The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution | 
 enlarge | Author: Pagan Kennedy
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $6.50
You Save: $17.45 (73%)
New (37) Used (23) from $1.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 278173
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 1596910151
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7680941
EAN: 9781596910157
ASIN: 1596910151
Publication Date: March 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new ships fast! gift quality
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Product Description
In the 1920s when Laura Dillon felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body, there were no words to describe her condition; transsexuals had yet to enter common usage. And there was no known solution to being stuck between the sexes. Laura Dillon did all she could on her own: she cut her hair, dressed in men’s clothing, bound her breasts with a belt. But in a desperate bid to feel comfortable in her own skin, she experimented with breakthrough technologies that ultimately transformed the human body and revolutionized medicine. From upper-class orphan girl to Oxford lesbian, from post-surgery romance with Roberta Cowell (an early male-to-female) to self-imposed exile in India, Michael Dillon’s incredible story reveals the struggles of early transsexuals and challenges conventional notions of what gender really means.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Neither one thing, nor the other.... July 2, 2007
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is neither a particularly insightful look into the general subject of the transgendered, nor a riveting account of these particular individuals. Much posturing, of the "as he gazed over the deck of the ship, he felt....." variety--describing in only the broadest, most hackneyed terms the inner monologues of personalities more difficult to fathom than most. And the over-hyped "love affair" chronicled between the two transgendered principals proves to be much more smoke than fire.
All these paeans to Pagan are a mystery to me. The book's a bore.
 Beyond gender (hello hooray) June 28, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Gay is the new straight and trans is the new gay. Maybe, soon enough, TG will become the neo hippie. All in your mind. Dolly Parton, after all, has had a lot more surgery than Christine Jorgensen ever did. So let us now push further.
Not as emotional or as 'literary' as Chris Beam's Transparent, Pagan Kennedy has nevertheless penned the 1st trans book anyone outside the trans world 'should' read. Trans is coming soon to Hollywood, I betcha, and here's a real contender.
The First Man-Made Man works several themes - history (Hirschfeld, Benjamin, et al.), drama ('burned by the blonde') and ideology (modern ID data necessitated HRT and SRS, which led to mainstream cosmetic surgery) - quite cohesively.
Kennedy's metanarrative is not 'transition' however, but self-actualization via reinvention. Protagonist Dillion's eternal quest (from FtM, then from Oxford Englishman to Tibetan monk) keeps the humanist foundation of this saga transparent - and tendentious.
Kennedy's conclusion that, by today, "gender had become ... a show tune you lip-synched when it matched the secret beat of your own heart" will assuredly infuriate postops (deal, ladies) but it will resound with a bewildered (mainstream) boomer.
Robert Owen, roll over - the new plastic man and woman (and genderfu**er) have arrived, to conquer the universe.
Which sounds about right on time to me!
 Most people think Christine Jorgensen was the first June 11, 2007
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is the story of Laura Maude Dillon, AKA Laurence Michael Dillon, woman, auto mechanic, member of the British peerage, security guard, physician, world traveler, man, and finally religious pilgrim. There are huge gaps in the story, out of necessity since much evidence of what he did at certain times in his life are long gone, but it does tell a story of a troubled person who was relatively openly transgendered in the 1930s and died mysteriously in 1962 in India at the age of 47.
Included was a brief early history of plastic surgery and a lengthy introduction to the only "woman" he appears to have ever loved, a man in transition to a woman. There is also commentary on the British class system and gender roles of the 1940s and 1950s, so this is quite a multifaceted book for being barely 200 pages.
What's this obsession with the word "vertiginous"?
Understand Transgenderism May 10, 2007
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
The true story of two sex changes is interwoven with scientific, medical and social history. You'll understand how difficult it is to change genders.
Spellbinding and fantastic May 9, 2007
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
The First Man-Made Man is enthralling, as gripping as the most powerful novel, written with exquisite authority and mastery. Rich in fascinating biographical, sociological and medical research, it's as suspenseful as a Hitchcock thriller. I was hooked from the first page and couldn't put this gorgeous book down, reading it breathlessly. The characters leap from the page, extraordinary and courageous. Pagan Kennedy takes a subject that might, in less capable hands, be sensationalized, and instead turns it into a profoundly human and moving story about yearning and loneliness, and an intense, existential quest for identity. The restless, searching spirit of Michael Dillon, brave and reviled, is captured vividly. He emerges as a vulnerable person of tremendous grace and dignity. From the posh halls of Oxford to the back of a dingy garage, from a ship sailing across the open seas to a remote Tibetan Buddhist monastery, First Man-Made Man catapults the reader into one memorable man's wild, often hostile, world. This poetic adventure is unforgettable.
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