"Maleness did not appeal to me at all, with its acrid musk, its stubble, its needful dangling genitalia, its oafishness and clumsiness, its sense of mission and conquest, its resemblance to the aspects of myself I most despised."

Writes Lucy Sante, formerly Luc Sante, quoted in "How Lucy Sante Became the Person She Feared/In her memoir of transitioning in her sixties, the writer assesses the cost of suppressing her identity for decades" (The New Yorker).

Also: "I created a male persona that was saturnine, cerebral, a bit remote, a bit owlish, possibly ‘quirky,’ coming close to asexual despite my best intentions."

The article is by Emily Witt, who says: "On the other side of her transition, Sante is finally able to assess the cost to her social life and well-being of keeping a secret from herself for nearly six decades. The book is most powerful as a depiction of the agony of suppression.... Her inability to be herself in public made her retreat from social life.... Her difficulty accepting her gender was compounded by a sense that it was too late in life to indulge in what she still thought of as fantasies.... Now, she says, 'I am the person I feared most of my life. I have, as they say, gone there.'"