The wrecked spirits Millan encounters may be "kids that I once knew" and "all dead hearts to you, " but their effect on her clearly isn't as impersonal or otherworldly as the subject matter suggests.
NPR: Stars: Of Haunted Spirits And 'Dead Hearts'
2.
Are we so hard-wired to identify gender, in others and in ourselves, that the thought of any ambiguity is a subject to be handled at a distance--or in the impersonal arena of public humiliation?