Trans Widows escape committee

That's interesting DJ, mine was a power lifter. You wonder how many more women's lives will be affected as a result.

Farinthepast
Theres no way I'd tell the kids. No one else who knows him would believe me. He's very into body sculpting, weight training and has found religion. In every day life, he now looks hyper masculine.

The only thing is as time has moved on, its become clear his relationships with women don't last. But people think he's a player who hasn't found the right woman yet.

I'll be honest I've read that article and I'm just depressed! So for the number of children that have dysmorphia for whom transitioning is probably "right" for them, we have a group of men having their sexual fantasies being given sir time and rights, and a group of women believing a sex change will make them happy...

I kind of knew that but reading the relevant research just makes you realise the damage the propaganda is doing

This blog post - just published - includes a detailed description of autogynaephillia - and points out that it is distinct from other kinds of gender dysphoria:

4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

For those of you who are trans widows, how open are you about this going on in your lives? When it happened to me, this was so far from mainstream that I felt I couldn't talk about it and only confided in a few people. Subsequently, I've told another handful.

I didn't talk because I felt so humiliated (yes, it was his secret but I was married to this man and how could I not have known?) and, reading some of your accounts and the links, I wonder how common it is to still hold this secret so many years after the events.

notapopstar how awful - I hope you have a good solicitor and I hope your daughter can have some say over seeing her father

to you all.

And fuck yeah! MIL obsessed with her daughter aged 45 who she speaks to every day on the phone, disappointed in her son who's role was simply to make them proud.

And snap - high earning IT guy - comedy breasts - fake hairy vagina - accent has changed from West Midlands to Queen Victoria for some reason.

Hi all!

I'm a trans widow of a male to female trans who shagged other women and blamed me for it during our marriage, repeatedly discarded me and hoovered me back in and subjected me to years of narcissistic abuse.

I finally got rid of him once and for all and he moved away with no notice. Our 7 year old daughter saw him every other weekend for a while but came home one Sunday evening absolutely devastated that "Daddy wore a dress, high heels and make up and took me out with other men dressed like ladies". He told me that he "had failed as a man and thought he'd have a go at being a woman" and "he knows what it's like to have sex as a woman because he's able to float out of his body into a woman's body when she's having sex".

Our daughter has refused to see him ever since that weekend, has had months of family support and now we are being taken to court to force her to see him.

He has reported me to the police for "transgender hate crime" 6 times even though I never contact him for fear of comeback.

He has said that the court officials, my solicitor, the Cafcass Officer, children's services and family support are all transphobic and Court was basically his moment to complain about his plight as a victim. He never mentioned our daughter once.

He never cross dressed to my knowledge or felt uncomfortable in his body. He just wants "special treatment" and sod anyone else.

I just want to tell the women in this thread that I support them and I'm glad this thread is here. I hope you use it for catharsis at the very least. I cannot believe what these men have put you through. Honestly I have felt so sad and even shed a year or two reading this thread and thinking of you. The fact that you are anxious not to be caught for seeking support, it's awful. Please know you have the support of many women on this board. Try to be strong and do the best thing for you and your families. We're here for you.

I should say that depending on your personality, it depends on where, what and why you search the internet. Rather than there being someone lurking in every forum, it tends to be more self selective, with people congregating in echo chambers of the like minded. This distorts what is 'normal' or healthy in certain cases.

It also means that vulnerable people are more likely to be influenced by others with a certain interest.

Online communities also often have a certain competitiveness. In people uncertain of their identity and insecure, being held in high regard for doing X or y, or expressing a particular view, also distorts things to extremes.

If your grip on reality is tenuous then this wouldn't help. The importance of reality ceases, because validation comes from online.

If men are conditioned to be naturally competitive this would also make them more susceptible to online extreme content and communities of all different kinds.

Equally women who do not have the luxury of time to indulge in the same thing, due to the pressures and responsibilities of real life, they too would be less likely to be instigaters or lead such communities. It makes them less able to fight online distortion, especially if they also face more abuse when they do so.

I guess as it's a sexual fetish and they are presenting as a woman in day to day life, maybe they are constantly turning themselves on seeing themselves as a woman etc. Every article I've ever read by an autogynephile or a suspected one uses sexualised language to discuss their bodies in a way that women very rarely do.

My brother had problems with reality to the point that his online habit had a serious impact at some considerable financial cost to my parents. He lived in a fantasy land more than reality. In his case I don't think it was primarily about porn but was definitely about social interaction. I don't know the ins and outs of it. I do know that he was sitting up literally all night on the internet and he was very secretive about it. It was not what you would call 'normal' and I say this as someone who met a lot of strangers through online forums in real life.

I don't know that it is necessarily people hiding behind every corner. I do think there is something about struggling with reality and actively trying to find something that fits that void.

I know men are supposed to think about sex every, what, 10 minutes?

But seriously, these autogynephiles seem to think about it permanently. Every single second.

It seems to be the only thing they live for. Exhausting.

and this part
He would be beside himself with excitement at going out “en-femme”. I could see his hard on starting from the moment he got out of his leisurely bubble bath (my bath’s were always rushed and fitted in around his dressing schedule). Getting ready was a ritual that took at least two hours. Of course, I was expected to “help
highlights the way that his being trans served as a means to endlessly indulge and gratify his sexual obsessions.
Because the mainstream view allows him to characterize this as his brave struggle against oppression he is able to make everything all about him, sex isnt about mutual pleasure it's about manipulating everything and every one to get yourself off as much as you can

That blog post has just joined a few dots for me ... this bit:

Using his smartphone, he created an online world for himself by inventing a fictitious life. I discovered that he had a secret Facebook profile, and scores of photographs of himself in varying degrees of undress– I am convinced that trannies invented that selfie – and that he had a coterie of dozens and dozens of young women between the ages of 17 and 24 who believed that he was a full-time transsexual, single, and struggling with finding a job in this cruel discriminatory society. He had a fictitious home life, fictitious job or non-job, a fictitious social life and fictitious friends. He even fabricated a “trans bashing” – this, I found particularly repulsive.

I am so aware of the bullshit factory of these misogynists TRAs, MRAs and abusive perverts like this woman's husband. There is so much pretence on social media - and I can feel it in the water. I wonder how many of these 'teenage girls' on twitter are actually middle-aged, hairy bollocked blokes? "so brave hun", "you go girl"... wank wank wank, jiz

Alwaysinmyheart thanks, I found that a very interesting and insightful read.
In some ways this bit seems to epitomize the 'have your cake and it it' theme:

For all his faux “girly-ness”, the feminine side never extended to practical, everyday stuff that most adults have to do to get by – like helping with housework. He literally told me “I can’t do housework because I might break a nail – my long nails are important to me

RedToothBrush

Your posts are always so articulate and rational. Your clarity is crystal clear.

I would be willing to bet that any analysis you make of your family dynamic is spot-on.

From the outside looking in, your mothers determination to highlight the fact that you and your brother were both gender nonconforming, makes it unsurprising that you struggled to relate to society’s insistence on its fucked up version of ‘femininity’.

I don't know if this has been posted before, but I found this woman's account very powerful, very similar to what some of you have posted here and again, very much emotional abuse.

naefearty.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/gas-mark-six/

Wow Red, that's a big one.

I totally understand that when you have been abused, and in this instance by your brother, that you fear history repeating, and in this instance with your son.

Your son is growing up in a different world with a different mother. You can buy him Cordelia Fine books, you can be the well educated and experienced mum who having lived with this, does things differently. You aren't going to be projecting your ideas of what is suitable gender based activities onto your child, creating a grim mental health situation for your child, should he not follow the defined gender roles.

Your mum makes me very angry.

I guess from what you write that your brother has a sexual and escape fantasy that he is a woman and more specifically you, in the same way I understand my husband has about women and (uggghh) me.

You know that it isn't your crazy don't you?

Tell your mum to beat it.

Isn't it odd. I read through this thread out of interest because my brother is trans and its destroyed my family.

What jumped out were two things. I distinctly remember when I was 10 a conversation my Mum had where she said that me and my brother were born the wrong way around. I should have been the boy and he should have been the girl. I think she said it repeatedly but I remember this one instance with such clarity. I can remember where I was and what toys I was playing with. There are few conversations I remember so well. I don't know if it made a difference but I am three years older. I was more dominant as the eldest, whilst he was passive. He also was small, terrible at sport, rather sickly, an August child and quite feminine. In terms of the male 'pecking order' he would be towards the very bottom.

Through my teens and early twenties I very much struggled with being a woman. I hated it. I wished I had been a man. I wished that I was not so obviously female and perhaps could be more androgynous. I wished I could be in a band and play guitar and 'look right' as women with guitars 'don't look right'.

I struggled with being a woman to the point that I hated it so much I said I did not want children. I told DH this and he accepted it. He was very upset when I broke down and said it was more complex than that. In the end for numerous reasons I had a CS on mental health grounds which I had to organise before I would agree to getting pregnant.

My brother insisted I was not told until after he had changed his name and was some way into treatment 'because of my husband'. DH is 6' 2" and very much a stereotypical alpha male.

When he did come out, he then approached my Mum saying that I was being unsupportive and that I was disrespecting him. I had barely spoken more than a dozen words to him on the subject, more because I wasn't around much and in the process of moving house. Again it was made about my husband too. Apparently my approval was incredibly important.

The second thing that jumped out, was about when he did dress in women's clothes, it was disturbing on a number of levels. It was the choice of clothes, and the fact he tried to look like me, but in a twisted way taking in one of his hobbies (which I won't mention as it is too identifying but it has connections with sexual interests and connotations).

In the end I cut contact pretty quickly with him, because I felt it wasn't about being trans, but about the behaviour that being trans enabled. I said to myself early on that I would have not have accepted the treatment I had as my brother, so why should I accept it because they were trans. To not do that would be bigoted. I still hold to that strongly. It wasn't until recently that I started to realise that it was actually an abusive dynamic. I was always framed as the one 'with the problem' and I believed this. I was caught up in my own internal conflict about how could I be so intolerant and not liberal minded enough. Again something that I now see for what it is; a con trick.

I fear greatly about the future and how it might impact on my son. My Mum bought into the narrative, without question and there is pressure for me to 'make up'. I have told her that in no uncertain terms that it will not happen.

I do worry about what she will say to my son about it all. I think back to the comments my Mum made when I was a child, and ask why they seems to significant to me for all those years and whether the idea of being trans simply provided a confirmation bias reaction for both my brother and my Mum. Would the same have happened to me, if I had different influences? I also wonder if she might do the same to my son, if he is feminine in build. At the moment he is small and 'pretty'. He will not have any brothers or sisters as I couldn't go through pregnancy again as I hated it that much, and because I wouldn't want him to have a sibling who did what my brother has done to me. He is even a September child, quite by design.

It has all been a significant contributor to my collapse in self confidence and my mental health problems. As time goes on, I wonder more and more if deep seated insecurity and jealously are drivers. Its consistent with the emphasis on power and its also consistent with abusive traits and behaviour which it enables because of that power.

Of course, this is not something I can have a conversation with any of my family in a rational manner. The narrative of victim and bigot has been set up and ingrained. I dread when my parents die in more than one way.

I can not image the same if it was my partner not my brother. It would be even more destructive and toxic.

Its also why I feel it so important that research into why someone comes out as trans is just so important. The destructive nature of it, isn't due to bigotry or narrow-mindedness. Psychologically, its impossible to 'just accept' because of the way it affects the nature and dynamics of other relationship because your own identity is very much connected to the identity and role/position of others in your family. It is categorically not the same as having someone homosexual in the family for this reason. The fact that there is such a resistance to this type of research is also somewhat alarming.

I do believe there are consistent and repeated patterns of behaviour that are not discussed or even known of, because there is so much stigma for the families of those who come out as trans and very often the families have others they want to protect from the shower of shit that even raising questions or concerns brings.

Those of us close to those who are trans, seen to be very often saying something very different to this idea of idyllic notion of declaring yourself to be want ever you want without any notion of realities or the impact on the identity and well being of others.

My best wishes to the trans widows on this thread. I do not envy you situation as it is far worse than the one I face. I only say, don't doubt yourselves. You feel something for a reason, even if you can not articulate it or express it for various reasons. It absolutely is not bigotry. Separate the behaviour from the identity. Watch how the two are combined to justify the unjustifiable.