When Donald at the age of 52 told his university dean, a conservative economist, he had decided to become a woman a stunned silence was followed by:
Thank God … I thought for a moment you were going to confess to converting to socialism.
The dean also joked it would be good for the department’s affirmative action program – one less man, one more woman – and that McCloskey’s pay could now be cut to about 70¢ in the dollar, since she would be a female.
Sadly, his son, daughter and former wife turned away from this new person.
His sister and one of her academic colleagues conspired to have him committed as mentally incompetent — unfit to sign papers for optional surgical procedures.
They devised a theory that he was manic and that his mania could be treated with psychopharmacology.
Twice during his determined journey into womanhood, they managed to have him incarcerated — handcuffed, locked away where he could not harm himself, at first in the University of Iowa Hospital’s mental ward and later in the University of Chicago Hospital.
Deirdre McCloskey’s mother and brother were bulwarks of support; her sister is moving toward reconciliation. She has finally stopped calling her ”Donald.”
McCloskey expected to lose everything because of the gender transition but her academic career survived. McCloskey’s former wife and two adult children have not spoken to her since 1995.
Her 16 books and 400-odd academic articles range from highly technical economics to philosophy, ethics and transgender advocacy. McCloskey’s Twitter biography is a reasonable 15-word summary of her:
Postmodern, quantitative, literary, ex-Marxist, economist, historian, progressive Episcopalian, coastie-bred Chicagoan woman who was once not.
More unusually for an American, she loves cricket. McCloskey even played wicket-keeper for the University of Illinois cricket team, which was made up mostly of players from the subcontinent and Jamaica.
HT: Sydney Morning Herald and New York Times
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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