Out of the Ordinary
A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions
by Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka
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Pub Date Nov 01 2016 | Archive Date Oct 04 2016
Description
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.
Advance Praise
“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. His memoir deserves a place alongside the great spiritual narratives, from Augustine to Merton.”—Pagan Kennedy, author of 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
“While so much of the history of transsexualism has circulated around and
through a few highly publicized lives of trans women, Jacob Lau and Cameron
Partridge have made an indelible contribution to the modern histories of gender
and sexuality by publishing this autobiography. Their introduction carefully
situates the history of one of the earliest female to male transitions and
gives us a smart and sympathetic account of the political, social and material
complexities of Dillon/Jivaka’s life. This is an astonishing story.”—Jack
Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity and In a Queer Time and Place:
Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780823274802 |
| PRICE | $29.95 (USD) |
