My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood.

The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.

I understood at those times what I was leaving behind: the solidarity of a shared biology. Women know what it means to have a body. They understand its difficulties and frailties, its glories and pleasures. Men think their bodies are theirs alone. They tend them in private, even in public.

But as I peeked at my brother's inert body....I was aware only of what a strange thing it was to be male. Society discriminated against women, no question. But what about the discrimination of being sent war? Which sex was really thought to be expendable.