Detransitioners: put the fatted calf away please.

I think I will always have empathy for the groomed children, many of them with autism, who have lost the language that describes who they are and fallen prey to false identities. They will have damaged those around them, of course, and I empathise with those families, too.

I think my empathy for transwidows is in the same league as my empathy for all domestic abuse survivors.

I'd agree that anything that could look like love bombing is going to be unhelpful in every way.

It's helpful to discuss ways of offering support without falling into that pattern of behaviour.

We have to be careful of our gut reactions on this. Every time we react, it's to a story we've mainly made up in our head, based on our own experiences. That sweet little lad next door that used to be so horribly bullied... The little girl whose dad wished he'd had a son... That awful man that wanked over his kids' underwear.

There's no one size fits all. Some detransitioners deserve all support in the world. Others don't.

It matters that each voice or group of voices has their own space, their own time to be heard, and to be enough in themselves, without trying to fit other groups in on top and blurring everyone's voice and situation in the process.
And without the dismissive attitudes that some, especially the transwidows and their children, so often encounter. Even here.

I am not at all sure that their parents, siblings and wider family would agree that there's been no harm done.

The parallels with caring for a child with anorexia, with all the attended pressures on family, the time and attention and high emotion, the fear and trauma generated by those involved and having to live alongside anorexia as an illness? It's quite striking.

But yes, extremely different to the multiple forms of abuse and grief suffered by transwidows. One thing this whole awful political nightmare has shown me is that forced teaming is never positive. It matters that each voice or group of voices has their own space, their own time to be heard, and to be enough in themselves, without trying to fit other groups in on top and blurring everyone's voice and situation in the process.

They have caused the same distress and despair as those with mental health problems, alcohol or drug dependency do to those who love and/or care about them.

Not deliberate and causing no more suffering than they experience themselves, I would say.

They haven't married, shared assets, had a family with someone while cross dressing in secret only to make a stunning and brave disclosure years or decades down the line.

It's a qualitatively different type of havoc.

Unlike middle aged AGPs, they haven't wrecked havoc on other peoples' lives either

I wonder whether their parents, siblings, friends, teachers etc would agree with that statement

I think I would rephrase that to say

Unlike middle aged AGPs, they haven't wrecked as much havoc on other peoples' lives either

The young 'detransitioners' break my heart. Those young lives and healthy boodies irreversibly damaged.

In this context, 'detransitioners' needs to be in gquotes as they can't actually detransitiin. They can't grow back healthy body parts or reverse the damage done by puberty blockers and cross sex hormones.

Unlike middle aged AGPs, they haven't wrecked havoc on other peoples' lives either.

They can ask for all the support they want as far as I'm concerned.

With you on middle aged AGPs though.

Thank you! And I did reach out to Vaishnavi and we had a really nice chat.

The trans widows were adults.
No sympathy for our kids then?

I do feel a good deal of sympathy for the deluded, misled youngsters. They do need support, but not 'love bombing'

But the guy in the OP, the ones who are the sole reason transwidows exist... RTFT before making glib comparisons maybe?

Have you actually tried listening to Trans Widows voices? You know, the people who had no agency over what happened to them and had their own histories rewritten to suit the selfish demands of a sexual fetish?

Why are you trying to hierarchise this? It's not Top Trumps.

I'm not sure who Alivee is but yes way way more sympathy for detransitioners in general compared to trans widows. Lots of the detransitioners were kids when it first started. The trans widows were adults. The detransitioners bodies are ruined. Many are infertile. No sexual functioning. There is no comparison in the level of trauma inflicted nor in the long term impact.

More sympathy for a Chris beck than for AliVee ? Really?

I'm a feminist and I have way more sympathy for detransitioners than trans widows.
I do agree that the fatted calf thing isn't right , it feels like 2 sides of the same coin.

As regards detransitioners, I think the push should be for proper follow-up care from Gender Clinics. Ideally better gatekeeping will come in & thus reduce the risk of it happening; but there’s a need for ongoing support & care that arguably could be managed via Gender Clinics - eg ensuring TM are invited for smears & having nurses there do them so there are no issues over misgendering etc. Then keeping a check on hormone levels; doing DXA scans as indicated… & then if people want to detransition, providing therapy, safely weaning them from cross-sex hormones etc. And keeping following them up even after that, even if it’s a 10-min annual phonecall. All of which will require significant investment; but I think it ought to be part of the service redesign that’s going on in NI [don’t think they’ve published decision yet] & for paeds in England. Absolutely umpteen other areas of the NHS need enormous amounts of investment, but other services also needing funding doesn’t make the need here (to use the dread term) less valid. Of course, in the likely absence of proper provision; a dedicated charity - which could lobby for said provision - would seem next-best? A helpline; closely moderated fora & chat rooms (think B-eat, not 🧜); lots of online info & signposting.

It is absolutely not, however, up to any of us here - and most especially not transwidows or children/parents/siblings of [de]transitioners! - to provide any of this. I can understand if there are women who’d want to be involved - the mothers of [de]transitioners perhaps being the most obvious example. Really Susie Green & the Webberleys & their ilk should be made to create & fund such a thing as penance; but sadly that’s not terribly likely.

@Blister
It does hurt to lose a friendship; but someone who is so selfish & so cruel as your unfriend is not a true loss, for all it might (because these things are tricky & tanglesome) cause you to grieve a while. You deserve better; & unless this individual were to make a complete, unqualified & fulsome apology coupled with a permanent change to their behaviour going forwards - they don’t deserve your friendship. How much is already under that rug? How much have you been expected to put up with because it’s just “how they are” or they’re “having a tough time/are stressed”? How many things have they done to make it clear that you aren’t terribly important - but you must be prepared to dance attendance on them at all hours? Are they prone to lying? Because that’s so very exhausting without anything else. You are worth more & you deserve better.

@AliVee am so sorry you’ve had need to find this space, but very glad you’ve now done so; & hope you find it helpful & healing. @TinselAngel is an absolute force of nature - it’s thanks to her I was able to explain to (horrified) Liberal Democrat canvassers for the last London elections that the “spousal veto” was not at all what they’d been told at their Conference by the “lovely” TW “whose wife wouldn’t let her transition” and why no-fault divorce coming in didn’t remove the need for it. They’d both mouths like the Blackwall Tunnel by the time I’d explained just a few things; & while she said she wanted to do more research & had questions for the Party Leadership, the more senior canvasser may have, um, achieved enlightenment, right then.

You know how ‘Gender Dysphoria’ isn’t one thing?

(see the 4th Wave Now article by Blanchard and Bailey on that topic but I reckon most of us will be very familiar with that concept already)

Well, If the motivation to/reason for transition is different, then the detransition is surely going to be different too?

In which case, Shapeshifter and Ritchie are not the same type of detrans as the subject of this thread (Chris is far more like the Jan Morris/Katy Tur /Stefánie Faludi types we’ve discussed recently) and the ROGD transmen (now reidentified young women) are different again.

I agree that supporting detrans people at an organisational level or supporting the emerging handful of professionals working with detrans people is probably the healthiest way forward for us and them (and supporting strategic legal action where appropriate. Certainly in the UK the NHS needs to be offering some sort of detrans support/supervised medical pathway).

Welcome @AliVee! I suspect you have found your people here!

What a strange and unenviable position you are in, dragged back into your ex’s dramatic vortex so suddenly after a decade of separation
I don’t know why I’m still surprised when stories like yours are told, crikey knows there are a lot of them about.

There is so little space for trans widows (or even slightly doubtful female partners) to tell of their own experiences (especially if there are children to consider) that it’s going to take the public a long time to see the whole picture. Hopefully Vaishnavi’s film will help a lot when it comes to joining up some dots.

You could always write your own book Ali, now that your ex is back in the news!

FWIW I expect this particular ‘detrans’ story is actually more akin to the familiar binge/purge cycle that many male late life transitioners exhibit, just described using 2022 language instead of the old TV/TS lingo.

OMG THAT MOVIE IS ME. 😭😭😭 All those words are my words. I wish I had known that it was happening, I would’ve absolutely wanted to participate. I never participated in Chris’s book Lady Valor, or the bullshit documentary, because I knew that they would be full of lies, and they were. But now, now I wish I could participate.

Thank you! Going mad is exactly how I’ve been feeling. I will look into the links and the YouTube movie. So glad you all are here.

Thank you! I’m struggling a little bit because the narcissism is so overwhelming. We haven’t even been together for a decade, haven’t spoken in 2 years after I finally blocked him everywhere (after he lied about starting to see his current girlfriend), and yet because I was with him right before all of this came to light, and people knew that I knew, everybody still is texting me, freaking out. The good news is that even though it ran in the news here it’s dying down. But, it’s just incredibly frustrating to have him walking around saying all of these things that aren’t true, but yet I am the bad guy because I keep trying to point it out to people. The reasons that we broke up were because he started to cheat on me with men and he wanted to go and live his life as a woman; when we were together he was “just” a cross dresser and that was fine, I totally supported it and wanted him to feel like he had a safe space. He told me that his first wife hated the cross dressing and that he felt super alienated and that nobody loved him, so of course not seeing that this was a way to draw me in and manipulate me, I came riding in on my white horse trying to save the day. Anyway, point is, he was living as a woman long before any of the people he’s accusing of turning him, even met him. Apologies for the book, but I think this is the community that will understand what I’m trying to say, it’s hard to talk to regular people about this, lol.