Born into a wealthy English family, Radclyffe began life as a girl in denial about her crushes on other women. After coming out as gay, the author visited the Bluestockings bookstore in New York City, a short train ride from the Connecticut home where Radclyffe was masquerading as a housewife despite suffering from hair and weight loss and random moments of pain associated with gender dysphoria. At Bluestockings, the author met and began dating a woman. When they slept together, Radclyffe imagined having a phantom penis, which, in retrospect, he recognized as a possible sign that he was transgender. However, only after getting a divorce and falling in love with another woman did he come out as a man. Although his relationship didn\u2019t survive his transition, Radclyffe found acceptance among his chosen family, his parents, and his children. Perhaps most importantly, he discovered self-acceptance and learned that his identity didn\u2019t negate his ability to be a loving and effective parent. \u201cThe world had tried to tell me that I couldn\u2019t care for myself,\u201d he writes, \u201cand also for my children, that I couldn\u2019t be trans and queer and be a source of stability.\u2026Whatever my failings as a parent\u2014and I knew there had been many\u2014my children would walk out into the world armed with all the tools I\u2019d once lacked: courage, curiosity, the confidence to form their own opinions and trust their own instincts.\u201d This book is consistently frank, vulnerable, perspicacious, and insightful, covering an impressive variety of aspects of the transgender experience in intimate, lyrical language and dry, compassionate humor. The author\u2019s analysis of privilege is particularly refreshing, as is his description of transitioning as a parent. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Born into a wealthy English family, Radclyffe began life as a girl in denial about her crushes on other women. After coming out as gay, the author visited the Bluestockings bookstore in New York City, a short train ride from the Connecticut home where Radclyffe was masquerading as a housewife despite suffering from hair and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}