However, the existence of trans people is still found throughout history. Alicia
Spencer- Hall and Blake Gutt’s suggest that trans individuals have been present and played
major roles in the Mediaeval era, even in traditional religious roles such as Monks,
documented with relative dignity in hagiography of the period. 41 Chevalie r/Chevalière d’Éon,
is an early and perhaps the most famous example of western gender fluidity, someone who
lived as both a man and a woman throughout their life in both France and England. 42
Moving onto the twentieth-century, Roberta Cowell gained national fame in Britain
as the first trans woman to ever receive gender reassignment surgery. Cowell was a racing
driver and RAF pilot in WWII and met Michael Dillon in 1950, a physician and the first trans
man to undergo GRS, after reading his book, Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics (1946),
which advocated for the rights of individuals to live as a different gender. She received an
inguinal orchiectomy from Dillon after the two became close friends, which allowed her to
be medically declared intersex by a gynaecologist, and have her birth certificate altered to
female. 43 The surgery had to be done in secret, as ‘mayhem’ laws, which prohibited the self -
mutilation of would-be soldiers, were being twisted to prohibit gender affirming surgery.
However, following her change in registered sex, Roberta was able to receive the first
vaginoplasty surgery in Britain in 1951, done by founder of modern-day plastic surgery Sir
Harold Gillies. 44
41 Alicia Spencer-Hall, Blake Gutt, Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021), pp. 25-27 42 Ardel Haefele-Thomas, Thatcher Combs, Introduction to Transgender Studies (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2019) p. 282 43 Alan Cowell, ‘Overlooked No More: Roberta Cowell, Trans Trailblazer, Pilot and Auto Racer’, The New York Times [online] (June 5, 2020) <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/obituaries/roberta-cowell- overlooked.html> [Accessed 10/01/2023] 44 ‘The History of Gender Reassignment Surgeries in the UK’, British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeries [online] (24th June 2021) <https://www.bapras.org.uk/media-government/news-and- views/view/the-history-of-gender-reassignment-surgeries-in-the-uk> [Accessed 10/01/2023]
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