It has to be the ultimate assignment, or rather reassignment. On 19 September, after a quarter of a century in the most macho of journalistic arenas, I began a new life. As a woman. It was the day The Prisoner of Gender finally escaped her chains.

Distorted by shame and embarrassment at what I had wrongly perceived to be a freakish perversion, I had locked the secret up inside me until well past my 50th birthday. Even my wife had only the slightest inkling that I was trans-gendered — and that after more than a quarter of a century of marriage.

I grew a beard and shaved my head to emphasise my masculinity and throw people off track. I was, to everyone who knew me, a normal heterosexual guy.

But inside, the real me, the female me, was desperate to escape her shackles.

I would cross-dress in private whenever I was alone, petrified that someone would burst in and find me.

Then, in 1997, everything changed. The moment I accessed the internet for the first time, I keyed in a search for two words -—”Transsexual” and “Manchester” — and hit on Northern Concord, the long-established support group for the local transgender community. For the first time in my life, I was able to pour my heart out anonymously.

The exchange of e-mails continued for a week or so, until, in the early hours one morning, my wife Lynn appeared on my shoulder.

Caught in the act, I had no choice but to come clean.

Her reaction came as a delightful surprise. Instead of the rejection I fully expected, she confided: “I never realised this meant so much to you and I promise I’ll try to help you from now on.’’ With that, she disappeared and returned moments later with two lipsticks. “Here’s a present for you,’’ she said. “I just bought these and the colour’s not quite right.’’ From the moment on, my shame and embarrassment turned to pride. Going out en femme in public for the first time was petrifying, but with encouragement from Lynn I managed it For the next six years, I lived two lives. By day I was Gerry Greenberg … husband, father, grandfather and hard-working, pun-obsessed journalist. By night and at weekends I was Donna Gee … elegant, middle-aged shopaholic with a love for all things feminine. I built a new circle of friends; people who know me only as a woman.

Eventually, our children and their families were brought into the secret and life became a compromise for all of us.

I continued to try to do the husband, dad and grandad bit, but the exhaustion of trying to be two people had to catch up with me eventually.

Naively, I thought no one knew about me at work. Then in August this year, my editor, Paul Harris, called me aside one Thursday after we’d put the Jewish Telegraph to bed for the week. He told me he had known about my “other life” for four years — courtesy of an anonymous e-mail. He assured me that my job as his deputy was safe and that, if I had any plans to transition, he’d do everything to I had any plans to transition, he’d do everything to ease my way. within a few days lingering family objections disappeared, too.

There was still, however, the question of my Saturday job as a sports sub at The People’s northern office. How on earth would I tell sports editor Lee Clayton and all the lads I’d worked with for years at Ludgate Circus and Canary Wharf? Even worse, what would my Rugby Union Writers’ Club colleagues think of the guy who ghosted Wade Dooley’s autobiography handing his trousers to the opposition? I FINALLY OUTEDmyself over lunch to People assistant sports editor John Moynihan, a good friend since we both helped to launch the Daily Star back in 1978.

“John, I want you to read this,” I said, nervously handing a letter to him. “It’s a copy of what I’ve written to Lee Clayton and which I want you to see.” It began: “Dear Lee, I think I can safely assume you will never receive a letter like this again as long as you live! This is not a wind-up, but to put it starkly, in the next few weeks I am planning to take the first, and most traumatic, step towards changing my sex …” There was a lot more, but John’s immediate reaction choked me to tears.

“Gerry, I hope this doesn’t mean we can’t be friends any more …” In London, Clayton and his deputy, Lee Horton, were to prove equally supportive. Horton, an old Daily Mirror colleague, even managed to blend humour and compassion into a uniquely hilarious e-mail. It was he who had stuck a piece of paper on my back saying “Well Hard” one night in 1996, soon after I had started shaving my head to disguise my hair loss — and, more important, hide my transsexuality. Now he wrote: “Dear Well Hard, John has briefed Lee C and me on your news and, for the first time in my life, I am f***ing speechless.

However, if you think you will escape the usual Horton tirade of abuse just because you are venturing pastures new … then you are very much mistaken. For what it’s worth, I think you are very, very brave. You are a pal and if I can help in any shape or form (apart from washing your smalls) let me know. Little did I know when I dubbed you Well Hard that there would be a cut-off date. PS: You look a f***ing sight better as a bird than you ever did as a geezer.”

The following Saturday, Horton went one better.

When Scotland’s Paul Dickov scored a goal against the Faroe Islands in a European Championship game, he taunted: “With the name of that scorer, there’s only one person I want to sub that story!” Ultimately, I have been astounded by the support I continue to receive from the newspaper world. Apart from one puerile e-mail from the Daily Sport, I have had only encouragement from colleagues past and present, which has touched me greatly.

I’ll just sign off by revealing that I was approached in the summer — when the “real me” was still under wraps — regarding a sports-desk executive post with Express Newspapers in Broughton. The big question is, if I were to take such a job now, would I have to write under the name Desmond Hackette?

 

TRANSSEXUALS AREN’T FREAKS OR PERVERTS SO I’M NOT GOING TO HIDE

Recently, a male-to-female transsexual from my area committed suicide in tragic circumstances. Like so many, she had been rejected by her family and had been living alone as a woman for some time. She had long adopted a female name, yet the Bury Times chose to refer to her by her original male name — and compound the indignity by referring to her throughout the article as “he”.

Until now, transsexuals in the UK have never had a platform to fight back.

Since most who “pass” as women prefer to remain anonymous, the only visible ones tend to be “man in a dress” types. Or, to be brutally honest, the sort who don’t look the part and often have no concept of female body language.

Believe me, it is not easy to be a convincing woman when you were born genetically male. Having said that, I have never had a problem in public and can’t remember the last time anyone looked at me twice in the street (or even once, for that matter!) — yet I am prepared to risk it all if it helps to bring people like myself into mainstream society.

When did you see a transsexual fronting a television programme, writing a newspaper column or sitting in a press box? Why should we not be just as capable of doing the job as anyone else? If my face were to appear regularly in the national press or on television, I know I’d never be able to live anonymously as a woman. But if that’s what it takes to show the world that we are not freaks and perverts, I am not going to hide.

At least editors and reporters now have one of their own who is prepared to discuss any aspect of the subject openly and honestly. Just e-mail me on Donna773@aol.com if I can be of any assistance. And that goes for backbench transvestites, too.