LG
05-23-2007, 08:24 PM
Go girls! Go!
:claps
Attention-grabbing headlines and a rather less sensitive approach from the Daily Mail (the full article is online):
First sex-swap mayor to be sworn in - and the mayoress used to be a man too!
Last updated at 12:43pm on 23rd May 2007
A man who had a sex swap is set to become the UK's first transgender mayor - and his mayoress has had a sex change too.
Liberal Democrat Jenny Bailey, 45, who underwent a sex change operation when she was in her 30s, is likely to be sworn in as the civic leader of Cambridge City Council at a ceremony tomorrow.
Her partner, Jennifer Liddle, 49, who also underwent a sex swap and is a former councillor, will be mayoress.
They are believed to be the world's first transgender Mayor and Mayoress.
Ms Bailey, who was once married and fathered two children, now aged 20 and 18, has served on Cambridge City Council with her partner.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/05_02/sexswap1MMP2305_468x550.jpg
And from the Cambridge Evening News, a more sensitive article:
New mayor is first to go through sex change
WHEN Jenny Bailey becomes Mayor of Cambridge tomorrow she will pass a new milestone in the city's history by becoming the first transgender person to take the office.
Jenny was born a boy, but went through a sex change operation to become a woman when she was in her 30s. And her partner, former councillor Jennifer Liddle - who will spend the year by Jenny's side as Mayoress - has also gone through the same process.
Jenny and Jennifer met while undergoing hormone replacement therapy. They now live together, work together and have served on Cambridge City Council together, as well as bringing up Jenny's two boys by her ex-wife.
The couple will be the world's first transgender mayor and mayoress, as Cambridge holds celebrations marking 800 years of the role.
Speaking exclusively to the News, Jenny told us how:
■ She got married and fathered two children, thinking becoming a family man would make her 'normal'.
■ She had to explain to her two young children that she would be coming back after Christmas as a woman.
■ She grew up in a prison and spent her childhood with 'Borstal boys' instead of girls.
■ Her mother struggled to adjust to her son becoming a woman.
■ She feared she would have to hide away and "only come out at night".
■ She was offered electric shock treatment to make her feelings go away.
■ She refused to spend two years dressing as a woman beforehand.
And Jennifer told us how:
■ She knew from an early age she was meant to be a woman.
■ She went to her GP for help - and was advised to "become a transvestite" instead.
■ She stuggled with HRT therapy and felt she did not have anyone to turn to - until she met Jenny.
Both women suffered from not having anyone to discuss their condition with, and initial meetings with doctors in their early 20s did not go well.
As a 24-year-old man, Jenny met a woman who she would later marry. She confessed her gender confusion to her fiancée, but they decided they were 'soul mates', and were married at Cambridge Register Office.
Later, they started a family, producing two boys, now aged 18 and 20.
However, Jenny increasingly felt she wanted to make the transition from a man to a woman, and the marriage came to an end.
While undergoing hormone replacement therapy 15 years ago, Jenny met Jennifer - who was also in the midst of transition - through a friend in London. The couple, both software engineers, hit it off straight away and started their own business, JSquared, in 1994.
Jenny remains close to her exwife and they share the responsibility of bringing up the boys.
One now lives with Jenny and Jennifer while the other stays with their mother.
Jennifer, 49, was the first to go into politics, elected to Cambridge City Council in 2000, and Jenny, 45, followed suit in 2002. Both served East Chesterton ward and became executive councillors, but they found the pressure of high level politics hard to juggle with work and family life.
Jenny has spent the past 12 months as deputy mayor to Coun Robert Dryden, while Jennifer decided to take a break from politics and stood down from the council at the elections in May.
The couple decided to tell their story to the Newsbefore they take on their new civic role.
Jenny said: "So many more things define me than being transgender, a medical condition I had 15 years ago which I have now recovered from.
"I'm proud that I managed to get through something which was quite difficult and managed to come out of it a better person. I certainly do not want it to eclipse being mayor.
"If it damages the Cambridge mayoralty I will be so upset. I'm so proud of Cambridge. It's an honour to be mayor."
The couple said no-one had ever had a problem with them being transgender.
"It has been described as the worst kept secret in Cambridge," according to Jennifer and a number of people at the council knew Jenny from before her transition.
She is well known in computer software programming circles as a former employee of Philips, in St Andrew's Road, Chesterton.
Jenny said: "As far as we are concerned, it's never been a secret.
The nature of the Cambridge software industry is that I can't go into a company and not meet one of those 2,500 people who worked at Philips."
"When I first joined the Liberal Democrats there was a vetting process and they asked 'is there anything in your past that is going to be difficult?' I said I was transgender and they said 'no, is there anything that is going to be difficult'?"
Jenny came to Cambridge 27 years ago to do a course in electrical engineering and fell in love with the city which helped her to build a successful career in radio technology.
So, it is no surprise the city's technological expertise will feature strongly during her mayoral year and she has chosen the Museum of Technology to be her charity.
She said: "My theme will be technology. One of the reasons I came to Cambridge was that it was at the leading edge of radio design.
"It was the obvious place for me to come and work. Some of the best tetra radios are still designed here. Cambridge is also at the leading edge of so many other products like biotechnology.
"People move to Cambridge to do technological things, it's not just that they go to university and stay.
"One of the interesting things about Cambridge is that it fuels technology. You go into a pub and there are conversations about IP addresses or the latest piece of biotechnology which is so different to where I was brought up, so different to Coventry where I went to college where the conversation would be about football.
"I felt Cambridge was the place I should be and to be elected the next Mayor is absolutely fantastic."
Jennifer took the leap into politics as a stand against the Prevention of Terrorism Act, introduced after the Birmingham pub bombings.
She said: "Because it was such a draconian piece of legislation it had to be renewed.
"Every year the Tories would vote for it and Labour, in opposition, would vote against it until Tony Blair took over as leader of the Labour Party and started to vote for it.
"I became a card carrying member of the Liberal Democrats because they were the only party prepared to protect civil liberties.
"I stood for the first time in 1999 and lost by 72 votes. It was very close and encouraged me to stand again the next year and I won."
Jennifer went on to become executive councillor for customer services and resources but stood down at this year's local elections to take a break from council work.
Jenny went into politics with the aim of promoting solar power in people's homes but soon found her efforts as a backbencher thwarted and moved up the ladder to become executive councillor for planning and transport.
She said: "I thought I could move the environmental green agenda along and improve building regulations.
"I soon realised how this aim was not at all straight forward. Unless you are in charge of the budget you don't get to make things happen."
Her move to executive councillor found her grappling with matters such as getting the buses to run on time, as well as dealing with the issues of the Guided Bus and plans for the station area.
She ended up quitting work to concentrate on her council duties and decided after two years enough was enough.
Then the issue of who to nominate as the next Mayor of Cambridge came up.
Jenny said: "I like to see the good side of everybody. I think people thought I'd make a good mayor because I get on with everybody "A lot of politics is about shouting, but if you want to sort things out you have to talk them through quietly and that's more my style."
Being a woman is like living life in colour
BORN and raised a boy in a Doncaster prison camp, Jenny Bailey always knew she was different. "I was confused from the age of six or seven," she says.
"When I was about 13 I started to think 'This really isn't right'."
Jenny felt she was a girl - trapped in a boy's body. "When I was at school I did feel odd," she remembers. "But I didn't understand the feelings; I had no point of reference. I just felt wrong.
"But I had the presence of mind not to talk about it. You don't know if it's just you, or if it's normal. And I'd not even heard of transgender people."
Her father a prison officer, her mother a housewife, Jenny has an older sister. But much of her childhood was spent playing with "the borstal boys", detained at the prison. "It was quite an amazing upbringing," admits Jenny, with a grin.
"And it explains why I like having everything locked up when I go to bed - the clinking of keys and rattling of chains gives me a feeling of security!"
Wanting to understand where her strange feelings were coming from, Jenny visited the local library.
"I looked transgender up in an encyclopedia and it wasn't very nice," she recalls. "I remember being very, very scared."
"I'd never been properly male," Jenny admits. "I was born with a physique that isn't that male. I was always quite slight; I used to joke to people that I was built for typing, not lifting things."
But Jenny, now 45, pushed her anxieties to the back of her mind.
"Initially I thought it was a curse," she says. "I thought 'This is a curse on my life. Why me? I don't deserve this. I just want to be normal'.
"During that time I found a fantastic outpouring for anything like that. I just involved myself in work, work, work, work. I worked really hard and didn't concentrate on anything else.
"That was great; that got me though college. It's how I coped.
And it was a coping mechanism with the side-effect of getting a really good job."
Now a senior software engineer, Jenny found she had a flair for technology.
After a sandwich course, carried out half in Cambridge and half in Coventry, she landed her dream job here in 1980, working with radios.
Aged 21, Jenny's career was starting to fly. But she was finding it ever harder to suppress her innermost feelings - about wanting to be a woman.
"I realised it wasn't going anywhere," she recalls.
"I was very, very confused. I went to the doctor and initially complained about having a cold - then said 'I think I might be transgender', which he took a bit seriously."
Offered aversion therapy, electric shock treatment to condition a patient into rejecting their feelings, Jenny was horrified.
"I thought 'I'm not having anything to do with that'," she says. "It pushed me over the edge of talking to my friends about it.
I had a very good friend and I broached the subject with her; she said 'We like you the way you are, don't change'. I then talked to lots of my friends, and I never had any bad reactions."
It was around that time Jenny first came into contact with a group of transsexuals.
Far older than her, they left her feeling more frightened rather than less. "I didn't want their lifestyle," she explains. "I just wanted it to go away. If there had been a magic pill I would have taken it.
"The male world is very confrontational, you have to compete.
I didn't do that. I liked talking to people and had lots of friends who were girls - as opposed to girlfriends. And I had lots of incredibly close male friends, just friends; we did some very clever stuff with radios together!
"They used to treat me like an honorary girl. I was gentle."
Then, as a 24-year-old man, Jenny met the woman who was to become her wife.
"She was very, very different to anybody I'd ever met before," explains Jenny. "She was just like me, she really was. She was as boyish as I was girlish.
And we had the same taste in music: Spandau Ballet and Toyah . . .
"We fell in love. It was going to be forever. Of all the things that happened in the world, this was forever. I was absolutely convinced about that. And it still is forever, in some ways."
Jenny told her fiancée about her gender confusion but, she confesses, "I thought that by settling down I would become normal. And it would please our parents - you know what parents are like."
Marrying at Cambridge register office, Jenny arrived on the back of a friend's motorbike.
"The registrar said 'You realise this is for a very long time'," she recalls. "I don't know if we looked naïve, but it was quite funny at the time."
Jenny went on to father two children - both boys, now aged 20 and 18.
"We did husband and wife and it was great," she says. "One of the completely baffling things is that people say being there at someone's birth is the most wonderful experience under the sun. It was the most vile. The person I loved most in the world was in so much pain and I would have swapped with her willingly; I wish I could have stopped how much it hurt."
The children were, says Jenny, "fantastic". But her uncertainty about her gender kept coming to the forefront of her mind.
"I shelved it for as long as possible," she says. "And I wanted to extend that until the boys were 18 and left home. So I went to the doctor again to ask 'How can I put this off?'" After a psychiatric assessment, the answer was clear: "There's no cure - there's nothing you can do to put it off." So Jenny decided to go through gender reassignment.
"You have to risk everything going into it," she says. "But then there's no alternative. That was the worrying thing, there was no living with what you had.
"I'd lost all perspective. I was concentrating on the one big problem in my life and I'd lost focus. My life was nowhere near as good as it could have been - I was spiralling down."
After a lot of soul-searching, Jenny and her then wife decided to go their separate ways.
"When it turned out we were splitting up, it was a real shock for both of us," she admits. Still very close friends, they live near each other and share care of their sons: the eldest lives with Jenny's ex-wife, while the younger stays with Jenny and Jennifer, her partner of 16 years.
Telling her parents was "interesting".
"My sister did it. I didn't quite leave the country first," jokes Jenny. "But seriously, I was much more worried about my father's reaction than my mother's, but he was fantastic.
"I think he had suspected for some time and he was brilliant.
As soon as I changed over he was absolutely chilled with it. He called me by my new name; he'd got a new daughter, as far as he was concerned.
"My mum had known all my life, as far as I can tell. But she struggled a bit more with seeing the changes."
Deciding to seek private treatment, rather than taking the NHS route (which requires living as a woman for two years before even starting hormone therapy, something Jenny thinks they just do "for a joke"), Jenny began the transition from man to woman 16 years ago.
It started with hormone treatment.
After six months, she began to feel genuinely womanly.
"There were a lot of bodily changes, but they felt natural," she says. "My body was getting more like me all the way through.
I felt I was becoming the person I actually felt I was."
While Jenny's body began to alter, her wardrobe changed very little. "Clothes have never been a big thing," she explains. "Before it was jeans and T-shirt, after it was jeans and T-shirt."
Working at Philips, a hi-tech company in Chesterton, Jenny was quick to confide in her colleagues and her boss. But, despite all the support, Jenny admits there were tough times.
"In my darkest moments I thought that, when I changed over, I'd be living in a caravan and would only come out at night to work in Te s c o so no-one could see me," she says.
"When I was transitioning I was very emotional. The hormones aren't kind to you. When I started taking them it was as if men live in black and white and women live in colour; women have so many emotions men just don't have.
"I get really upset when I shouldn't; it's lovely and it's horrible. But I can't imagine going back to that bland black and white world."
Physically, the most difficult thing was having electrolysis, to combat facial hair growth.
"It was two hours a week of complete agony," says Jenny, wincing at the memory. "It made waxing your legs seem like 'the nice bit'."
T hrough her wide socialci rcl e, Jenny started to meet other transgender people and, on a personal recommendation, found a specialist surgeon in Sussex.
And in 1994, almost three years since starting hormone treatment, she jumped the final hurdle into womanhood - by having genital reconstruction (a process she describes as "the icing on the cake").
Jenny says she never had any doubts about having the surgery.
But, before going under the knife, came "one major event".
"We sat down, myself and Jennifer, the boys, my ex-wife and her partner, with a family psychologist," explains Jenny.
"We briefed the psychologist first and then explained everything to the boys. I couldn't do anything until they knew. They were eight and six and I don't think they really understood it; it took a while to sink in.
"I left just before Christmas as my old person and arrived just after Christmas as my new person."
Returning to work was nerveracking, but Jenny says her coworkers were, for the most part, very accepting. "One just stopped talking to me and another tried to convert me to Christianity, but that was it," she recalls, with a laugh. "2,500 people worked for that company - and 2,500 walked past, along the corridor, that first week!
"It wasn't a secret - you can't have a secret like that. Though a lot of people do when they transition:
they change job, change name, change house . . . they disappear. I can understand that, but you'd always be slightly afraid someone will find out. I didn't want that."
Since changing gender, 12 years ago now, Jenny says she's been happier than ever, both in her private and professional lives.
"Jennifer is my partner, my ex is my best friend and the boys are the thing I'm most proud of," she says.
"It's like getting over any illness. The best description would be having a cold and recovering from it. Afterwards, you don't think about having had a cold any more.
"That's what it was like. I just felt better. It was all over and I could get on with my life."
Pals became inseparable
THERE'S no doubt Jenny Bailey and Jennifer Liddle are a unique couple. They met, through mutual friends, 16 years ago - while both were in the midst of changing gender. And, living and working together, they've been inseparable ever since.
"We hit it off straight away," remembers Jennifer "We were both involved with computers and found we had a lot in common. When we merged our book collections, there were lots of common titles - books we'd both read. But then, when we merged our music collections, I don't think we had a single thing in common."
"Yes, but Steeleye Span and Elton John? Come on Jennifer, that's embarrassing!," laughs Jenny.
Born male, in Nottingham, Jennifer grew up in Surrey with one younger brother.
Like Jenny, she was always uneasy about her gender.
"It's difficult to describe," she says. "Any transgendered person would say the same thing, I think. I was too young to really remember; it was definitely pre-puberty."
It wasn't until her mid-20s Jennifer realised she had to take action; she couldn't ignore her feelings any longer.
"I had to do something so I went to the GP and said 'Help! Help!," she remembers. But, referred to a specialist, she was told "Why don't you be a transvestite? It's a lot easier you know". "It was like 'No, that's not going to help'," she recalls, with a wry smile.
After deciding to begin the transition, by taking HRT, Jennifer says she had low moments.
"I had difficult times when I was on my own, before I met Jenny," she says. "That was before I knew any other transgender people; I had no one to turn to for advice."
Both going through the same process, when they met Jenny and Jennifer were able to offer each other invaluable support. "It was especially helpful for me, I think," says Jennifer. "Jenny was ahead of me, she was trailblazing. So I knew exactly what to expect at each stage."
Just like Jenny, when Jennifer broke the news to her mother (her father had already died) it was something of an anti-climax.
"I was very nervous, worked myself up to do it and she said 'Yeah, I knew that'," she admits, laughing.
When it came to choosing a new name, Jennifer picked hers because "it was unique in my circle". Until, one night in London, she met Jenny.
"It was very confusing when we first met," says Jennifer.
"But we very quickly settled on Jenny and Jennifer so people could tell us apart."
Since completing the gender change process, Jenny and Jennifer have lived, worked and served on the city council together. "We make a good team," says Jenny.
"But we argue a lot."
"We don't argue at all," corrects Jennifer. "We just have a full and frank discussion."
With Jenny a dedicated sailor and Jennifer a keen swimmer, they recently took up scuba diving. And they make time to holiday annually with a group of friends - including some they have known since school.
Jenny's sons, who call her by her female name, have known Jennifer since they were little.
She'll make an excellent mayor and I'm very proud, says ex-wife
JENNY'S ex-wife told the News she is "incredibly proud" of her former husband - now the woman she calls her best friend.
"I am incredibly proud of Jenny and the achievements she has made over the last few years," she said yesterday (Tuesday, 22 May).
"She is a totally selfless person who wants to help others and make a positive impact on our community.
"I think she will make an excellent mayor and has major contributions to make. I hope this will be the focus which people concentrate on."
Preferring to remain anonymous, she added: "While there were concerns about the children it was and still is more about what other people think.
"Our children have always grown up in an honest family environment and our situation was explained at a very early age. Where there is honesty there is love and respect.
"The result of this I feel is that we now have two incredibly open- minded people who are caring, loving individuals who have themselves much to offer."
When, soon after they met, Jenny confided her doubts about her gender, her ex says she took it in her stride. "Jenny and I are very similar people," she said. "Jenny told me because she trusted me. I didn't see it as an issue then and I feel it is not the issue now.
"We should be concentrating on what is important for our community in the future and not on someone's gender."
And when Jenny decided to undergo gender reassignment, her former wife admits having "personal feelings". But she added: "It wasn't about me and as her partner she had my total support.
"We are as much a family unit as we have ever been.
"Jenny is my best friend and has always been there for me and always will be, as I will be for her.
"I feel very strongly this is not about either myself or the children.
"The focus should be primarily about Jenny being mayor and her role in Cambridge for the next year.
"I feel sad that the emphasis seems to be about the pathetic 'scandal' involved in her past.
She's going to be an excellent mayor and this should be the focus."
:claps
Attention-grabbing headlines and a rather less sensitive approach from the Daily Mail (the full article is online):
First sex-swap mayor to be sworn in - and the mayoress used to be a man too!
Last updated at 12:43pm on 23rd May 2007
A man who had a sex swap is set to become the UK's first transgender mayor - and his mayoress has had a sex change too.
Liberal Democrat Jenny Bailey, 45, who underwent a sex change operation when she was in her 30s, is likely to be sworn in as the civic leader of Cambridge City Council at a ceremony tomorrow.
Her partner, Jennifer Liddle, 49, who also underwent a sex swap and is a former councillor, will be mayoress.
They are believed to be the world's first transgender Mayor and Mayoress.
Ms Bailey, who was once married and fathered two children, now aged 20 and 18, has served on Cambridge City Council with her partner.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/05_02/sexswap1MMP2305_468x550.jpg
And from the Cambridge Evening News, a more sensitive article:
New mayor is first to go through sex change
WHEN Jenny Bailey becomes Mayor of Cambridge tomorrow she will pass a new milestone in the city's history by becoming the first transgender person to take the office.
Jenny was born a boy, but went through a sex change operation to become a woman when she was in her 30s. And her partner, former councillor Jennifer Liddle - who will spend the year by Jenny's side as Mayoress - has also gone through the same process.
Jenny and Jennifer met while undergoing hormone replacement therapy. They now live together, work together and have served on Cambridge City Council together, as well as bringing up Jenny's two boys by her ex-wife.
The couple will be the world's first transgender mayor and mayoress, as Cambridge holds celebrations marking 800 years of the role.
Speaking exclusively to the News, Jenny told us how:
■ She got married and fathered two children, thinking becoming a family man would make her 'normal'.
■ She had to explain to her two young children that she would be coming back after Christmas as a woman.
■ She grew up in a prison and spent her childhood with 'Borstal boys' instead of girls.
■ Her mother struggled to adjust to her son becoming a woman.
■ She feared she would have to hide away and "only come out at night".
■ She was offered electric shock treatment to make her feelings go away.
■ She refused to spend two years dressing as a woman beforehand.
And Jennifer told us how:
■ She knew from an early age she was meant to be a woman.
■ She went to her GP for help - and was advised to "become a transvestite" instead.
■ She stuggled with HRT therapy and felt she did not have anyone to turn to - until she met Jenny.
Both women suffered from not having anyone to discuss their condition with, and initial meetings with doctors in their early 20s did not go well.
As a 24-year-old man, Jenny met a woman who she would later marry. She confessed her gender confusion to her fiancée, but they decided they were 'soul mates', and were married at Cambridge Register Office.
Later, they started a family, producing two boys, now aged 18 and 20.
However, Jenny increasingly felt she wanted to make the transition from a man to a woman, and the marriage came to an end.
While undergoing hormone replacement therapy 15 years ago, Jenny met Jennifer - who was also in the midst of transition - through a friend in London. The couple, both software engineers, hit it off straight away and started their own business, JSquared, in 1994.
Jenny remains close to her exwife and they share the responsibility of bringing up the boys.
One now lives with Jenny and Jennifer while the other stays with their mother.
Jennifer, 49, was the first to go into politics, elected to Cambridge City Council in 2000, and Jenny, 45, followed suit in 2002. Both served East Chesterton ward and became executive councillors, but they found the pressure of high level politics hard to juggle with work and family life.
Jenny has spent the past 12 months as deputy mayor to Coun Robert Dryden, while Jennifer decided to take a break from politics and stood down from the council at the elections in May.
The couple decided to tell their story to the Newsbefore they take on their new civic role.
Jenny said: "So many more things define me than being transgender, a medical condition I had 15 years ago which I have now recovered from.
"I'm proud that I managed to get through something which was quite difficult and managed to come out of it a better person. I certainly do not want it to eclipse being mayor.
"If it damages the Cambridge mayoralty I will be so upset. I'm so proud of Cambridge. It's an honour to be mayor."
The couple said no-one had ever had a problem with them being transgender.
"It has been described as the worst kept secret in Cambridge," according to Jennifer and a number of people at the council knew Jenny from before her transition.
She is well known in computer software programming circles as a former employee of Philips, in St Andrew's Road, Chesterton.
Jenny said: "As far as we are concerned, it's never been a secret.
The nature of the Cambridge software industry is that I can't go into a company and not meet one of those 2,500 people who worked at Philips."
"When I first joined the Liberal Democrats there was a vetting process and they asked 'is there anything in your past that is going to be difficult?' I said I was transgender and they said 'no, is there anything that is going to be difficult'?"
Jenny came to Cambridge 27 years ago to do a course in electrical engineering and fell in love with the city which helped her to build a successful career in radio technology.
So, it is no surprise the city's technological expertise will feature strongly during her mayoral year and she has chosen the Museum of Technology to be her charity.
She said: "My theme will be technology. One of the reasons I came to Cambridge was that it was at the leading edge of radio design.
"It was the obvious place for me to come and work. Some of the best tetra radios are still designed here. Cambridge is also at the leading edge of so many other products like biotechnology.
"People move to Cambridge to do technological things, it's not just that they go to university and stay.
"One of the interesting things about Cambridge is that it fuels technology. You go into a pub and there are conversations about IP addresses or the latest piece of biotechnology which is so different to where I was brought up, so different to Coventry where I went to college where the conversation would be about football.
"I felt Cambridge was the place I should be and to be elected the next Mayor is absolutely fantastic."
Jennifer took the leap into politics as a stand against the Prevention of Terrorism Act, introduced after the Birmingham pub bombings.
She said: "Because it was such a draconian piece of legislation it had to be renewed.
"Every year the Tories would vote for it and Labour, in opposition, would vote against it until Tony Blair took over as leader of the Labour Party and started to vote for it.
"I became a card carrying member of the Liberal Democrats because they were the only party prepared to protect civil liberties.
"I stood for the first time in 1999 and lost by 72 votes. It was very close and encouraged me to stand again the next year and I won."
Jennifer went on to become executive councillor for customer services and resources but stood down at this year's local elections to take a break from council work.
Jenny went into politics with the aim of promoting solar power in people's homes but soon found her efforts as a backbencher thwarted and moved up the ladder to become executive councillor for planning and transport.
She said: "I thought I could move the environmental green agenda along and improve building regulations.
"I soon realised how this aim was not at all straight forward. Unless you are in charge of the budget you don't get to make things happen."
Her move to executive councillor found her grappling with matters such as getting the buses to run on time, as well as dealing with the issues of the Guided Bus and plans for the station area.
She ended up quitting work to concentrate on her council duties and decided after two years enough was enough.
Then the issue of who to nominate as the next Mayor of Cambridge came up.
Jenny said: "I like to see the good side of everybody. I think people thought I'd make a good mayor because I get on with everybody "A lot of politics is about shouting, but if you want to sort things out you have to talk them through quietly and that's more my style."
Being a woman is like living life in colour
BORN and raised a boy in a Doncaster prison camp, Jenny Bailey always knew she was different. "I was confused from the age of six or seven," she says.
"When I was about 13 I started to think 'This really isn't right'."
Jenny felt she was a girl - trapped in a boy's body. "When I was at school I did feel odd," she remembers. "But I didn't understand the feelings; I had no point of reference. I just felt wrong.
"But I had the presence of mind not to talk about it. You don't know if it's just you, or if it's normal. And I'd not even heard of transgender people."
Her father a prison officer, her mother a housewife, Jenny has an older sister. But much of her childhood was spent playing with "the borstal boys", detained at the prison. "It was quite an amazing upbringing," admits Jenny, with a grin.
"And it explains why I like having everything locked up when I go to bed - the clinking of keys and rattling of chains gives me a feeling of security!"
Wanting to understand where her strange feelings were coming from, Jenny visited the local library.
"I looked transgender up in an encyclopedia and it wasn't very nice," she recalls. "I remember being very, very scared."
"I'd never been properly male," Jenny admits. "I was born with a physique that isn't that male. I was always quite slight; I used to joke to people that I was built for typing, not lifting things."
But Jenny, now 45, pushed her anxieties to the back of her mind.
"Initially I thought it was a curse," she says. "I thought 'This is a curse on my life. Why me? I don't deserve this. I just want to be normal'.
"During that time I found a fantastic outpouring for anything like that. I just involved myself in work, work, work, work. I worked really hard and didn't concentrate on anything else.
"That was great; that got me though college. It's how I coped.
And it was a coping mechanism with the side-effect of getting a really good job."
Now a senior software engineer, Jenny found she had a flair for technology.
After a sandwich course, carried out half in Cambridge and half in Coventry, she landed her dream job here in 1980, working with radios.
Aged 21, Jenny's career was starting to fly. But she was finding it ever harder to suppress her innermost feelings - about wanting to be a woman.
"I realised it wasn't going anywhere," she recalls.
"I was very, very confused. I went to the doctor and initially complained about having a cold - then said 'I think I might be transgender', which he took a bit seriously."
Offered aversion therapy, electric shock treatment to condition a patient into rejecting their feelings, Jenny was horrified.
"I thought 'I'm not having anything to do with that'," she says. "It pushed me over the edge of talking to my friends about it.
I had a very good friend and I broached the subject with her; she said 'We like you the way you are, don't change'. I then talked to lots of my friends, and I never had any bad reactions."
It was around that time Jenny first came into contact with a group of transsexuals.
Far older than her, they left her feeling more frightened rather than less. "I didn't want their lifestyle," she explains. "I just wanted it to go away. If there had been a magic pill I would have taken it.
"The male world is very confrontational, you have to compete.
I didn't do that. I liked talking to people and had lots of friends who were girls - as opposed to girlfriends. And I had lots of incredibly close male friends, just friends; we did some very clever stuff with radios together!
"They used to treat me like an honorary girl. I was gentle."
Then, as a 24-year-old man, Jenny met the woman who was to become her wife.
"She was very, very different to anybody I'd ever met before," explains Jenny. "She was just like me, she really was. She was as boyish as I was girlish.
And we had the same taste in music: Spandau Ballet and Toyah . . .
"We fell in love. It was going to be forever. Of all the things that happened in the world, this was forever. I was absolutely convinced about that. And it still is forever, in some ways."
Jenny told her fiancée about her gender confusion but, she confesses, "I thought that by settling down I would become normal. And it would please our parents - you know what parents are like."
Marrying at Cambridge register office, Jenny arrived on the back of a friend's motorbike.
"The registrar said 'You realise this is for a very long time'," she recalls. "I don't know if we looked naïve, but it was quite funny at the time."
Jenny went on to father two children - both boys, now aged 20 and 18.
"We did husband and wife and it was great," she says. "One of the completely baffling things is that people say being there at someone's birth is the most wonderful experience under the sun. It was the most vile. The person I loved most in the world was in so much pain and I would have swapped with her willingly; I wish I could have stopped how much it hurt."
The children were, says Jenny, "fantastic". But her uncertainty about her gender kept coming to the forefront of her mind.
"I shelved it for as long as possible," she says. "And I wanted to extend that until the boys were 18 and left home. So I went to the doctor again to ask 'How can I put this off?'" After a psychiatric assessment, the answer was clear: "There's no cure - there's nothing you can do to put it off." So Jenny decided to go through gender reassignment.
"You have to risk everything going into it," she says. "But then there's no alternative. That was the worrying thing, there was no living with what you had.
"I'd lost all perspective. I was concentrating on the one big problem in my life and I'd lost focus. My life was nowhere near as good as it could have been - I was spiralling down."
After a lot of soul-searching, Jenny and her then wife decided to go their separate ways.
"When it turned out we were splitting up, it was a real shock for both of us," she admits. Still very close friends, they live near each other and share care of their sons: the eldest lives with Jenny's ex-wife, while the younger stays with Jenny and Jennifer, her partner of 16 years.
Telling her parents was "interesting".
"My sister did it. I didn't quite leave the country first," jokes Jenny. "But seriously, I was much more worried about my father's reaction than my mother's, but he was fantastic.
"I think he had suspected for some time and he was brilliant.
As soon as I changed over he was absolutely chilled with it. He called me by my new name; he'd got a new daughter, as far as he was concerned.
"My mum had known all my life, as far as I can tell. But she struggled a bit more with seeing the changes."
Deciding to seek private treatment, rather than taking the NHS route (which requires living as a woman for two years before even starting hormone therapy, something Jenny thinks they just do "for a joke"), Jenny began the transition from man to woman 16 years ago.
It started with hormone treatment.
After six months, she began to feel genuinely womanly.
"There were a lot of bodily changes, but they felt natural," she says. "My body was getting more like me all the way through.
I felt I was becoming the person I actually felt I was."
While Jenny's body began to alter, her wardrobe changed very little. "Clothes have never been a big thing," she explains. "Before it was jeans and T-shirt, after it was jeans and T-shirt."
Working at Philips, a hi-tech company in Chesterton, Jenny was quick to confide in her colleagues and her boss. But, despite all the support, Jenny admits there were tough times.
"In my darkest moments I thought that, when I changed over, I'd be living in a caravan and would only come out at night to work in Te s c o so no-one could see me," she says.
"When I was transitioning I was very emotional. The hormones aren't kind to you. When I started taking them it was as if men live in black and white and women live in colour; women have so many emotions men just don't have.
"I get really upset when I shouldn't; it's lovely and it's horrible. But I can't imagine going back to that bland black and white world."
Physically, the most difficult thing was having electrolysis, to combat facial hair growth.
"It was two hours a week of complete agony," says Jenny, wincing at the memory. "It made waxing your legs seem like 'the nice bit'."
T hrough her wide socialci rcl e, Jenny started to meet other transgender people and, on a personal recommendation, found a specialist surgeon in Sussex.
And in 1994, almost three years since starting hormone treatment, she jumped the final hurdle into womanhood - by having genital reconstruction (a process she describes as "the icing on the cake").
Jenny says she never had any doubts about having the surgery.
But, before going under the knife, came "one major event".
"We sat down, myself and Jennifer, the boys, my ex-wife and her partner, with a family psychologist," explains Jenny.
"We briefed the psychologist first and then explained everything to the boys. I couldn't do anything until they knew. They were eight and six and I don't think they really understood it; it took a while to sink in.
"I left just before Christmas as my old person and arrived just after Christmas as my new person."
Returning to work was nerveracking, but Jenny says her coworkers were, for the most part, very accepting. "One just stopped talking to me and another tried to convert me to Christianity, but that was it," she recalls, with a laugh. "2,500 people worked for that company - and 2,500 walked past, along the corridor, that first week!
"It wasn't a secret - you can't have a secret like that. Though a lot of people do when they transition:
they change job, change name, change house . . . they disappear. I can understand that, but you'd always be slightly afraid someone will find out. I didn't want that."
Since changing gender, 12 years ago now, Jenny says she's been happier than ever, both in her private and professional lives.
"Jennifer is my partner, my ex is my best friend and the boys are the thing I'm most proud of," she says.
"It's like getting over any illness. The best description would be having a cold and recovering from it. Afterwards, you don't think about having had a cold any more.
"That's what it was like. I just felt better. It was all over and I could get on with my life."
Pals became inseparable
THERE'S no doubt Jenny Bailey and Jennifer Liddle are a unique couple. They met, through mutual friends, 16 years ago - while both were in the midst of changing gender. And, living and working together, they've been inseparable ever since.
"We hit it off straight away," remembers Jennifer "We were both involved with computers and found we had a lot in common. When we merged our book collections, there were lots of common titles - books we'd both read. But then, when we merged our music collections, I don't think we had a single thing in common."
"Yes, but Steeleye Span and Elton John? Come on Jennifer, that's embarrassing!," laughs Jenny.
Born male, in Nottingham, Jennifer grew up in Surrey with one younger brother.
Like Jenny, she was always uneasy about her gender.
"It's difficult to describe," she says. "Any transgendered person would say the same thing, I think. I was too young to really remember; it was definitely pre-puberty."
It wasn't until her mid-20s Jennifer realised she had to take action; she couldn't ignore her feelings any longer.
"I had to do something so I went to the GP and said 'Help! Help!," she remembers. But, referred to a specialist, she was told "Why don't you be a transvestite? It's a lot easier you know". "It was like 'No, that's not going to help'," she recalls, with a wry smile.
After deciding to begin the transition, by taking HRT, Jennifer says she had low moments.
"I had difficult times when I was on my own, before I met Jenny," she says. "That was before I knew any other transgender people; I had no one to turn to for advice."
Both going through the same process, when they met Jenny and Jennifer were able to offer each other invaluable support. "It was especially helpful for me, I think," says Jennifer. "Jenny was ahead of me, she was trailblazing. So I knew exactly what to expect at each stage."
Just like Jenny, when Jennifer broke the news to her mother (her father had already died) it was something of an anti-climax.
"I was very nervous, worked myself up to do it and she said 'Yeah, I knew that'," she admits, laughing.
When it came to choosing a new name, Jennifer picked hers because "it was unique in my circle". Until, one night in London, she met Jenny.
"It was very confusing when we first met," says Jennifer.
"But we very quickly settled on Jenny and Jennifer so people could tell us apart."
Since completing the gender change process, Jenny and Jennifer have lived, worked and served on the city council together. "We make a good team," says Jenny.
"But we argue a lot."
"We don't argue at all," corrects Jennifer. "We just have a full and frank discussion."
With Jenny a dedicated sailor and Jennifer a keen swimmer, they recently took up scuba diving. And they make time to holiday annually with a group of friends - including some they have known since school.
Jenny's sons, who call her by her female name, have known Jennifer since they were little.
She'll make an excellent mayor and I'm very proud, says ex-wife
JENNY'S ex-wife told the News she is "incredibly proud" of her former husband - now the woman she calls her best friend.
"I am incredibly proud of Jenny and the achievements she has made over the last few years," she said yesterday (Tuesday, 22 May).
"She is a totally selfless person who wants to help others and make a positive impact on our community.
"I think she will make an excellent mayor and has major contributions to make. I hope this will be the focus which people concentrate on."
Preferring to remain anonymous, she added: "While there were concerns about the children it was and still is more about what other people think.
"Our children have always grown up in an honest family environment and our situation was explained at a very early age. Where there is honesty there is love and respect.
"The result of this I feel is that we now have two incredibly open- minded people who are caring, loving individuals who have themselves much to offer."
When, soon after they met, Jenny confided her doubts about her gender, her ex says she took it in her stride. "Jenny and I are very similar people," she said. "Jenny told me because she trusted me. I didn't see it as an issue then and I feel it is not the issue now.
"We should be concentrating on what is important for our community in the future and not on someone's gender."
And when Jenny decided to undergo gender reassignment, her former wife admits having "personal feelings". But she added: "It wasn't about me and as her partner she had my total support.
"We are as much a family unit as we have ever been.
"Jenny is my best friend and has always been there for me and always will be, as I will be for her.
"I feel very strongly this is not about either myself or the children.
"The focus should be primarily about Jenny being mayor and her role in Cambridge for the next year.
"I feel sad that the emphasis seems to be about the pathetic 'scandal' involved in her past.
She's going to be an excellent mayor and this should be the focus."