was written-is the memoir of Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka (1915-62), the British doctor and Buddhist monastic novice chiefly known to scholars of sex, gender, and sexuality for his pioneering transition from female to male between 1939 and 1949, and for his groundbreaking 1946 book Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology. Here at last is Dillon/Jivaka's extraordinary life story told in his own words.
Out of the Ordinary captures Dillon/Jivaka's various journeys-to Oxford, into medicine, across the world by ship-within the major narratives of his gender and religious journeys. Moving chronologically, Dillon/Jivaka begins with his childhood in Folkestone, England, where he was raised by his spinster aunts, and tells of his days at Oxford immersed in theology, classics, and rowing. He recounts his hormonal transition while working as an auto mechanic and fire watcher during World War II and his surgical transition under Sir Harold Gillies while Dillon himself attended medical school. He details his worldwide travel as a ship's surgeon in the British Merchant Navy with extensive commentary on his interactions with colonial and postcolonial subjects, followed by his "outing" by the British press while he was serving aboard The City of Bath.
Out of the Ordinary is not only a salient record of an early sex transition but also a unique account of religious conversion in the mid-twentieth century. Dillon/Jivaka chronicles his gradual shift from Anglican Christianity to the esoteric spiritual systems of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky to Theravada and finally Mahayana Buddhism. He concludes his memoir with the contested circumstances of his Buddhist monastic ordination in India and Tibet. Ultimately, while Dillon/Jivaka died before becoming a monk, his novice ordination was significant: It made him the first white European man to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Out of the Ordinary is a landmark publication that sets free a distinct voice from the history of the transgender movement.
Foreword by Susan Stryker
Editors’ Note
“In His Own Way, In His Own Time”: An Introduction to Out of the
Ordinary Out of the Ordinary
Author’s Introduction
Part I. Conquest of the Body
1. Birth and Origins
2. The Nursery
3. Schooldays
4. Oxford
5. War—The Darkest of Days
Part II. Conquest of the Mind
6. Medical Student
7. Resident Medical Officer
8. Surgeon M.N.
9. On the Haj
10. Round the World
11. Interlude Ashore
12. The Last Voyage
13. Imji Getsul
Michael Dillon / Lobzang Jivaka: A Timeline
Acknowledgments
Jacob Lau is Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cameron Partridge is an Episcopal priest, theologian, scholar of trans and religious studies, and an openly transgender man. He has taught at Harvard University, Harvard Divinity School and Episcopal Divinity School and is currently the rector of St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in San Francisco.
First and foremost, [Dillon/Jivaka] was a seeker after truth, who
traveled wherever his queries led him. His peregrinations from
Laura to Michael to Lobzang were all of a piece, as spiritual and
metaphysical as they were intellectual and transsexual and
medical.---Susan Stryker, from the foreword
Blocked from publication in the 1960s and then hidden in a
warehouse in London, Michael Dillon's autobiography moldered away
for decades in the darkness. Now, for the first time ever, it has
burst into print. The book illuminates the life of one of the
ground-breaking transgender pioneers of the 20th century. Just
important, it is a suspenseful and heart-breaking tale that begins
at the English seaside and ends with a mysterious death in the
Himalayan mountains. In his gripping autobiography, Dillon finds
new answers to enduring questions about gender. At the same time,
he never manages to solve the puzzle of his own identity and dies
in the pursuit of transcendence. Dillon's memoir deserves a place
alongside the great spiritual narratives, from Augustine to Merton.
This edition is beautifully put together, with an introduction and
notes supplied by a trio of scholars who have immersed themselves
in Dillon's life history.---Pagan Kennedy, The First Man-Made
Man
The importance of this work to the history of sexuality--and
especially to the history of transsexuality--cannot be
overstated.---Jose Ignacio Cabezon, University of California, Santa
Barbara
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