T hroughout Crossing , we feel the baleful influence of John Stuart Mill's famous dictum that the sole end for which mankind is warranted, either individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of any of their number, is self-protection, and that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community is to prevent harm to others. Everything Professor McCloskey says of his sex change could have been said had he been a necrophiliac instead of a transsexual. Although Professor McCloskey is not an ironist, this is not to say that his book is completely without irony. But as it happens, there has recently been a controversy in Britain about a surgeon in Scotland who amputated a perfectly healthy leg from two people who claimed that they felt the limb to be so extraneous that its presence was ruining their lives. And, of course, the surgeon soon received other requests from around the world, one from an American woman who felt that she would be happier without both of the legs with which a negligent and careless Nature had so mistakenly endowed her, and had bought a wheelchair to practice for her forthcoming happily legless condition.
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Go back to the text. From The New Criterion Vol.