Seven years ago, not long after I began working as a freelance reporter for this newspaper, I was asked to write an article about an Irish dentist called Dr Lydia Foy, writes Róisín Ingle.
The 49-year-old woman was in the news because of her struggle to have her birth cert put in her name, the name she chose after she underwent successful gender realignment surgery 12 years ago. She wanted the birth certificate to reflect the fact that she was a woman called Lydia, not a man called Donal, the name given to her at birth. Lydia was granted leave to challenge a refusal by the registrar to change the entry on her birth certificate. Two years ago she lost the fight when the High Court rejected her claim.
"It is like a witch-burning," she told the Carlow Nationalist at the time. "It is being used as an instrument to punish us, to ridicule us and to deny us basic rights if someone throws a stone at me, which they have done on many occasions, and says to me 'you are not really a woman anyway because you don't have a birth certificate, you are an old transsexual', what can I say? I don't have a birth certificate. I am a lesser citizen in Ireland until I get it."
I found my article about Lydia's struggle extremely difficult to write seven years ago. We journalists get used to turning into temporary experts on subjects we are not overly familiar with but the transsexual experience was so utterly alien that I agonised over every word. The result was a perfectly acceptable, factually enlightening 900 words explaining the complexities of gender dysphoria. Reading it back now, I see I was trying so hard to understand the issue that there wasn't any room for heart or soul in the oh-so-worthy article that I wrote.
I've been thinking a lot about Dr Lydia Foy over the past two months. About the two children she fathered when she was Donal, the children that as Lydia she was not allowed to see. About the taunts and jeers she has lived with ever since she underwent the long-drawn-out and painful surgery. I've been marvelling at the bravery of her ongoing battle to be seen as a woman in her own right and not to be dismissed by society and by the state as some kind of freak.
A determined, tenacious woman, Lydia is currently appealing the High Court decision. Meanwhile in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights has since granted several women, including a British transsexual, the kind of legal recognition they deserve.
I've been thinking about Lydia because of Big Brother. I really hope she has been enjoying the programme over the past couple of months, particularly the antics of Nadia, the 27-year-old Portuguese woman who laughs like a hyena and always fights for her rights. At the time of writing, I have no way of knowing what the outcome of the contest is, but I know that if there is any justice in the world, this stiletto-wearing, cleavage-obsessed, lipgloss lady is currently contemplating her future as the winner of BB5.
It's incredible what Nadia's presence on Big Brother has achieved in developing our understanding of a much-misunderstood condition. From the minute she teetered into the house laughing that laugh, giving voice to her every emotion, there was never a question but that she was a woman. At an all-female champagne soirée I was at recently, where everything from shaving body hair to shotgun weddings was discussed, some of us were forced to admit that she was more of a girly-girl than we would ever be.
Unfortunately, Nadia's last days in the house were tainted by concern that she was being ridiculed or condemned by the outside world and by her nervousness about the reaction of her remaining housemates when they finally hear her secret. Some fool shouted "Nadia, you are a man" over the wall of the house and while the others pretended they hadn't heard the intruder, she went into temporary depression in the privacy of the Diary Room.
What Nadia didn't know is that against all the odds she had emerged as one of the most popular housemates in the history of Big Brother. When this vibrant, brave, glamorous, hilarious woman was thrown an inevitable and heartfelt love bomb from the public she probably got the sweetest shock of her life.
It has to be said that on her own, Portuguese national Nadia Almada has done more for the cause of transsexuals than a million earnest articles on gender dysphoria. We shouldn't imagine that all transsexuals will be as loud and as in-your-face as Nadia. Sometimes they will be as quiet as Dr Lydia Foy. But at least now when a male-to-female transsexual stands up in work or in court and says she is all-woman, a whole new generation will respond with fresh understanding. And they say reality television rots your brain.