opinion

Before Caitlyn Jenner: When I went from Donald to Deirdre

Bruce Jenner came out to Diane Sawyer on ABC several days ago. Seventeen million people tuned in. Surprisingly in our celebrity culture, the show was calm and dignified and sympathetic. The calm — relative at least to the average "Meet the Kardashians" — reminded me of how Iowa reacted in 1995 when I came out.

"U of I Professor Becomes Woman." After the fourth story about it on the front page of the Register, someone wrote in and complained about the breathless coverage. You know, we're not rubes, she wrote. Enough.

Terry Branstad, governor then as now, was asked what he thought about Donald becoming Deirdre. He said in effect, "Can she still teach? Does she still have the same academic standing? Well, then, what's the problem?" Iowa calm.

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I couldn't at age 53 "become" a woman in genes or life history, no more than Jenner can at age 65. Yet I could and did present as a woman, and Iowans were mostly calm about it. I'm calm, too, now a church lady (Episcopalian, the Frozen Chosen), younger sister and daughter, at 72 still working, if you call the work I love "working." Gender change is a distinctly minority desire — maybe one in 200 or 300 born girls or boys. Being calm about it is not going to destroy society or cause "human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together," as Bill Murray said in "Ghost Busters."

Jenner can expect some surprises in how people react. The three people I love most in the world have have not spoken to me since 1995. I have three grandchildren I've never seen. But, really, no more tears. Into each life some rain must fall. Your family will have similar stories. Uncle George married a Catholic and no one spoke to him again. Aunt Louise said something unkind to Cousin Betty 20 years ago and that was it. Families act often as though love was in excess supply, as economists put it. Garbage. Throw it away with both hands.

But the surprises are often good. I expected my mother to have a hard time adjusting. She took five minutes: "Son, if that's what you want. Just one piece of advice: Don't do anything more interesting! Don't decide to become a horse!"

My dean at the University of Iowa, Gary Fethke, said at first when I came out, in a little comedy act, "This is great for our affirmative action program: one less man, one more woman!" Gary, like me, is a free-market economist. So his next joke was, "Thank God! I thought you were going to tell me you were converting to socialism!" Then he acted as my friend and advocate. Iowa calm.

How to stay calm? Stop thinking of gender change as being about sex, sex, sex. Stop believing the locker-room theory that gender changers are gay, and gays want to be women. Whom you love is not same thing as who you are. You can love your dog without wanting to become a dog. You can want to become an adult, as our kids do, without having much of an idea of what it's actually like to be an adult.

Stop imagining that all male-to-female gender crossers become prostitutes. Stop imagining that "men" enter the women's room to spy on born women or commit rape. Stop thinking of gender crossing as an indulgence. Believe me, I would much rather have realized at age 53 that I was gay, or wanted to ride Harleys, than to go through a dozen operations and a lot of funny and terrifying embarrassments.

But I realized in August of 1995, after 30 years of a loving and successful marriage, perfectly normal all around, that I wanted to become an old woman, not an old man. I had wanted it since age 11, but people can adjust, and I did. Captain of my high school football team. Macho economist. Pretty good father, pretty good husband. I can still change a tire — but would rather watch some man do it.

To stay Iowa calm, look at that Jenner interview, available free on ABC's web site. Diane Sawyer comes from Kentucky, as a bunch of my favorite people do. They're pretty calm over there, too.

Deirdre McCloskey has taught economics and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2000. In 1995, teaching then at the University of Iowa, she began transitioning. The story is told in her book "Crossing: A Memoir" (1999). Contact: deirdremccloskey.org.