Debbie and Stephanie Hayton interview transcript

More recently, she became active in the transgender debate where she seeks to maintain the rights of transgender people without compromising the rights of women or the safeguarding of children.

Now we know that’s not true. Anyone know if DH has helped to update the NASUWT’s transgender policy so that women teachers can now have single sex spaces and not be threatened with a disciplinary if they use the evidence of their own eyes and a life time of speaking the English language and use factually correct pronouns?

A very hard read. I would like to hear far more from SH and far less from DH.

I wonder how different her interview would have been if completed on her own.

And that's what's informing the women on here. The fact that it's oh my God just all part of the same damn script. Utterly predictable.

Personally, all I can see is manipulation. And it keeps happening. I keep seeing it.

What’s surprised me is it’s clear that Debbie’s story is incredibly stereotypical - the post hoc justifications, the all consuming compulsion, the links with trans groups, the secrecy, the refusal to compromise, the sexism. Given that DH acknowledges they are male and actively campaigns against self id I thought the story would be different.

Stephanie said

Do I miss being in a relationship with a man? Yes, I do. That is a grief to me but not big enough to say, 'Well, actually I'm going to get divorced and get out there and have a look'. Debbie is my best friend and I think at the moment that's, that's my choice

And a poster jumps in with:-

I hope she finds happiness and ideally the love of another man, who can cherish her

Because clearly Stephanie can't be trusted to know what she really wants.

What if Debbie had depression? Or anxiety disorder? Lots of people stay with their mentally ill partners. It's not great but it's not necessarily abusive. They seem like good friends

I feel for SH, she hasn't had space to think how she feels about it all. She's put supporting her children first and foremost.

In terms of DH, I found this bit shocking.

once you were referred into the system, that all took place very, very quickly. Within 4 months, I'd decided that I was you know, I was going to transition, and I had to transition. And dates were set and they kept coming forwards, and I remember one consultation with a specialist psychiatrist saying that I was going to transition at Christmas, and I'd never been out the house in female role and she looked at me very quizzically and said, 'Well, you know, you've got some work to do here' and it really starting from a standing start.

I can't work out what the specialists are thinking. DH had a date set for "transition" yet had never been out of the house in "the female role".

How does that work? How can anyone become sure they need to transition if they have never tried it at all?

Then later on DH comes to understand that they aren't a woman trapped in a male body, so I wonder what the whole thing was about.

*sake not show

She could have thrown Debbie out. She could have left with the kids. It's quite obvious that Stephanie is a strong woman who holds her own in life. She has chosen to stay with Debbie despite debbie's mental illness for the show of her family. It's a valid choice and it appears to have worked out well for them. They seem good together

Nah, don't need to "look at myself" thanks. I've spent enough of my life dealing with narcissistic and mentally ill people. They drain and they drain and they drain. Its not transphobic to see Stephanie being exhausted and drained by the whole dynamic, and to hear the misery in her words.

Imagine the husband had become anorexic or something suddenly and it became his whole life, altering everything and making their whole lives revolve around it - you wouldn't think it was anorexphobic to say "Christ, what a miserable life for his partner".

For any women who are still labouring under the delusion that DH is a friend to women: He promised his wife he would leave if she asked. She asked him to leave and he refused. If he won’t leave, even after promising his wife, his best friend, that he would, what makes you think he would leave a female only space if asked?

I really would like an answer to that question.

There was a difficult period in their relationship and they got through it. Stephanie comes across as a strong and thoughtful person. Both she and Debbie had/have safe well paid careers so it's not as if Stephanie was tied financially to Debbie- she could have walked away if she wanted.

You (general you) don't want the reputation of being transphobic- well have a look at yourselves. And that is aside from the patronising assumptions that you (general you) know far more about what is best for Stephanie than Stephanie does.

that was very hard to listen to. Stephanie has no privacy to make any decisions (partly because DH has been so public). The interview itself is a coercive situation. She can refer to the terrible treatment she has had but she is required to accept it (by fear obligation guilt) and to make a declaration that that 'friendship' with DH is more important than all those hurts and damages and compromises. Terrible

Debbie is pretty damn honest

Did you read what I read? Did you see the words of the woman whom Hayton lied to, whom Hayton told would leave if she asked and then refused? Did you read a transcript of an interview where Hayton sat in the same room while she was finally given the smallest of platforms for her voice, and where Hayton got another opportunity to regale rapt listeners with Haytonself, and be 'the first transgender guest'?

Hayton is pretty damn 'honest', sure. Anyone paying the slightest attention will see Hayton for exactly who Hayton is.

Solidarity, Stephanie. You've done very brave and hard things to keep your family together. But you are worth so much more than where you are. I really, really hope you get there.

I really feel for Stephanie. I know I can never know for sure what I would do in someone else's shoes but I found myself reading that and wondering what I would do and I'm 99% sure I would ask DH to leave if he announced he was transitioning.

Not a two-tier system, Datun, but a system with two axes, I think.

There's the 'mental distress' factor - the obviously euphoric got a lot less traction than those who are obviously in a lot of mental distress. By stripping this as a requirement for trans status we're left just with the sexual threat factor.

This is mostly about orientation. If we read the individual as gay-adjacent that taps into existing sympathy for an oppressed group and at the same time lowers our defenses. We are not, could never be, the recipient of a homosexual male's sexual interest, yet we know in our bones that heterosexual males always present a degree of risk; we're always on the alert for problematic sexual expression from them in a way we often aren't around males we perceive as gay.

I find it interesting, too, that we see the opposite reaction among men. They shrug at the behaviour of males they perceive to be female-attracted; they're far more perturbed by the behaviour of those they read as male-attracted. It's a lot easier to feel sympathy for someone we perceive as presenting negligible sexual threat.

Dysphoric heterosexual-transsexuals might have had some traumatic experiences, but they still represent a potential sexual threat because they're female-attracted. And euphoric heterosexual-transsexuals are the most threatening, because they have both the means and the motive. DH doesn't draw repeated attention to the sexual motivation because to do so would allow women to see him clearly for what he is: a highly sexually motivated heterosexual male who pisses all over women's boundaries, and thus a high threat.

However, I do think many people have a sort of two tier system. And one is more acceptable than the other.

Which sometimes makes it a little more difficult when the empathy factor is employed.

Personally, I see Debbie as admitting it's a sexual motivation, but then trying to sanitise it for the sake of their, I don't know, career? Reputation? Internal sense of pride maybe.

Datun I see a rough equivalence with Blanchard's description of hsts and agp - the former got the 'born this way' sympathy whereas the latter were viewed as choosing to be sexual deviants. Either would qualify for the descriptor 'transsexual' if they were presenting as the opposite sex full time; transvestism is more equivalent to Buncean fluidity. It's part-time, not full-time.

DH is a heterosexual-transsexual who admits being sexually motivated. I think we like to kid ourselves that homosexual-transsexuals aren't sexually motivated at all, which doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny: the traditional hsts wants to have m/f sex with themselves taking the f role. The heterosexual-transsexual wants f/f sex (usually) again with themselves taking an f role.

The common factor between the two is not wanting to have sex with their own (male) body. Which is the sort of mindset that doesn't develop without the aid of some shitty experiences that do warrant a bit of sympathy.

But the main reason transsexuals and transvestites were viewed so differently is because people intuitively understood that full-time cross-dressing and declarations of not being male were indicators of a whacking great dollop of internalised homophobia in a same-sex-attracted male, whereas transvestites are usually straight and happy about it.

DH is being disingenuous trying to occupy the same conceptual space as old-school homosexual-transsexuals. It's an attempt to garner sympathy, nothing more. It might work on many women, but it doesn't work on those of us who've always been troubled by the practice of inverting the invert (as it were).

Tangentially related, just thinking about the kiddliwinks - has the phrase 'internalised heterophobia' been coined yet? Because I'd lay money that that's a factor among the cohort of young females identifying as gay men; and my ex's agp is very much rooted in his fear of becoming and need to neutralise the thing that hurt him (his father's typically male expression of heterosexual behaviour).

Gosh, what a lot of work S did in all this, taking care of the children, telling their teachers, thinking through the effects on circles of family and friends... could anything be more gendered?

Which currently seems to have been given some kind of sheen, which obscures who the victim is.

The sexual aspect, which is pivotal, never seems to be mentioned.

Debbie, certainly, has managed to never mention it, despite being a self-confessed autogynephile.

That was a harder read than expected.

I read Stephanie's words first and then DH's as I have heard the latter's accounts many times in different ways, so I wanted to hear another view.

The dynamic is unfortunately the same as I have read from other accounts of this.

It is always the same. It is how the whole movement works. Those who have experienced it keep pointing it out.