It’s been a good week for losing one’s virginity. Metaphorically, of course – though given how some in the LGBT community regard the mainstream press, I can imagine a fair few reaching for somewhat grittier analogies of a kind guaranteed to make me blush. For last week – last Thursday to be precise – I earned my first by-line in the Daily Mail. [A British talbloid newspaper described as ‘anti-gay and anti-trans’.]

‘How could you, Jane?’ was the reaction from a few – but mercifully, far fewer than I feared. I was given the chance, the privilege to write at length about the harsher reality of trans life in a media space whose audience runs into the millions – and I took it.

A sell-out? Hardly. Because I am not – have never been – someone who lives in the past. The Mail had some strange political views in the 1930s. That is almost a century gone: yet still I hear, among the various critiques hurled at that paper, denunciations of the exceedingly late Lord Rothermere.

Like, huh? That’s a couple of lifetimes away. In the 1960’s, my long-departed Gran would lecture me, a somewhat puzzled six-year-old, on the iniquities of ‘the reds’. She was reminiscing the General Strike, then a mere 40 years previous. I didn’t get it then. I don’t now.

In my world, people make mistakes, they take positions: they change. Which is not to say you believe every last scumbag who throws himself on the mercy of a court, having suddenly ‘found religion’, or insight. It does mean you deal with what is before you.

I have, as they say, had my moments with the Mail. I have been a fierce critic of some of their reporting, particularly on LGBT issues. But credit to them: they took as much risk in giving me houseroom, as I did in writing for them.

Do I think they have undergone some Damascene conversion on this issue? No. Do I think they are getting better, for reasons over and above last week’s article? Yes. Do I believe that henceforth all will be sweetness and light? Of course not!

I am writer and a realist.

And that should be an end to that. I was just lying back and enjoying my post-coital ciggy – still metaphorically speaking, you understand! – when the tweets began. The most pointed read simply: ‘@JaneFae might want to get Private Eye a miss this week.’

Eeeek! For non-Brits, Private Eye is the UK’s satirical fortnightly news magazine.

Here I must confess that I have, on occasion, contributed in my own small way to the enlargement of Lord Gnome’s magnificent organ (sorry! Couldn’t resist…). But this was another first: the first time I’d actually featured in his pages. On the Street of Shame column, no less, dedicated to covering the antics of journalists such as myself.

Phew! A muffled sigh of relief as I realized they weren’t reporting on what I did last summer (or the role played in my doings by strawberry jelly!). It wasn’t a smutty outing. It was – see above – a large question mark over why me, why now, why the Mail? And just a hint it was politically convenient for the Mail to be taking my copy.

Perhaps. I am a realist: cynic, too. Few things in life are wholly uncomplicated. I fear being taken up for token purposes: I hope, nonetheless, that I have some small talent, that makes me worthy of mass exposure. I have no idea why this engagement now. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there was some calculation involved. I doubt it was the out and out ploy that the Eye imply.

Besides, while I appreciate Lord Gnome’s concern (as the proprietor of Private Eye is fictionally and comically titled), I note also that their piece contained several trigger words and disrespectful phrases – from use of ‘sex change’ to ‘transsexual’ as noun – as well as a slightly inaccurate reference to Lucy Meadows, whose absence from my writing they note. Yes: the reason I am mostly not writing about her now has nothing to do with Daily Mail arm-twisting, everything to do with the express wishes of her friends and family – and I hope other journalists reading this will now respect that, too.

And while I am grateful for the regular exposure of the powerful and corrupt provided by my fortnightly Eye, I wait with bated breath their focus on some of the scandals that beset, for instance, trans healthcare in the UK.

Pot. Kettle.

It’s been an interesting week.

Still, if ever the trans community is to achieve acceptance and understanding, that means engagement: living, and acting, like ordinary everyday members of the community. Being ordinary lawyers, refuse collectors, police officers, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors and, yes: journalists, too.

I liked that for once I was able to write about trans issues not within the LGBT community, nor even to the vaguely liberal Guardian and Independent readers – but to a mass who mostly don’t engage, who may well labor under serious misapprehension about the reality of transgender.

Most of all, I liked that a friend texted me the afternoon the article was published to say her mum had been on the phone in tears: that for the first time, she sort of began to ‘get’ why she was who she was.

In the end, that’s what its about. Each and every individual personal moment that, no matter how it is achieved, slowly adds up to change for all.