Defiance

Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka

Michael Dillon, trans healthcare pioneer and Buddhist novice monk, was born 1 May 1915 in Kensington, London, the child of an Australian mother with Cork ancestry and a father who inherited the Baronetcy of Lismullen, Co. Meath. From 1945-9, while studying medicine at Trinity College Dublin, Dillon underwent genital reconstruction surgery, becoming the first known case of a transmasculine person to do so. From 1958 until his death, Dillon lived in India as a Buddhist novice monk with the name Lobzang Jivaka.

Click here to read an Extraordinary Emigrants article about Lobzang Jivaka.

Photo courtesy of Liz Hodgkinson.

Stonewall – The Irish Connection

A landmark moment in the history of LGBTQ+ liberation, the Stonewall Rebellion was a series of confrontations between police and protestors outside the Stonewall Inn, a Gay bar in New York, that took place over four nights from late June to early July 1969. One Irish participant in the Stonewall Rebellion was John O’Brien, born in New York in 1949 and raised in Harlem by Irish parents. Already active in the Civil Rights Movement by the summer of 1969, O’Brien was present on the first night of rioting outside the Stonewall Inn and aided in converting a parking meter into a battering ram.