Crossing: A Memoir [Paperback]

Deirdre N. McCloskey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0226556697 | ISBN-13: 978-0226556697

We have read the stories of those who have "crossed" lines of race and class and culture. But few have written of crossing—completely and entirely—the gender line. Crossing is the story of Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald), once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s and 1960s privilege, and her dramatic and poignant journey to becoming a woman. McCloskey's account of her painstaking efforts to learn to "be a woman" unearth fundamental questions about gender and identity, and hatreds and anxieties, revealing surprising answers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This fascinating memoir chronicles Deirdre McCloskey's transformation from Donald McCloskey, an economist at the University of Iowa and married father of two, into the woman he finally accepted he had always wanted to be. McCloskey had been dressing in women's clothes since he was 11, but after his daughter went to college in 1994, the 52-year-old man grew increasingly aware that he was more than "just a heterosexual crossdresser." As he moved toward the decision to become a transsexual, his wife reacted angrily, and his sister tried twice to have him declared insane. The passages detailing McCloskey's ordeal within the psychiatric and legal establishment are as gripping as a topnotch thriller. But the memoir's deeper interest lies in the author's reflections on the nature of gender and identity. Donald was a macho academic who dominated every discussion, viewing conversation as an exercise in one-upmanship. As he surgically altered his appearance and began to take estrogen on the road to "The Operation," he found himself relating to people in a more conventionally female way: listening to others, considering feelings. "The hormones are working, he thought at first. Or was it merely that the real person could now stand up?... Biology or core identity?" There are no final answers to such questions, but McCloskey poses them with sensitivity and insight. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Transsexuality has fascinated mainstream readers since 1953, when former U.S. serviceman George Jorgensen went to Sweden and, to banner headlines, returned as Christine. Since then, there has been a string of notable memoirs of gender crossing, including Geoff Brown's sincere I Want What I Want (1966), Jan Morris's meditative Conundrum (1974) and Holly Woodlawn's campy A Low Life in High Heels (1994). McCloskey's own odyssey from Donald to Deirdre is closest to noted journalist Morris's, in that it charts the life change of a highly regarded public figureAMcCloskey is a world-famous conservative economistAwho finds fulfillment as a woman after four decades of living as a man. McCloskey forthrightly describes her upper-middle-class youth in Boston, her early and lifelong interest in cross-dressing, her education and eventual success as an academic and her marriage and children. In her late 40s, McCloskey decided that she was not simply a heterosexual cross-dresser but a transsexual and decided to undergo a series of operations to become an anatomical woman. Her memoir effectively details the pain involved: a bitter divorce, insurance companies' refusal to cover surgeries and her sister's repeated attempts to block the process legally. McCloskey's proclivity to jump around in time, her tendency to disrupt the flow of her story with social and political digressions and the constant placing of additional thoughts and ideas in bold text throughout the narrative distract from her storyAbut her courage nevertheless shines through. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226556697
• ISBN-13: 978-0226556697
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #633,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs > Transgender

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On Becoming, September 7, 2001

By 

Richard Bear (Eugene, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crossing: A Memoir (Paperback)

"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."

53 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and annoying, August 29, 2000

By 

Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Crossing: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This is a book about someone who has gone through an amazing experience. The problem is that the author doesn't seem to grasp most of what she has done. For example, she is hurt beyond belief that the woman she was married to when she was a man can't accept that she is now a woman. But prior to this revelation, he had been lying to his wife, and he had a secret life. He seems to have no sense of what a major revelation this was, no ability to understand what it might be like to discover that your husband has been deceiving you and now intends to change his (and your) life profoundly and That This Is Not Open For Discussion. (Never mind that if you resist the changes he is proposing for your life, you will instantly become the enemy.)

Also, she has a strange view of what it means to be a woman. Near as I can tell, any woman whose experience of being female is different than hers is a "radical feminist" and the enemy.

She not only accepts second-class treatment, she seems to crave it. She brags about doing the cooking and cleaning with the other women while the men in the group are chatting in the living room. She seems to have chosen friends who will reinforce her ideas about what it means to be a woman. In the end, she is living out a man's fantasy of what it is like to be female. More power to her, but I think she would find more acceptance (which she clearly longs for) if she would start with a little empathy. It's all about her, all about what she wants, and not at all about what it might mean for those who started out loving him.

Her sister tried several times to get her committed to mental institutions, in order to prevent her from having the surgery. This was vile and evil, and intrusive. Lots of bad things happened to her because of the choices she made (and people's reactions to them). I really wanted to be sympathetic, but it was hard when she was herself such a monster of self-absorption and selfishness.

I was hoping for a book which would explore the boundary between maleness and femaleness, which would be about what it means to be a woman (or a man) in America these days. Instead I got yet another man's view of womanhood, with a strong dose of "only I know what it means to be female" thrown in. The world is not that simple, and this author is, in the end, too self-indulgent to take seriously as a reporter from that boundary country.

(A better book on this topic is Kate Bornstein's _Gender_Outlaw_.)

31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Well-Written Memoir with Insight into Gender Issues, November 24, 1999

By 

Dr. George Wilkerson (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crossing: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.