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Crossing: A Memoir

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"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."

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_.)

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.

About halfway through the book it struck me that although the author is the same age as I am (early 50s) the womanhood he embraces is the very same womanhood my mother tried to impose on me back in the early 1960s.

Womanhood, to this author, means a constant, obsessional focus on clothes, girl-talk, shopping, clothes, makeup, acting passive in public, hiding your smarts, kissing people in public, clothes, being sweet and nurturing, cooking, cleaning, and thinking of men as beasts who want one thing. . .In short, folks, McCloskey, seems to have become HIS OWN MOTHER!

I kept waiting for him/her to fall in love and tell us how he/she greeted the loved one at the end of the day holding a martini while dressed in nothing but Saran wrap--a la Total Womanhood.

Like other reviewers I was struck by the monomaniacal selfishness that infuses the author's prose. Characters are described only in terms of whether they approve of him/her or do not, or whether they do things for him/her or not. He/she seems fatally incapable of empathy for anyone but himself and completely unable to see anyone else's viewpoint but his/her own.

The author demonizes those who don't agree with him, like his family, psychiatrists, and what he calls "radical feminists" which is the term he applies to any politically active woman who doesn't want him to be her personal spokesperson.

He is very angry at his ex-wife and children for the way they cut themselves off from him, but the cold, intolerant, insensitive way he describes them in the book and the lack of any sign that he ever made any attempt to understand what they were going through made it pretty clear to me that they were probably not acting entirely irrationally in protecting their lacerated emotions by cutting off contact.

I feel very strongly that people do have a right to do whatever they want with their bodies and their lives. However, it is one thing to dress up as something and another to claim that you ARE the thing you are dressing up as and then appoint yourself spokesman for that group.

If McCloskey had gotten his eyelids done three years ago instead of his sex organs, would he be treated this seriously telling us what life is like as an Asian American? Especially if most of what he told us was how inscrutable he'd become?

I doubt it. It is an ironic commentary on women's situation in this country that the media will always be more interested in a man telling us what it is to be a "woman" than they are in the real thing.

"Crossing: A Memoir" is an excellent education for anyone who wants to learn more about the complexities involved in changing (and, ultimately, accepting) your own identity. As a male reader, I will admit that I could not relate to the feelings expressed by Donald (the man), but the book is so well written that you begin to understand those feelings.

The book will certainly resonate with those individuals who cherish liberty and freedom above all else. The hurdles, obstructions, etc., that Deirdre had to endure to make her crossing should raise the ire of freedom loving individuals in this country. The medical establishment's Benjamin Standards, coupled with the power they have to incarcerate people in mental institutions--supposedly for their own good--is truly horrific in this day and age.

Deirdre has written an impassioned, personal account of her journey, with many profound insights into the male and female psyche. I would recommend this book to anyone with the courage to become educated on this misunderstood topic.

American jokes often begin with "You know that someone or something is ... if ..." and the list goes on. I will not build up such a list on McCloskey's book, (anyway, I do not try to be funny either) but rather give you one personal reason why I loved it.

The author, at first, convinces you that her crossing is truly a "state of being" and not what most of us would take as some sort of obscure fantasy. The reader is then "sympathetic" to her in the very first meaning of the word: I understand and I suffer with you, especially as things go wrong with her surgeries and with her family.

But here come the mixed feelings: is she not responsible for being rejected by her wife and her children? For instance, was she not expecting too much from her daughter when signing "Deirdre and Dad" at the end of one letter ? Was "Dad" only not more appropriate to show that her new physical appearance changed nothing about the love she has for her daughter?

At the end, the reader cannot help but ask himself where would he likely stands in all this and long after finishing the book he would think and think over it again. As for me, this is a sure way to recognize "a great book".

Finally, the book is well written and it is hard to skip a single page when you put both your mind and your feelings into it, which is surprisingly easy once you began to read it.

I read this book out of curiosity right after I read J. Michael Bailey's landmark scholarly study, The Man Who Would be Queen. I find McCloskey's memoir to be complementary and reinforcing---wonderfully well written, insightful, humourous, and honest. McCloskey is a consummate scholar, a dispassionate writer, and an astute observer of human behavior. I recommend this book to one and all readers. Kudos!

McCloskey's "Crossing" describes the difficulties and joys encountered by a highly respected academic in transitioning from a 50-something-year-old libertarian conservative male economic historian to a post-op female economic historian/feminist. The story focuses on McCloskey's gender identity, its interplay with her personal relationships, and her internal dialogue about each, as she changes from genetic male married for over 30 years to the same woman with two grown children and established social networks in a small Iowa community, to a single post-operative female economist/feminist facing a seriously altered and in some ways much richer set of social relationships.

While the post-op McCloskey seems to gravitate toward some of the more traditional roles played by women, the reader should not be fooled into believing that she is therefore advocating these roles for all women. The post-op McCloskey remains a world-class educator, albeit with slightly different interests. The story is not about promoting a conservative view of women's roles; instead, it's about the acceptance and love of female identity in all of its forms.

McCloskey's story highlights the archaic state of psychiatric treatment for gender crossers, and the difficulties apparent in securing needed medical assistance and the resources to pay for it. Equally important are the hopeful tales of friendship, community and cultural acceptance shared throughout the book.

This book is an easy read, has its share of intrigue to move you through the pages, and is well the time and effort.

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.

My reason for picking up _Crossing_ was this: I am a communication scholar, someone interested in gender roles and their permutations, and I need to find some way to explore transgender issues with my students. The book gave me a chance to look at transsexuality as a threshold to cross--granted, a threshold many of us do not negotiate. _Crossing_ is a book about transitions, not just gender and how we express it. For me, the notion of transitions is the most useful. The "look at the animal in the zoo" emotion is there, as it will be for my students, but her story of change hits home with me. I am guessing my students will get past their "point, laugh, and stare" reaction and identify with how enormous change can be.

McCloskey is selfish, yes, in telling her story--it's HER story. Her interpretation of gender roles may stereotypical, and they not be mine, but that's ok; women don't all have the same experience, whether they are genetic women or transgendered (with operations or not). My nine months of pregnancy is nothing compared with my sister-in-law's 12-month adoption anxieties. Our birthing stories are different, but we find commonality in being mothers. That's what I liked about _Crossing_. Even though McCloskey and I have had almost entirely different experiences with womanhood (she's a much more "girly" girl than I am, by far, and if she loves to dust, she needs to come to my house), we can still share in the sisterhood. We can still comiserate about the pleasures and pains of transition.

The style of the book is fast-paced and personal; the language is fresh and unusual. McCloskey gives us an intensely personal view of a change very few of us make. Her strength and courage gives me hope in making my own transitions, none of which have to do with becoming another gender. I am grateful to have read this book.