Hello and welcome to Queer's Fact. I'm Eli. I'm Hamish. I'm Lara.

We are a queer history podcast that comes out on the first and 15th of every month,

bringing you a topic from queer history from around the world and throughout time.

Today we'll be discussing the writer and Dr. Michael Dillon,

who was the first transgender man to undergo a falloplasty

and the first Englishman to be ordained as a novice monk in Tibetan Buddhism.

So if you have listened to an episode of ours before, you might have noticed that there's a voice you haven't heard before.

We have a special guest today who's our very good friend, Lara,

and she's going to be bringing you an episode soon.

So she's here to see how the inner workings of the blanket fort unfolds.

Thank you for being here, Laura.

Thanks for having me.

That's all right.

Before we get started, we have a few content warnings.

This episode contains general mentions of dysphoria and of periotypical misogyny and transphobia,

and the latter includes talking about people being outed.

We also discuss malnourishment and starvation, and there are also some descriptions of surgery.

Lastly, there are some brief mentions of suicidal ideation and of emotional abuse.

So with the content warnings over, we can move on to talking about the life of Michael Dylan.

He was born on the 1st of May, 1915, and his mother died of sepsis when he was 10 days old.

It wasn't the done thing at the time for a single father to raise children.

So he and his, so he and his 15-month older brother are sent to live with their aunts.

...