The hoarse voice of the well-dressed woman at the microphone was the only clue that this was not just another speech by an ordinary visiting professor.

Deirdre McCloskey, a professor of economics and history at the University of Iowa who has received media attention with a much-publicized sex change, spoke Friday at the Memorial Union about her experiences as a transsexual.

In November 1995, Donald McCloskey announced plans to take an unpaid leave of absence and undergo an operation to become a woman.

After a name change, eight surgeries and hormone and voice therapy, Donald is now Deirdre and is teaching again in Iowa City.

“My colleagues have been just swell,” McCloskey said. She also said her students have been “wonderful” in response to her “transformation,” as she calls the process she went through.

“It turns out they care how you teach, not how you look,” McCloskey said.

She related an incident with the U of I dean of business, who quipped, “This is great for our affirmative action program,” and joked he could now give her a 70 percent salary cut because she was a woman.

McCloskey used her economic background to illustrate the reasons for her dramatic change.

“It’s a matter of identity, primarily, not cost and benefit. Who would put up with pantyhose and bad hair days if it was cost and benefit?” she asked. “I just knew I wanted to be a girl.”

McCloskey also said she has gained a new perspective on her career over the last two years and said her job is not as important to “Deirdre” as it was to “Donald.”

“I would be happy to move to Washington and be a secretary in a grain elevator,” she said.

During the question and answer session, McCloskey fired a broadside at the academic establishment, saying Donald would “absolutely not” have gotten as far as he did if he had been a woman.

McCloskey said she would never change her mind about the transformation. “Coming out is an incredible relief, isn’t it?” she said, drawing widespread murmurs of assent from the crowd.

She said her mother and brother are just two of the many who have accepted her after her transformation.

But she said coming out was “terrifying and painful, too,” mentioning her sister, her former wife and a colleague’s wife as people who have not supported her.

After McCloskey went public with her decision in November 1995, her sister called sheriff’s deputies and had McCloskey committed to a mental hospital, saying she was manic depressive.

Responding to a question about her sexual orientation, McCloskey said, “I’m not sure, honestly. I’m open to offers.”

After the comment elicited uproarious laughter from the audience, she qualified her statement, saying, “I don’t know who I love.”

In closing her speech, she said, “You’ll lose people whatever you do in life. A choice that changes you will annoy people.”

She added hopefully, “When we’ve all come out at last, when the closets are used for keeping clothes instead of people, we will all have gotten our prayer answered: Please, God, let me be the person you made.”