Uncle Donald is now Aunt Deirdre.
Donald McCloskey, 54, a University of Iowa professor of economics and history, left the school to teach for a year in the Netherlands and returned to Iowa City last week for the start of the spring semester as Deirdre McCloskey.
McCloskey is still a highly regarded, Harvard-educated economist and historian, but she is now a female professor instead of a male professor.
"I am now officially in every way you can name a woman," McCloskey told her economic history class Tuesday. "That's, of course, how I want to be treated."
McCloskey has been taking female hormones and living as a woman in the Netherlands since the fall of 1995 and underwent a sex-change operation in Australis last June.
"I want you to treat me as you might treat your aunt," McCloskey told her class. "Think of me as your Aunt Deirdre."
Over tea in her antique-filled Victorian home, McCloskey said her students will notice a marked change from Donald's macho teaching methods. "They'll observe a more womanly style. Instead of being Uncle Donald, I'll be Aunt Deirdre."
The class of undergraduate and graduate students sat in silence as McCloskey talked about her transition. "Now, this will be embarrassing at first, but if we're straightforward with each other, it doesn't have to be," she said.
McCloskey said she defines herself as a professor of economics and history, not as a transsexual. But she said she could not change genders in secret, so she felt she needed to be forthright with her students.
"I'm appealing to people's best qualities," McCloskey told her class. "I ask you to see a professor here, a female professor who is very anxious to instruct you. It seems to me that appealing to you directly like this is healthier than somehow leaving it to some sort of rumor mill."
McCloskey said she is not ashamed of what she's done. "If there's nothing shameful about being a woman, then there's nothing shameful about becoming one."
McCloskey's decision to become a woman after 30 years of marriage and two children was made public in November 1995, but McCloskey was on a sabbatical then and left soon afterward to teach for a year in Rotterdam. So Tuesday's economic history class was the first exposure U of I students have had to Deirdre McCloskey.
The students seemed to take the news in stride. And university officials also have accepted McCloskey's transformation.
"The position that the university is taking is this is an extraordinarily fine faculty member and we're glad she's back," said Ann Rhodes, vice president for university relations.
Said Gary Fethke, dean of the College of Business Administration: "The professor who's returned to Iowa may look different from the one who left, but the essential characteristics are the same. An extremely intelligent, insightful person with a terrific sense of humor left and a person with those same characteristics has returned. From our perspective, that's what counts."
McCloskey is encouraged by the support she's received from U of I administrators and fellow faculty members, especially females.
Lola Lopes, a professor and associate dean of business administration, said female faculty members accept McCloskey as one of their own but "it would be awkward to have to pretend that there hasn't been a major change."
"We're meeting someone who's new and yet it's someone that we've known for a long time," said Lopes. "It's like meeting someone that you have communicated with for a long time by e-mail or in letters and then you come to meet them face to face. They're someone that you know and yet it's a new face to you."
McCloskey spent tens of thousands of dollars of her own money to make that face look feminine. She endured hundreds of hours of electrolysis to get rid of Donald's beard. She bought an expensive hairpiece to cover Donald's bald spot. She had vocal cord surgery and speech therapy in a largely unsuccessful attempt to raise Donald's voice.
McCloskey said she hasn't had any second thought. "I've not had a moment of doubt. I thank God I was born to be a woman. I thank God that in this great country I can be a woman for the rest of my life, that I can be who I want to be, who I am."
McCloskey said she encountered no problems in the Netherlands and doesn't expect any in Iowa. "People in Iowa treat each other with respect. I love this state. It's been kind to me. I'm as Iowan as a non-native can be."
McCloskey has been living as a woman only since Thanksgiving of 1995, but Donald already is fading from her memory. "I've started to forget what it's like to be a man and have started to be puzzled by men, by how they act," she said.
McCloskey is working on a general-audience, non-academic book about her transformation, and publishers are expressing interest. She has been featured in Harper's and the London Times. The New Yorker sent a writer to the Netherlands to interview her.
McCloskey, who labored in relative anonymity as Donald, is bemused by her newfound fame as Deirdre. "I didn't do this to become famous as a transsexual. I'm interested in becoming famous as an economist and historian."
But having been a man for 53 years places McCloskey in a unique position to illuminate the differences between the sexes.
"It's like being your own sister, your own twin sister," she said.
"I'm not ashamed of having been Donald and I'm not ashamed of that man. He was OK."
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