Crossing

by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Gender, Biography, Transgender, Queer

282 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 1999

About the author

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been distinguished professor of economics and history and professor of English and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of numerous books, including Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World.

Reviews

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1995, economics professor Donald McCloskey's second child had gone off to college, and in the empty nest he indulged a little bit more in a habit of decades: cross-dressing. But with the new freedom he found it wasn't just an isolated habit and he wanted to take it further and further, become more and more a woman: by the end of the year he'd changed his name to Deirdre and was living full-time as a woman, and by summer of 1996 Deirdre had gone to Australia for The Operation. His wife had divorced her (he was already a she), his daughter wouldn't talk to her—but in his profession and elsewhere, Deirdre found new support and friends.

Deirdre McCloskey doesn't want to get in your face about gender roles; she just wants to tell what it's like to want to become a woman, and then to actually do it. She tells the book in the third person, giving clear attribution to Donald's thoughts and experiences, Deirdre's, and those of "Dee" (the interim stage). It's a very quickly written book—it came out in 1999, less than two years after the last events it recounts—but that comes across not as sloppiness so much as looseness and lightness in the structure and a clear sense that there was no editing or censoring of what's on the page. This is what Deirdre thinks, period. As Deirdre the economist might say: either you find it of value, or you don't.

She's thrilled about the new social avenues and acknowledgements open to her, less thrilled about learning makeup and worrying about passing. She's grateful for the easy acceptance of her sex change in academic circles, distraught over her family's rejection (including twice being arrested and committed for psychiatric evaluation, at her sister's instigation). It's hard not to read this book as an action thriller, where the protagonist's goal is simply to make the crossing safely from hero to heroine. Several times, in fact, McCloskey brings up immigrants and others who managed "crossings" which she sees as more courageous—and, going by this example, changing sex really shouldn't be that big a deal.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating memoir. McCloskey, a successful economics professor, transitioned to a woman in middle age, and she tells this story with great emotion and candor. She has strong ideas about what it means to be a woman, what it is to be feminine, and many will find this frustrating (as I often did), but it is also entirely understandable. She's a smart and brave narrator, and I highly recommend this book.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

With a transgender student arriving in September, I wanted to gain some understanding of the issues/psychology involved. This book, although incredibly annoyingly written by the author in 3rd person, does offer a fascinating insight into transexual and cross-gendered people and issues.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m glad to have read this for the content and the perspective, but I can’t say that it was an easy read. That’s mainly because of how dense it felt at times. The author’s choice of writing it in third person is interesting, especially since it’s a memoir. There are parts of the text that have been bolded and serve as a switch to first person. I’m not sure if this always works stylistically, as I found it kind of broke up the flow of the narrative. All that being said, I’m glad to have read this and to have experienced Deirdre’s story. There were times that I wanted to throw the book because of how angry I was, especially when reading about what Deirdre’s sister did to her.

[Jamie (Books and Ladders) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this as a means of learning and understanding more about transgender individuals and their similarities and differences when transitioning, but the style of writing was horrendous to me and the gender roles that McCloskey imposes upon herself and appears to judge other women based on are not healthy. I don't think this should be read alone, but alongside Roxane Gay's "Bad Feminist" or even Kelly Jensen's edited volume "Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World" so if you do read this and don't fall into all the things McCloskey (sort of) says you need to in order to be a Woman, don't fret.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at the experience of transition. McCloskey waxes lyrical on the medicalisation, economics, and familial tensions arising out of her gender crossing. Well worth reading!

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it well written. McCloskey escapes the male privilege of cross dressing and pre-1990s transsexualism even if she lacks the emergent vocabulary of transgenderism. Her account of being transgender in the academy even if minimal, is encouraging. This book brought me to tears four or five times. I find her to be a very intelligent and good person.

[Shannon T.L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was an interesting book but poorly written. the whole thing was in third person which was really distracting and disconcerting. i enjoyed reading about her experiences, but wish it was written better.

[Diana Wills · Rating 5 out of 5]

I happened to hear an interview of this author years ago. One thing she said stayed with me: that what made her cry as a woman were the things that made her angry as a man.
Her memoir is truly fascinating! I will probably read it again.

[Homa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book utterly boring.

I disliked this book immensely. I hated the way she treated her family especially her children. I did not relate to any part of her struggles. Completely bogus.

[Sally Bruggeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!

I learned a lot about what it means to be transgender. Deirdre has many interesting stories to tell. The book rambles a little bit but that didn’t bother me. I just kept reading!

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very odd book. I respect the author's struggle to cross from a man to a woman, but this book really bogs down I the constant consideration and reconsideration.

[Dylan Groves]

three takeaways:

1 - transsexualism is about identity, not decisions
2 - its not about the sex
3 - its really hard on the family

[Erin Ramsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Just didn’t really like the writing style.

[Helen Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is charming and hopefully able to write all that she means to say. Donald McCloskey, Harvard undergraduate and PhD, Economics professor at the University of Iowa, married for thirty years with two children, a son and a daughter. He has crossdressed for decades with reluctant acceptance from his wife while becoming more and more adventurous as over the years he begins to attend crossdressing clubs, events and parties as he travels the world in his role as an Economics lecturer. Then in 1995, at age 53, with his last child off to college, he is finally able to address his desire and belief that he is actually a woman and decides to take the first steps to make that a reality. This book is the story of that journey and it is well-structured and well written as she pleads her case that gender is not a matter of genitalia or chromosomes but of a belief and a presentation.

It's hard to make sense of her argument that what she has done is normal and not a mental illness. Although she admits at the beginning of the book that he had no idea what it is to be a woman and that he has been totally happy being a man, she simply feels that she is meant to be a woman. That is a difficult argument to parse.

Although I can accept her arguments for tolerance and understanding, I really cannot feel that this is a good direction to provide for children as seems to be happening in our society at this time. Nevertheless, truly glad that she found what made her happy.

[Ariel Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I so appreciated Deidre telling her story. I've always been comfortable with my birth assigned gender. I picked up this book because I wanted to better understand & empathize with people who have had a different experience than myself. She tells her story with so much honesty & depth. I found it interesting to hear about someone who transitioned in that particular timeframe. The world is still full of hate & prejudice, but it was even more problematic during the time when Deirdre began her journey. She is an incredibly brave person & I felt honored to hear her story & gather some insight into what it feels like to have that experience. She handled certain forms of rejection with an amazing amount of grace & forgiveness. She also had certain instances of acceptance that I would not have expected (given the time in history). Seeing her good experiences gave me renewed hope that humanity is moving in the right direction. Her experiences of rejection remind me of how far we have yet to go. I am grateful to have found this book.

[Bruce Ide]

In the early 1970's, I was a student of Donald McCloskey in a fascinating course analyzing historical events from an economist's point of view -- remarkably different from historians' widely accepted assumptions and conclusions. Professor McCloskey was distinguished from most other U. Chicago teachers in that he was careful to explain why these studies were relevant. Besides that, he did not support Richard Nixon for president and he was about the only Chicago economist who did not receive a Nobel prize. He wanted more to be a good teacher than a path breaker.

Male or female, D. McCloskey's books are in my opinion the best explanation of the economic world that we live in.

[Jasiek Gromadzki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo intymne wspomnienia z kilku lat procesu uświadamianie sobie swojej transpłciowości i tranzycji napisane w 1999 gdy temat był w zupełnie innym punkcie debaty. Obserwacje, które napisane są w sposób, który można odebrać jako uogólnienia ja traktuję jako obserwację tej konkretnej osoby na temat siebie i swojego otoczenia. Poza tym lektura obowiązkowa dla ekonomistów: sporo ciekawego dowiadujemy się o akademii ekonomicznej na przełomie tysiącleci.

[Asher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating memoirs always feels odd. Overall this book was enjoyable and had a lot of surprising insights for a trans memoir published in 1999. However, the focus on gender differences and how radically changed she is after starting hormones and having surgery rubs me the wrong way, as always.

[JUDD IRVING-MOORE · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read

A good read, a honest writing about how it is, with (warts) heels or flats we have all had to try some on either way! Thank you for telling like it is later on in life. Should be told to be read, for people just beginning so knows what can happen in life either way.

[Kyle Macleod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read 9/10ths of this in the first sitting. Simply a fantastic book. McCloskey’s prose style is to be admired, and the author succeeded at making me question my views on quite a few issues.

[liv scif · Rating 3 out of 5]

touching memoir of Deirdre

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Being a woman is what you do... not what your wear. Caring, watching, noticing.” So says Deirdre N. McCloskey, quoting lessons learned when she was still Donald. He contrasts “the self-deprecating style women use when charming others of their tribe” with “the boasting of my tribe.” And he realizes, like a New Yorker whose heart is really in the South, that he wants to be someone else.

I was an adult when I became an American. My husband and I forced a whole new world and culture on our children. There were times we wondered if family and friends would forgive us. But for Deirdre, the change is even bigger, and forgiveness can be hard to find. Doctors might easily offer a nose-job to woman who wants to change her face, but when a man wants plastic surgery to seem more womanly, the psychiatrists have to be called, and sometimes even lawyers. After expensive legal procedures (oh yes, we had those to become American) and stays in mental wards (we had none of those, but we did have to be physically examined to prove we were healthy), Deirdre finally embarks on a long series of operations. Insurance won’t pay, claiming she’s either ill, but not treatable, or mad and shouldn’t be treated. Complaining that “gender crossing is not a psychosis, and there is no medical evidence that it is...” Deirdre finally concludes “Identity is both made and not made,” while making for herself a very human, very normal new identity.

As an economist, Deirdre is well-established, multiply published, very observant and very learned. One thing I particularly enjoyed about this book was her recognition of differences between male and female points of view of economics in relationships. “People have two ways, exchange and identity. Men can grasp only exchange,” she says, illustrating her point with a lovely scene where a wife recites who gave her each ornament in the collection around her house. To a man they’re just items of property; to a woman they stand in for the friends who gave them.

The biggest surprise for me in this book was the author’s faith. I wasn’t expecting to see a connection drawn between finding gender and finding religion, though “rebirth” certainly makes sense in both realms. Faith does too; when he couldn’t imagine continuing as he was, Donald had the faith (and the money) to embark on his journey to Deirdre. While some readers might find it hard to imagine why, and some people of faith might find it hard to accept, Deirdre’s advice to “try to think of Jesus as a God of love” is wisely given and well-taken.

A fascinating, absorbing memoir, Crossing invites us to examine who we are, and how much we care for our neighbor, in the light of someone who learned who s/he was not.

Disclosure: I was lucky enough to get a free ecopy of this book.

[Nathaniel Hendrix · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for those rare but special books in which an academic turns their focus towards themselves (the apotheosis of the genre might be Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's A Dialogue On Love), and this is no exception. It traces a very particular line through its author's life as she goes from furtive cross-dresser to post-operative gender crosser (to use her preferred calque).

I can't intelligently comment on the parts of the memoir where she describes, mostly by showing, what gender crossing is -- I was just reading to hear her experience of it. But I enjoyed her observations on male vs female conversation styles and habits, and have found myself thinking often of how true many of them are.

If there's a flaw to the book, it's that it didn't include more of her diary: the snippets included were such perfect crystallizations of the emotions she felt at the time that the surrounding, post-hoc prose seemed flat by comparison.

All in all, it was a joy to read about her journey towards self-discovery, -improvement, and -acceptance, and I'm grateful to her for sharing it.

[Kate M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another I'm reading for class. Again, not something I'd normally pick up, but transgender memoirs are quite rare, as many do not ever fully "cross" and this is interesting to me. I'm glad I had the opportunity to read this, but having finished it I'm not sure I'd recommend it, except as a narrative to provide insight into the transgender experience. Like many of the narratives I've read for this class (for which this was also assigned) I found it to be coming from a point of view of someone with privilege, who was able to pay for these surgeries and procedures and whose life did not change much except for feeling more at home in her body after the changes.

[Jennavier]

I've been curious about the lives of transgender people. So many in our culture describe it as clear cut either for good or for bad. I was interested in hearing about all the tiny choices that led up to and came from a big one. Sadly Crossing isn't the novel to tell me. Despite what should be an electric story line the boring narrator lost me.

[Laura]

Free download available at The University of Chicago Press books

[Bill Zhou · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last book I read in 2016, and the first book I read in 2017.

[Tianna]

Very eye opening