From now on, I was in an LGBTQ+ family’: my husband came out as trans while I was on maternity leave

Sorry, this one shows more clearly the very long tail of high earners

dianebrewster Very clear description of the differences, but can I just be a little bit nitpick-y about one point:-

If we are told the average wage, in an industry, is £50k because they are using mean average and include the v high earners, that's quite different to finding out most employees are actually on £30k - modal average.

In most statistics you see about wages, for example from the ONS, it's actually the median that is given.

The reason that the mode isn't used particularly for wages is that the mode for wages will usually be very much lower than the median.

This is a chart from the ONS of distribution of hourly earnings for all employees in the UK.

You'll see that the largest number (ie the mode) is right down at the minimum wage level.

The median hourly earnings for all employees (full time and part time) was £13.24 and for full time only was £15.68.

So you can see that from that chart there is a big difference between mode - which is minimum wage - and median which is £13.24 for all employees.

I can't think of any experience of pregnancy and breastfeeding that wouldn't involve giving up in some way your sense of self, and it sounds as though AH's experience was on the more difficult end of the scale. To go through all of that and be told that your partner didn't feel their body was really them - well.

It just reads as though she is desperately trying to keep things together, as many women do, for the sake of her child.

Her ex is clearly prioritising only one person. Plus ca change.

Not only had she just given birth, she had experienced multiple miscarriage, failed rounds of IVF, a sexual assault while pregnant, a hazardous labour and then struggled to breastfeed. Imagine going through all that and then have your husband announce, 'I'm a woman too.'

Thanks,Floisme, for making the clear and simple point that the author didn't manage to reach in 4,000 words. All those shattering female experiences made not the slightest impression on her husband -- because he knows what being a woman really is.

And now she is being a good support human to this narcissist. I join you in not cheering

This sums this whole frightening shit show up perfectly. PERFECTLY.

She's now getting grief for describing her ex as her husband? Good grief. That is the legal, factual term.

What would they prefer she used?

Or would it best if she just shut up altogether, we know TRAs prefer women not to talk about themselves unless they are Special Women? Is it a bit of jealousy that there was just too much focus on the woman and not enough on the Bravery of the Special Woman? Only trans people are allowed to talk about trans issues, of course. Look at Amanda Knox et al, female allies are only tolerated to an extent before the misogyny rears up again.

Leave her the fuck alone and let her heal fgs. You're supposed to be her 'rainbow family', so for once you could just do a bit of supporting and putting of someone else's needs first, instead of picking at her usage of factually accurate and neutral terms.

"We were unconventional."
Right.
I was waiting for the discovery of lesbian porn that he's been bashing it out to all through her miscarriage and pregnancy and shingles but maybe she went through all this and continues to go through all this with her eyes wide shut.
The cognitive dissonance must be searing.
By the time her kid is old enough to read HP the court cases will have mounted.

And the ‘and they all lived happily ever after’ bit made no sense at all, in context. Like two completely different women’s stories tacked together for no reason at all.
The second half is much less sincere. I don’t think the author believes it herself really.
I hope the she has access to a good therapist, and not just couples counselling either.

I wonder how the dynamic will change if/when she starts seeing a new chap? One that sees her as a whole person and not a vessel for child carrying?

Given 'what' she's written

It's also deeply insulting to her. That's her story - she married a man. I'm assuming, given why she's written, that she wouldn't have married that person if they had been a transwoman at the time. The insistence that other people deny the truth (deny their truth and their own trauma) to facilitate a fantasy is not kind.

Someone should direct her to this thread.

I wonder how the Guardian will respond.

This is utterly nonsensical. How can you tell your story if you can't use the word husband? At the time the author's spouse came out to her, he was her husband! The transition came later!

Look at the conversation AH is having to have re: the use of the word “husband” in the article’s title/headline...

Agree about the "cool girl" description of their supposedly non gender conforming relationship - sounds pretty average in this day and age for men and women in a relationship to share housework and earning. And "gender neutral" clothes - I'm wearing my husband's jumper right now because it was the first thing to hand on a chilly morning, it's not some nonbinary statement! Really feels like that bit was shoehorned in in retrospect.

As an aside @Defaultname - re the average thing. Three different types of statistical average.
Mean, mode and median.

Mean = add them all together and divide by the number of things / people
Mode = is the commonest value, the one you have most of
Median = the one in the middle of the range

So 9 men have rods of the following lengths in cm
3,3,3,3,4,5,5,9,10

Mean = total (45) divided by 9 = 5
Mode = 3 because there are the most of them
Median = 4 because it's the middle value in the range

So they give different values and should be used in different situations depending on what you want to achieve and the range of values. So we know the classic splitting the bill after a meal with friends only works using the Mean if you all owe very similar amounts. If it's a huge range in values it's not appropriate to use.

Mean and mode are the most useful really - but I get the rage when not told which is being used as it makes a huge difference. If we are told the average wage, in an industry, is £50k because they are using mean average and include the v high earners, that's quite different to finding out most employees are actually on £30k - modal average.

As for the article, she doesn't come over well to me, but I know the Brighton wokerati, she's trapped in a nonsensical worldview that she's trying to make sense of. I hope she has some breakthrough moments which allow her to detach and stop being the support act.

It might just be the age of onset for trans seems to be middle age for most mtf but sheesh there are a lot of us who had husbands transition during pregnancy or very shortly thereafter. Mine told me he was trans when our daughter was an infant as well.

That poor woman.

The article was horrifying. I'm really curious about why the Guardian published it. You have to be pretty dogmatic not to wonder whether her ex-husband's belief that he's a woman could simply be the result of a breakdown on his part.

And the awful irony of him doing that after all she went through, and letting her down so badly.

And her pretence that she's in a new kind of family, when she's clearly just been left with the kid.

The article is no advertisement for trans inclusiveness. I could actually imagine someone writing at article like that as an act of sabotage.

God the poor woman. I quite liked "Run like a girl" which is FULL of examples of how being female is a real thing - the history of women's sport and how they were banned from marathons til the 1970s - her complicated quest for the right sports bra off the top of my head. I think she sounds like she's in a cult and her ex sounds hideous. I also understand how much she wants to smooth things over for her child. God it just sounds horrific.

There is a lot positive to be said about being a single parent as an active choice, but nobody gets married with the intention of getting divorced. Being a divorced single mother in your forties with a young child is an everyday tragedy.

It must be really tough for her.

Like many, many other husbands, hers turned out to be a selfish arse who thought something else in life was important than his family. The trans element is just a less common way of stomping all over the ordinary hopes his wife had of family life. , granted to many of the women she knows but not her.

It must be hard to pretend lgbtq co-parenting is a reasonable substitute for someone actually loving you, but I can understand why she pretends to believe in it.

Not only had she just given birth, she had experienced multiple miscarriage, failed rounds of IVF, a sexual assault while pregnant, a hazardous labour and then struggled to breastfeed. Imagine going through all that and then have your husband announce, 'I'm a woman too.'

Thanks, Floisme, for making the clear and simple point that the author didn't manage to reach in 4,000 words. All those shattering female experiences made not the slightest impression on her husband -- because he knows what being a woman really is.

And now she is being a good support human to this narcissist. I join you in not cheering.

I don't get "me, me, me, look at me, I'm so not like the other girls" at all. She seems to be describing a boringly normal relationship which is similar to what you'd expect in the 21st century. But maybe all the other women she knows are Stepford wives, in which case she would think her relationship with her husband was a bit special

She is describing a perfectly normal relationship - so why trumpet it in the way she is doing except to make out that she is something special?

I found her extremely irritating from the very start of her article which was then compounded by the utter tripe of perpetuating the idea of women being a white woman.