Talk:Michael Dillon

Untitled comments

I believe mention should be made in this article, which names Dr. Michael Dillon as the first female-to-male transsexual to undergo sex reassignment surgery, of Dr. Allan Hart, who underwent hysterectomy for the purposes of transitioning to male in 1917 or 1918 (see also here). "Sex reassignment surgery" is a bit of a misnomer, as it is not one surgery but a number of different surgical procedures, any one or any combination of which may be sufficient to allow an individual to live in the social role they see as appropriate to their gender identity. I believe the wikipedia entry on sex reassignment surgery makes this clear. I am therefore editing this article to reflect that Michael Dillon is the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty, rather than using the more general and potentially-misleading "sex reassignment surgery." —k.a.l. 03:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Note: We have an article on Alan L. Hart. -- The Anome (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 13 June 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. It was pointed out that MOS:GENDERID does not apply here as the name change is not due to a self-expressed gender identification, so the name of the article should follow the name under which the subject was most notable. (non-admin closure) WPscatter ^t/_c 19:08, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

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Michael Dillon → Lobzang Jivaka – MOS:GENDERID calls for using the subject's latest preferred name (Lobzang Jivaka) rather than the most common name (Michael Dillon). gnu57 18:43, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: If I understand correctly, both names are male, so MOS:GENDERID may not really apply to the choice. Also, MOS:GENDERID is primarily about living people. Matters may be more difficult to ascertain for long-dead people. This may be a bit more like Cat Stevens or Stokely Carmichael, where the person's greatest notability uses a different name than their most recent name. I also notice that the nominator has submitted other questionable renaming proposals very recently, which makes me skeptical about this one as well. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Rv. 1192127025 Notability as a rower

Per WP:BIO#Sports_personalities I don't see how his highschool rowing is considered notable. The only source for this information is included from a biography of his importance as a trans man, not as a rower. there appears to be no media coverage focusing on his highschool activities at all. Liz-wiki-en (talk) 23:08, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

"High school"? I think you mean rowing for Oxford University in the Women's Boat Race 1935 and the Women's Boat Race 1936; in both of these pages Dillon is wiki-linked which is notable. Nedrutland (talk) 23:18, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Linked because he has an existing article, not because the information itself is notable. this is shown by how the other rowers don't have articles. Liz-wiki-en (talk) 00:23, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Michael Dillon/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Unexpectedlydian (talk · contribs) 18:27, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 05:25, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Will review this as part of trying out Wikipedia:Good article review circles. Review to follow within the next few days. —Kusma (talk) 05:25, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Content and prose review

I will make more comments than strictly necessary by the GA criteria. Please push back against anything you do not wish to do, and certainly do push back against everything where I am wrong.

• Lead: will need to comment later.
• Early life: Mother's name seems to be Laura Maude (?) see also p. 3 and p. 42 of the book. (I do wonder whether it should really be omitted that he was named after his mother when he was christened; sources generally seem to mention his female name). The Dictionary of Irish Biography has "Laura Maud" though, and some detail on her being a widow and some of the crazy family background (Australian-German??)
• before he could be cashiered for those of us who don't know that "cashiered" is something bad, could this become "to avoid being cashiered"?
• self-imposed economic hardship seems a bit exaggerated; they did have nannies after all.
• Brampton Down Girls' School mention it was in Folkestone?
• Later in his life, he claimed that as a child and teenager he never thought of himself as a girl. you could just cite that to the book instead of to a website that cites the book...
• Education at Oxford: decided to switch his course to Greats [..] after persuading the university that sounds weird. I would expect he first decided to switch, then persuaded the university to allow it, then actually switched.
• As captain and he achieved blues in 1935 and 1936 probably the "and" should go; could you explain what "achieving blues" means? It does not seem to be either music or depression ;)
• "He graduated in 1938 with a third" might be worth explaining to the non-Brits what a "third" is?
• Bristol: Should "Commandant" be uppercase?
• Just to confirm: he volunteered, git rejected, then found out reasons why he would not have liked to be there?
• After leaving the laboratory do we have a year for that?
• heavy bombing of Bristol link Bristol Blitz
• the book argues [..] and advocated I would use present tense both times.
• You could mention that the book was later published.
• Hypoglycaemia: do we know why?
• Footnote about cousin Maude Eileen Beauchamp should have a citation.
• Trinity College: Oxford tutor who changed the university records this almost sounds like falsifying. "It was due to the kindness and commonsense of my ex-tutor that my name was transferred to the books of Brasenose College where I had learned all my philosophy, and also that the Oxford University Registrar was persuaded to issue me an M.A. certificate with only my initials in place of my first names." is what Dillon says. Source cited has "With the help of a former tutor, Dillon was able to change his Oxford records to state that L. M. Dillon had attended the all-male Brasenose college, not St Anne’s." so it is not the tutor personally who did the change of records.
• Roberta Cowell: Dillon's book Self brought him to the attention of Roberta Cowell so when was it published?
• Is it worth noting that Cowell did not get divorced until 1952? (And does not mention Dillon in her book, if I skim-read correctly?)

More later! —Kusma (talk) 21:30, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

• Medical career: Dillon’s entrenched imperialist and xenophobic views became more apparent this is the first time we hear of these views.
• Outing in the press: the section doesn't really describe the actual outing in the press.
• Buddhism: When Dillon's ship travelled back to India, he stayed in the country and travelled to Kalimpong sounds like he stayed in the US instead of going to India?
• the monk found it difficult to teach Dillon and found him gullible the book says "naive and arrogant", which isn't quite the same
• he wanted to ordain as a novice monk shouldn't it be "be ordained"?
• Jivaka’s interpreted the rule to mean that he should not necessarily be prohibited from ordaining something is wrong with this sentence grammatically. Also, the IDNB (White/Evers) says "Tibetan practitioners in Sarnath seemed more accommodating to his ‘third sex’ status, however, and his request for ordination seemed set to be granted." so this seems to be about a different school of Buddhists.
• He decided he should let the monks make the final decision on whether Jivaka could be ordained, and they ultimately forbade Jivaka's ordination. hmm, the source is more equivocal, "Whatever Sangharakshita wrote to the monks — whether he truly left it up to them or whether he in fact argued against Dillon becoming a bhikkhu — his letter was enough to thwart the ordination"
• José Ignacio Cabezón writes gloss him so we know why we should care about his opinion?
• The senior monk at Sarnath [..] suggested Jivaka could achieve full ordination so the other monks decided against what their senior monk said? Or are there Theravadans and Tibetans in different monasteries in Sarnath?
• the first person from the West to be ordained as a Tibetan novice monk (getsul) and the first to attend Rizong the sourcing for this isn't great, as Lau and Partridge just quote Jivaka for this. White/Evers have "one of the earliest Westerners to seek ordination into Tibetan Buddhism". Perhaps best to attribute this to Jivaka?
• He wished to return to Ladakh, but without wanting to reveal his gender transition, he struggled to secure entry. this is a bit confusingly written, and it is unclear why wanting to reveal his transition would have helped him enter Ladakh.
• He wrote to the monk asking to be sent his incomplete autobiography, driven by a wish to write his life story in his own words. Whose autobiography? And whose life story did Jivaka want to write?
• Death and legacy: The Hodgkinson and Kennedy biographies might be a good fit for this section?

More later! —Kusma (talk) 21:15, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

• Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics (1946): Many of the arguments in the book mirror those made by Harry Benjamin in his book The Transsexual Phenomenon (1966) source has "Although Dr. Harry Benjamin is generally credited with developing the “logic of treatment” for transsexual medical care in his 1966 book The Transsexual Phenomenon, Dillon actually got there first, a full two decades earlier." which doesn't seem to be the same as "mirroring"; Dillon predates Benjamin by 20 years but makes very similar arguments.
• Poetry: Gurdjieff: might be good to have a gloss here or at first mention
• Imji Getsul: The book was published in Great Britain spring 1962 "in the spring of 1962". (And actually MOS:SEASON discourages this way of describing a time of year, but that is not in the part of MOS in WP:GA?).
• Other works: do we know whether these were by "Jivaka" or by "Dillon"?

First pass done! A very interesting story, well told, some suggestions above (and some issues with faithfulness to sources). Lead to be discussed later. —Kusma (talk) 21:32, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed