When skimming the text, apparently insignificant accounts of daily life are mixed in with the narrative of significant events. Reading straight through their importance emerges. Each meeting with friends, each gift exchanged, each time out passing illustrates Deirdre's mind rewiring for the feminine. It is happening the same way with me. Just before the table of contents, Deirdre lists hundreds of women's names, all friends who helped along the way.
Many names are familiar.
Deirdre emerged with the support of the contemporary transgender community and I am delighted to see us acknowledged for the first time in a major autobiographical work. Her friends are our friends. Deirdre spends many pages complaining about psychiatry and its unhelpful influence. Considering her dreadful experience, no wonder. Psychiatry, like economics, is corrupted by power.