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

Because reproduction gives women the ultimate power; maternity is always secure (i.e. it is always clear who the child's mother is) but paternity can never be.

And she feels compelled atone for her act of heresy (divorcing a TW) by denouncing the 'anti-trans' feminists who might try to point out her cognitive dissonance.

I find it a lot sadder and more disturbing than the usual Disneyfied trans spouse narratives in the Guardian about how lovely it is buying make up together.

it's hard to gloss over the weight of the experience brought to bear by her female biology (which she cannot change) and the superficial nature of her partner's womanhood. It is so glaring

Hm. I wonder who edited it?

AH has been through traumatic experiences and has then had to process her partner's transition post birth. I think she is being particularly kind to that person, but she needs effective psychological support herself and I hope she is getting it. Her article is extremely contradictory and perhaps that is because it is an abridged excerpt, but it's hard to gloss over the weight of the experience brought to bear by her female biology (which she cannot change) and the superficial nature of her partner's womanhood. It is so glaring, I think perhaps she does see it herself.

I realise I am a cynic but it reads as though she has had an awful lot going on, a lot of appointments and attention and heartache... and a lot of it uniquely connected to her being a woman. Is he feeling a bit left out? He wouldn't be the first man to be put out by the shift in everyone's focus when a baby arrives, and in this case there was a hell of a lot going on before baby's arrival.
The DNA part I don't know what to make of.

It sounds like she's had a really tough time but she and her family have found a way through that works for them.

this body doesn’t represent who I am

But ... but this body is who I am. It's an odd way of looking at things, isn't it? If one isn't one's body, who is one? I presume it's some kind of 'soul/essence' idea, akin to supernatural religious ideas? I suppose that's how the whole 'wrong body' thing operates, too. Find it all a bit illogical myself, but hey ho.

[potters off to muse on Cartesian duality and the possibility of nominating someone else's body, perhaps Uma Thurman's, as my representative]

I take away 3 things from that article. Firstly, editing appears to be a lost art. Secondly, the author is desperately unhappy and needs a lot of good therapy and space away from the father of her child, and thirdly, that something must be up at the Guardian as I didn’t think they would have published this not so long ago...

A judge fails to protect her from sexual assault, and she suddenly forgives her husband for his terrible failure to support her?

Yes, that was appalling. The judge didn't give her testimony much weight, since she had been pregnant when the assault happened and must therefore have been in a state of heightened emotion.

That is sexism of the highest order and something that only a woman would ever be subject to. No mtf transitioner would ever have this experience. Not one. Ever.

How she can experience all this and then reach her final conclusion is completely beyond me.

I've read it twice now. 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.'
I feel so angry on her behalf.

I feel like I might read the book to see if it makes more sense at length? It just feels like a lot is being left out. Like she goes on about how she had the very difficult pregnancy and birth, and the sexual assault, and she wanted to say to her husband, why do you want to transition to this? Did she actually have a conversation, or a row, with him about this, and what did he say? In the article we just segue to them having a nice calm friendship.

"I mean I have accepted that I am not this.” A hand gestured at the body I had lain next to each night for the last five years. “I have accepted that this body doesn’t represent who I am.”

Yeah, mate, as a disabled woman...mine neither.

it’s clearly a mash up

Ah, I see. Maybe that's why it all seemed to segue so oddly from all of the genuinely horrible things she's been through to a sudden epiphany of how silly she'd been to think her husband who'd impregnated her couldn't be a woman just like her.

What a rough time she's had. Really feel for her.

The last few paras seemed really odd, tacked on at the end where she 'comes to terms' with all the shite that's she's had thrown at her.

A judge fails to protect her from sexual assault, and she suddenly forgives her husband for his terrible failure to support her?

I hope she has good, strong, sensible women around her to actually help out and not feed her more bullshit. She sounds like she could really use some down to earth women around her.

It's not actually an article, it's an excerpt from her latest book.

I read the first one she wrote (I think it was the first), about running. I enjoyed it. This one doesn't sound like my thing though.

I found this really odd. Also it’s clearly a mash up taken from her book.

Throughout it talks about women’s biology and how conscious of her body and its functioning she is. Then suddenly she has her experience of being groped denied and thus argues that we should accept her husband as a woman as it’s not nice to have your experience denied.

Some serious cognitive dissonance going on.

Possibly coupled with subconsciously knowing that a TERFy book wouldn’t sell. And would make her a meanie.

The name Alexandra Heminsley rang a bell so I had a quick look*. Her living is as an "Author, speaker, journalist & event host" and part of her pitch is selling the ideology:

twitter.com/Hemmo/status/1269400031821512711

• www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3932036-alexandra-heminsley-book

I found the cognitive dissonance in that article startling.

She goes into detail about her difficulties conceiving and the toll that pregnancy and breastfeeding has taken on her body.

Yet the fact that her partner likes to wear foundation and shave their legs is apparently sufficient to make them a woman. And the writer berates herself in that final paragraph for previously having had an overly narrow view of womanhood.

The strange thing is, in the beginning her partner seems to have embraced the idea that a man could shave his legs and wear makeup, yet still be a man.

It's a really odd article. I wonder whether the writer believes what she is saying deep down.

quite impressed that the article was in the Grauniad though, it definitely wasn't the rah rah rah cheerleader isn't it all so wonderful article I'd have expected from them

It is a very long article.

I read it as providing another route to a positive outcome. The usual result was transition -> happy lesbian couple. Now we have transition -> separation, validation of the new identity, and respect on both sides with everyone being happy.

I wonder when The Guardian start publishing articles that deal with the other outcomes?

She’s a hostage.

I found this odd:
'And it showed me that when I used to speak about “the average woman”, it was a lazy, self-reflective assumption: we bled, we fed, we bred. I would sit happily discussing the books I had written, all the while perpetuating the idea of “woman” as white, fertile, able-bodied, straight, cis.'

Does anyone really think that only white women are women, or that disabled women aren't women? This comes up so often that I wonder whether some people do actually feel this on some level.