Radio 4 just now (8.47) bonkers conflation of intersex and trans

I agree @GaspodeTheWonderDog
Michael Dillon seems to have been extraordinarily talented, and as a man was able to make something of his life he never could have as a woman. Was that his motive rather than a drive to be a man? Or was it both?

He has written an autobiography but I haven’t read it. It would be interesting to understand his reasoning and feelings in an era before the present beliefs about a separate- from- the body gender took hold.

Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions - Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka - Google Books

books.google.com/books/about/Out_of_the_Ordinary.html?id=AZWUDwAAQBAJ
books.google.co.uk/books/about/Out_of_the_Ordinary.html?id=AZWUDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1&redir_esc=y

Thank you, @ScrollingLeaves, that's a fascinating addition. I was born in the early 1960s. It doesn't take too much of an effort to imagine how much more constrained women's lives were in the first two decades of the 20th century, and obviously even earlier too. Not allowed to vote, only recently allowed to hold onto their own assets after marriage and go to university, rape in marriage legal, domestic violence accepted as a fact of life and not prosecuted, divorce almost impossible, most professions barred in practice if not legally, married women routinely ruled out of consideration from many jobs.

I look at the lives of people like Elizabeth/Ewan Forbes and Laura/Michael Dillon and it seems to me that they were desperate for the freedoms and privileges their brothers had and took for granted. They didn't want to be women, because there was nothing in a typical aristocratic woman's life they wanted. And if you aren't a woman, what are you? The only other option available is to be a man, and if you can get away with it, you can have a freedom that was completely out of reach for most women of the era.

The boundary between not wanting to be a woman and actively wanting to be a man is an interesting one. Dillon had a phalloplasty at a time when that was absolutely at the frontiers of what plastic surgery could do, and we know that the success rate of that operation now is very poor, and there are lots of complications and infections after it. I would be interested to know what the health problems were which led to Dillon's very early death at 47.

I wonder if anyone knows if Dillon had the operation out of a desire to pass better, and thus to have an increased chance of being accepted as a man and living that less restricted life, or genuinely out of a desire to have something as close to male anatomy as medical science could provide at the time.

Michael Dillon - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dillon
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dillon

It looks from another case, Michael Dillon b.1915, that if a doctor signed a note saying the person had a DSD (also called ‘intersex’) meaning the person’s real sex had been mistaken at birth, they could change the birth certificate.

From looking at this Wikipedia article quoted
below, Michael Dillon did not actually have a DSD ( he was trans gender) but a doctor helped him by writing a letter for him so he could change his birth certificate.

His Oxford University college St Anne’s, which he had attended as a woman, was also changed to Brasenose College later when he was living as a man, at the behest of his old tutor.

From Wikipedia
“While in the Royal Infirmary recovering from the second of these attacks [hypoglaecemia] he happened to come to the attention of one of the world's few practitioners of plastic surgery. The surgeon performed a double mastectomy, provided Dillon with a doctor's note that enabled him to change his birth certificate, and put him in contact with the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies.[3]

Gillies had previously reconstructed penises for injured soldiers and performed surgery on intersex people with ambiguous genitalia. He was willing to perform a phalloplasty, “

“TeamRex
That article seems to have taken the line that in the past, pre 1970, people could simply "correct" their birth certificate. That was apparently fine until their sex was questioned in law. “

I have not read the book but heard the programme and read a good review.

It seems that in order for the court to decide in his favour, so he could change his birth certificate and inherit the title, Forbes faked a biopsy of a supposedly undescended testicle, to prove that his sex had been mistaken at birth and he was really a man. That is to say, he proved to the court that he had a DSD. (He could not have simply identified as a man.)

So I don’t think that prior to 1970 a person could self identify and then change their birth certificate.

Anyone listening to the radio though would have had the idea that someone with a genuine DSD, and someone who identifies with the opposite gender, are the same.

That article seems to have taken the line that in the past, pre 1970, people could simply "correct" their birth certificate. That was apparently fine until their sex was questioned in law.

It strikes me that some people just got away with self-identifying their sex as it was very rare and no-one had properly thought through the consequences.

We are really only beginning to see the consequences of this ideology being taught to a whole generation as fact, alongside surgeons willing to operate destructively on healthy bodies.

This book appears to be a bit of a rose-coloured fantasy idea of what could have been if only no-one had noticed.

Is Playdon's book intended as a work of fiction?

That’s not the word I would use. How sad when book editors don’t bother with even simple fact-checking. Thanks for doing their job for them, OldCrone. Too bad the book, and its credulous reviewers, will continue to spread fantasies.

WTF? She think Carl Linnaeus caused the slave trade and the holocaust by systemising taxonomy?

Well, we know science is dangerous because it contradicts people’s fantasies. So who knows what other harm it could do?

[quote ArabellaScott]Article from inews by Patrick Strudwick

inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/secret-court-case-50-years-ago-robbed-transgender-people-rights-1291857[/quote]
From that article:
Due to the wealth and connections of Forbes’ supportive mother Lady Gwendolyn, at 15, he was taken to a range of specialists across Europe and given synthetic testosterone, which had only just become available. It prompted a male puberty (complete with spots and stubble) which supported the fact that throughout his young life he presented as and considered himself a boy.

Forbes was born in 1912, so would have been 15 in 1927. Testosterone was first isolated and synthesised in 1935. Details in this paper:

eje.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/eje/180/6/EJE-19-0071.xml

And girls can't go through a 'male puberty'. Is Playdon's book intended as a work of fiction?

Article from inews by Patrick Strudwick

inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/secret-court-case-50-years-ago-robbed-transgender-people-rights-1291857

I agree with Babdoc about the term intersex, but lots of people are still using it unfortunately, there's even a few BBC documentaries a couple of years old that still used the term.

TRAs love the term because it creates confusion about the reality of sex, and suggests that one can be neither A nor B, but somehow a mixture of both of them (or none of them!). As if there was an option 'C'.
There is also a recent push to include conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome in the 'sexual spectrum' (for want of a better term). Anything that confuses sex, for them, is a bonus because it muddies the waters, feeds into their narrative, and chucks sand in the eyes of the uneducated (in terms of science) general public.
Sex is a 'spectrum' don't you know?

@oldwomanwhoruns - I put my complaint in to the BBC about this item. I am still fuming about it. This awful book is going to be turned into a tv mini-series apparently, so expect more of this grooming / propaganda

I seem to be angry all the time these days

I've been angry since about 1972 @WearyLady You learn to live with it

“@thinkingaboutLangCleg
I learn more reliable, evidenced and factual information on Mumsnet than I do from mainstream media! Thanks, oldwomanwhoruns and all posters who put your own unpaid time into doing what the MSM should do.“

I agree completely.

I'm less angry now. The BBC have just announced they're going to pull out of the Stonewall diversity programme. Hurrah!!!

I seem to be angry all the time these days ...

Hmmm, he was also asleep at the wheel in that segment a couple of weeks ago about how the poor little menz were being locked out of current fiction publishing. Too many women in the business and as novelists apparently!

I stand corrected re Amol. I heard that piece about women in publishing and was quite enraged by it. Why would anyone be surprised that if the vast bulk of fiction readers are women then their would be a large number of women fiction writers? And why would anyone complain that women are well-represented at all levels of the publishing industry? I thought all of that should be a cause for celebration rather than complaint!

I seem to be angry all the the these days ...

Yesterday, though, he was definitely asleep at the wheel.

Hmmm, he was also asleep at the wheel in that segment a couple of weeks ago about how the poor little menz were being locked out of current fiction publishing. Too many women in the business and as novelists apparently!

It was a shockingly ill-informed, ahistorical segment, and he led it.

So Radio 4 gives us lies and nonsense, which is very sad, as the BBC is losing its worldwide reputation for honesty. The interviewer would have had time to check basic facts about ‘intersex’ and DSDs.

But within a few minutes of this posting, ordinary women on Mumsnet are able to correct the misinformation. And within a few hours they’ve posted enough links and clear scientific information to give the true story to anyone with a few minutes to read this thread.

I learn more reliable, evidenced and factual information on Mumsnet than I do from mainstream media! Thanks, oldwomanwhoruns and all posters who put your own unpaid time into doing what the MSM should do.

[quote nauticant]Have you noticed how incredibly similar Amol Rajan is to Gary Bellamy from Down the Line?

I don't doubt that he is talented, he wouldn't (or perhaps shouldn't) be where he is if he isn't a very good journalist and presenter; but on Today he just sounds half asleep, disinterested, out of his depth and a bit thick to me.

Amol Rajan is a great presenter - very polite, relaxed questioning style which gets a lot out of interviewees without sounding angry
I couldn't agree more. I love his conversational interview style, which as you say, usually gets much more out of his interviewees than an angry interrogation. Yesterday, though, he was definitely asleep at the wheel.

Today is something of a mixed bag. In two hours the presenters will interview a wide range of people with different specialisms. I assume they are briefed by researchers, but I dare say there isn't much time for preparation, so if you're not familiar with a subject you'll probably do a duff interview. John Humphrys used to drive me up the wall because he never bothered to prepare properly for interviews with scientists and he seemed to treat any scientific item as a joke.

I agree, I think he's great. That TV documentary he did a while back about why there are so few BAME people working in TV was really good. He must have been having an off day, but if enough people write in he will learn from that. Might be worth writing to Feedback too.

Love Sarah Ditum's review, especially this paragraph.

It would take a certain kind of cursed genius to render this material anything less than thrilling. However, Playdon is that genius. Possibly to make up for the thinness of the available material (Ewan left no diaries or letters), Playdon appears to have included everything she discovered: the level of detail about Ewan’s country dancing group can only be described as an ordeal.