Women's hour right now - on transitioning husband?

I felt very uncomfortable listening to this. AH needs to take time to realise what has actually happened to her. Her husband is a bully and abusive. She sounds beaten down.

'Join Damian and Alex, author of 'Running Like A Girl' and 'Leap In', in conversation on Instagram Live at 8pm on Thursday 14th.'

www.instagram.com/p/CJ5-NGKgDfv/

f I loved him, I would accept that a transsexual has to do what a transsexual has to do – and sacrifice my own identity accordingly.

We're back to the whole mummy thing again, aren't we? Curry used to talk about that in the context of this kind of relationship.

I miss Curry, they talked a good deal of sense.

You don't have to get over anything, AH. You are and always will be your baby's mummy. You and nobody else - you are the only person who carried and birthed your baby.

The mother/baby dyad is the strongest human bond. It makes me angry that anyone would try to infringe on it, lessen it or make a mother feel that they were somehow less entitled to it or required to share that bond.

If it's 'just a word', then why does she have to surrender her 'possession' of it? Of course it's not 'just' a word - it's a word with the strongest associations, meanings and emotions attached to it. In the word is a representation of the bodily reality of having carried and birthed a baby!

To think that someone would make this kind of statement just after a long and difficult maternal journey is - well. What kind of a person would do that? Deny their wife the language of her experience?

You can't have our words. You don't have our bodies. You don't and can't and won't. Ever.

Why not expand the bandwidth of 'father', ffs?!

She also lives in Brighton. I can imagine it being quite isolating in Brighton if you want to support trans people but don't go along with the TWAW and always have been mantra.

She almost choked at the beginning from trying not to use the word father... I am in no doubt that she is being gaslit and erased in that relationship. Trying to do what she can, but to repeat twice that it’s the anti trans narrative that is the problem is disingenuous to say the least

The genetic test mix up was worrying because she had IVF but using her own eggs. When the result came back that she was unrelated to the baby, she had the extra worry of wondering whether there had been a mix up at the clinic and the wrong embryo had been implanted. Thankfully it turned out to be a mistake in the testing process and the baby is hers genetically.

Remember when the Guardian used to run articles like this:

www.theguardian.com/society/2012/nov/02/my-husbands-sex-change

Some excerpts:

Yet Tom was interested in my relationships with other women. Too interested. Whenever I began a friendship, he would edge suffocatingly close. One time he called a new friend in secret to ask for babysitter recommendations so he could take me out for my birthday. After that, he often found some pretext – it always felt like a pretext – of doing something nice, and got his hands on a friend's phone number, calling for advice or information and asking her for secrecy. It felt creepy every time.

And

For his part, Tom's perspective was that if I loved him, I would accept that a transsexual has to do what a transsexual has to do – and sacrifice my own identity accordingly. When he wasn't telling me that the person I thought I had known had never existed at all, he'd say it was a sign of my limitations that I couldn't grasp the idea of same person, different package.

Then:

" What if you knew that doing this would destroy one or all of the children?" I asked him. Ice cold, the man I had once thought a wonderful father replied, "I would do it anyway."

So many more parts to quote, but I'd be here all day. It's really worth a read.

The Guardian would never publish something this good, and honest, anymore.

I agree, she has been through a series of traumatic events that must have put/be putting her under enormous psychological strain.

I didn't hear WH but I did hear most of AH's interview with Mariella Frostup this afternoon. The husband came across as incredibly self-centred. As well as miscarriages, IVF treatment and pregnancy she had been sexually assaulted when nine months pregnant and the perpetrator had been found not guilty, leaving her completely unable to challenge the verdict. She described hiding her breastmilk in the fridge as her husband was doing all the feeding. She certainly didn't come across as happy as she said she now was. I can really believe she is still quite traumatised. I don't think the issue of her baby not being genetically hers came up (though I might have missed it) but, from an interview I saw in the Times recently, it was later decided that the baby was genetically hers. I've no idea how the uncertainty arose.

She said this in her Guardian article.

Such an enormous level of stress she must have been under during her infertility years and then this happening when she was pregnant. Then the baby is born and your narcissistic husband makes it all about them.

Ah, thank you @Melroses

It adds a bit of mild peril to the story.

[quote ErrolTheDragon]I didn't catch who it was - seems like it's the case in this ongoing discussion:

From now on, I was in an LGBTQ+ family’: my husband came out as trans while I was on maternity leave www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4123411-From-now-on-I-was-in-an-LGBTQ-family-my-husband-came-out-as-trans-while-I-was-on-maternity-leave[/quote]
Yes, the PR machinery has been working hard - she has been everywhere since Christmas.

they will be tethered together for at least the next 18 years It is a very long time. Things change.

I am always suspicious of books where someone has found the answer via unconventional means. It never seems to have panned out that way, when someone catches up with them later on, if it ever had in the first place.

Sorry I haven’t read about this specific case- why is the genetic relationship thing relevant in this- she’s the baby’s mum?

Sorry, I've missed this and have just read through the thread. How isn't the baby genetically her's?

It's soul sucking to even read about. What part of her has she not had to submit to this person, while having to pretend she's ok and this is all lovely and jolly positive and perfectly ok? What has her ex left her with? Even her unique role and name in her child's life has been commandeered. And she's having to smile while it's done to her.

Yes Michelle I agree, what struck me is the complete sense of defeat-she knows she is going to have to co parent her child with this person-they will be legally entitled to have input into the Childs life....they will be tethered together for at least the next 18 years-no wonder she sounded like a nervous wreck

she talked about 'getting over' her possession of the word Mummy,

Oh God, how sad That's awful. Why should the poor woman have to 'get over' and surrender that thing that should be hers and hers alone with her child? So that her male partner can be happy and have everything they want. The amount of enforced sacrifice involved from everyone else is exactly what's wrong with all this, the zero respect for anyone else. The answer to this should be 'no'. With an expectation that the transitioned partner 'gets over it', just like they expect her to just get over things.

how in the great scheme of things she couldn't fight over that (it's just a word.)

And right there is the beaten down exhaustion. She hasn't given up on this willingly or because she chose to, but because in the scheme of everything else she is having to fight, and deal with, and suck up from this partner, that's something she didn't have enough left for that one.

This is awful. Awful, awful stuff. That poor woman.

Confused how can her baby not be genetically hers? What? Is that possible?

Right at the end she talked about 'getting over' her possession of the word Mummy, how in the great scheme of things she couldn't fight over that (it's just a word.) So I imagine the man she fell in love with, who fathered her child, is now insisting on also being called mummy.

Partner puts her through all that JUST AFTER she's given birth. She suffers a serious of other traumatic events as a result of being biologically female - the infertility, IVF, birth, difficulty breastfeeding etc - then partner presumably insists upon taking the name that refers to the biologically female parent. A name which has meaning to women. Nope, definitely not a narcissist, nothing to see here.

Sounded to me rather like a hostage talking.

I am unbelkieveably confused. Alexandra Heminsley is a transwidow and has written a book. She isn't a lesbian so she is now divorced. but that WH picked up on the fact that the DNA test showed that her baby wasn't genetically hers which she?