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Title: Crossing: A Memoir by Deirdre N. McCloskey ISBN: 0226556697 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.84
Rating: 3
Summary: Too many stereotypical assumptions for my comfort
Comment: Generally speaking, radical feminists and early-transitioning transsexuals hate people like Dierdre McCloskey--and one need only to read her book to understand why.
McCloskey, like many transsexuals (including myself)is a walking contradiction. She is a woman who spent most of her fifty-something years trying to be a man, and a gender rebel who is one of its most ardent defenders. It has long been a source of embarrassment and irritation to me, but many of us transsexuals are profoundly conservative when it comes to gender roles, and McCloskey is no exception. When she rhapsodizes on her newly-acquired compulsion to clean, I'm tempted to send her a list of the women I know who could give Oscar Madison slob lessons. Dusting is NOT in one's DNA.
Nonetheless, one cannot help but feel for McCloskey, who suffered the torments of the damned to become who she truly is. Ironically, the lion's share of prejudice and fear came not from her friends and colleagues (most of whom accepted her) but from members of her own family. The one clear villian of this book is her psychologist sister (I thank whatever God is out there that thre are no shrinks in my family) who has Dierdre committed no less than three times. Her view, apparently, is that transsexuals are delusional in the same sense as a man who believes he is Napoleon. That there are professionals who still hold this view is frightening--the fact they can succeed in committing a transsexual multiple times is terrifying.
All in all, this book is a compelling study of the roller-coaster process of changing gender. Yet women, both transsexual and natural-born, will be infuriated for decades by this "tranny come lately," who preseumes to tell them what being a woman is.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Well-Written Memoir with Insight into Gender Issues
Comment: Kudos for the first completely honest and exceptionally well-written presentation of the difficult road a transgendered person must travel to define his/her place in the world. I was especially pleased to see how well-balanced this book is and the obvious pains the author took to show the many sides of this issue.
Especially impressive are those instances where Ms. McCloskey is able to describe the mistreatment, lack of understanding, and downright cruelty of others without lapsing into vengeful remarks or angry tirades. Instead of using it to deride the mistreatment she received at the hands of the ignorant, Deidre's multi-dimensional story leaves the reader with an empathy for the plight of the so-called 'transsexual' and the need for us to rethink our view of the subject. Through her story we begin to understand in a very personal way the limiting nature of the male and female definitions of gender.
This is not a historical or medical book. As the subtitle says, it's a memoir. I've struggled through books on this subject by other transgendered writers like Rikki Wilchins and Kate Bornstein, but this is the first I've found that is written in a way that makes the subject accessible to those who haven't had to deal with this situation.
Ms. McCloskey has adopted a use of the third person which is wholly appropriate to her subject. Given the pronoun limitations for referencing gender, she has done a remarkable job of presenting the different aspects of herself while retaining the sense of a completely unified individual.
As an educator and writer, I believe that "Crossing" should be recommended reading for people of all ages. As we grapple more and more with gender issues, Deidre McCloskey's book provides the kind of understanding and appreciation of the experiences of all gender variant persons we need to hear. Like Ms. McCloskey, one of my oldest and dearest friends is an economist. I plan to give him a copy of the book for Christmas.
Rating: 5
Summary: On Becoming
Comment: "Crossing" is an honest account of a high-profile intellectual's sometimes terrifying journey to herself through a maze of psychological, social and physical barriers. A noted economist and economics historian, Deirdre McCloskey is currently UIC Distinguished Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago. and a visiting professor at Erasmusuniversiteit Rotterdam. She began this career as Donald McCloskey, and her gender change was heralded by accounts in The Chronicle of Higher Ed and elsewhere.
Arranged in three sections named for a progression of personae -- "Donald," "Dee," and "Deirdre," the book follows decades of furtive cross-dressing to a moment of epiphany in 1994 at the age of 52, followed by learning to "pass"as a woman, by loss of family and some friends, by painful surgery, and on to discovering new friend, and rediscovering the world (and the academic discipline of economics) through the eyes of a woman. Joys -- a child born, named for her -- sorrows -- her own children, long since grown, refusing to acknowledge her. Well paced yet thoughtful, "Crossing" reads like a novel despite its long passages of musing on the economic, social and political aspects of her situation and of that of other crossers, of women, and of men in a "free" society that is severely opressive to those whose free choice is to redefine their gender expression. Want to know more about these issues? Or just want to know a brave new woman better? Buy the book.
The medical profession has labeled crossing as a medical condition, "transsexualism," for which there is a specific cure, an agonizingly slow course of treatment consisting of counseling, mandatory two years living as the other gender, hormone therapy, and gender assignment surgery, most of which is regarded by the insurance industry as strictly elective and uninsurable. McCloskey makes the excellent point, not always made clear, that the two year's waiting game thus mandated is not only quite dangerous to many crossers, due to the activities of "gay" bashers but is in most places illegal. Police, firemen, EMTs, doctors, and nurses have all been known to slow down or even stop rendering assistance when faced with "pre-op" gender crossers. In the case publicised by the 1999 film "Boy's Don't Cry," the attitude of the police actually contributed to the death of a young woman, living as a man, at the hands of intolerant youths. Given the often painful struggle Donald went through to become Deirdre, it is interesting to note that criticism of her memoir is often directed, sometimes by women, to what is thought to be the flaw in her theory of womanhood; the word "stereotyping" is bandied about, in a tone suggesting that it is improper to notice how women move, how men move, and that we know and can tell the difference almost immediately. Such knowledge is vital to the crosser, who needs it in order to survive, yet describing these cultural realities invites ridicule. I think the flaw is in the thinking of the critics here, not that of our author. Stereotyping is simple habituation -- the habitual awareness of characteristics statistically common to a population -- raised to a pernicious art form by its being applied to individuals in order to objectify them. It's a power move, used either by oppressed or oppressors, to dehumanize the opposition. When Deirdre McCloskey observes male behavior and its consequences, or female behavior she wishes to learn, in individuals, this is not sterootyping, it's recognition -- since she has no agenda to objectify anyone. The chapter on the women's culture of gifts -- required reading for anyone hoping to make this a better world -- should be convincing on this point. One of the deepest attractions of womanhood to a gender-crossing male is the opportunity to inhabit a space of caring, of not needing to play the game of winning. McCloskey says it best: "One of the policemen asked Dee, 'Is this about money?' He meant: You obviously are not crazy; is your sister trying to get you declared crazy in order to take over some inheritance? 'No,' said Dee, "It's about love."
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Title: True Selves : Understanding Transsexualism--For Families, Friends, Coworkers, and Helping Professionals by Mildred L. Brown, Chloe Ann Rounsley ISBN: 0787902713 Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 1996 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Feminizing Hormonal Therapy For The Transgendered by Dr. Sheila Kirk ISBN: 1887796045 Publisher: Together Lifeworks Pub. Date: 01 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Lazy Crossdresser by Charles Anders ISBN: 1890159379 Publisher: Greenery Pr Pub. Date: 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Out & About: The Emancipated Crossdresser by Lacey Leigh ISBN: 0971668000 Publisher: Binary Star Press Pub. Date: 15 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender by Kim Elizabeth Stuart ISBN: 1555520138 Publisher: Metamorphous Press Pub. Date: 1991 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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