Psychiatry, like economics, is corrupted by power. The impulse to control others, through gate-keeping or social engineering, invariably distorts the science and often leads to misadventures. Still, there are competent and compassionate caregivers in the mental health field and TGForum readers are strongly encouraged to seek them out. One of Deirdre's many contributions to the science of economics is the concept of gift culture. Men participate in an exchange economy, exchanging goods or favors and expecting value in return.
Women give objects as tokens of love.
The gift culture is the founding culture of the Internet and the growing Open Source software movement. Economic life, like all cultural life, is ultimately about storytelling. Deirdre's many academic breakthroughs have come by carefully exploring this boundary between the economic and the cultural. Women have intricate economic and cultural lives bound up together. By doing and sharing knowing as a woman we can find being as a woman.