Angry with my non binary brother- how to help SIL

Unquestionably.

It's not usually true about women who become trans but it's highly, highly co-morbid with straight and even bisexual men who do.

Just want to wish you well. Its a very difficult situation with estrangement as the constant threat hanging over everyone.

Agree totally. It is not the identity part, it's the power and behaviour that is always the issue: which is supposed to be excused by the identity. It is wholly unreasonable and abusive to require someone else to re write their life, their history, even the evidence of their eyes and ears, to lie as required for another person's benefit. A well, socially functional person would not do this to strangers, never mind loved ones. Not a healthy relationship in any way and what is in it for the person required to surrender their reality? Other than a rather Christian-reminiscent sort of belief in the virtue of subservience.

I find it very interesting to read the accounts of women who have detransitioned, many of whom mention a need for control as being part of their transition. There are as I said above, a lot more links to addiction and anorexia than to a family member coming out as gay.

I know my parents had given considerable thought and love to my brother's name. It was in part a reflection of heritage and that wasn't replaced with equivalency. It meant a lot to them so I don't know how they must have felt. It must have felt like a rejection and an erasure of something in the family they wanted to honour and remember.

It's hard to explain it to people who have not experienced it with in their own family. I really found it upsetting in my own right.

I find it hard writing about him here and I waiver between they/he and sibling/brother because that's my history. I can't bring myself to rewrite my history and use she or sister because that's not my experience.

He transitioned as an adult and I can't say our relationship was close so in some ways it's easier because there hasn't been this forced maintenance that still living in the same household brings. My mum accepted it without question and my Dad just went along with her. But he pretty much doesn't keep in touch with them even then.

We were told at the time by my brother that family estrangement was common even in families that accepted it, because family were a constant reminder of the past. So he knew this himself but it all got framed as DH and I being awful - even though at first we tried. It was his appalling behaviour and the way he treated everyone that broke us and we didn't tolerate it. It wasn't his identity.

I ultimately think that some people want to simply reject family and cast themselves into this victim role because it gives them power in other ways going forward.

I don't think there is any level of empathy or consideration going on though. It's so self absorbed and inward looking.

None of that goes on with being gay (unless you marry a beard which I think is equally appalling).

I think I'm fairly at peace with it all now. There isn't anything I could have done differently. I don't think anything but estranged was ever on the cards for us both. I doubt my parents will ever share that though for various reasons.

I'm not assuming most people who are trans become so due to porn habits. Young girls drawn into it aren't. Young boys may not be either. That can be gender dysphoria, a need to feel special or just out and out confusion due to gender stereotypes. I do indeed suggest that adult men who suddenly transition later in life do so out of autogynephillia which I think is heavily influenced by porn habits.

As to it being a major invasion of privacy, obviously. I'd say he has given SIL very strong grounds for concern about what he might be into or up to online. She's in a dangerous position frankly. As our her kids. You have an objection to my implying the trans movement is tied to abusive sexual fetishes. I say in the case of autogynephiles, it is so and one should act accordingly.

No, she's making an assumption about most middle-aged male late transitioners, which sadly tends to be true.

The teen girls presenting at GIDS are also often transitioning because of what they've seen in porn, but to escape being the pornified object of desire, not to become it.

You are making an assumption here that most people who are trans become so owing to porn use. This is simply not true

how do you know that?

You are making an assumption here that most people who are trans become so owing to porn use. This is simply not true.

Also what you are advocating here is an invasion of personal privacy and possibly hacking.

99.99% certainty he has a vicious porn habit concealed somehow. It'd be upsetting but looking through his computer files might provide useful insights and some idea just how rotten things are below the surface. If he has a Discord account, that's also a likely mine of TRA porn and reinforcement and will clue her in to how long this has been gestating in him. Likely longer than she realised and might give her clarity on what she actually wants to do. Also potentially useful during divorce if he has lots of degradation or fetish porn.

Honestly, I want to just straight up say divorce him and now, but that would be irresponsible as I don't actually know them. Still, she might want to have a look-see and see what she can see. If he's got it all locked down and she's not tech-savvy herself, a tech-minded friend may be able to help.

*…play those bullshit gender roles- do all the housework and be quiet. Unlikely, I think.

Brilliant- she can play those bullshit gender

He has also started to repeatedly correct their children’s use of pronouns towards him, even though they don’t understand. If my SIL questions it he calls her a transphobe and a bigot. She said she is at breaking point.

He’s a selfish, abusive dick.

Let your SIL know are has your full support and that it’s ok to leave him.

@RedToothBrush thanks for articulating this so powerfully. I hadn't been able to.pinpoint some of the pain I experienced when one of my dc changed their name and identity - but this is a big part.

And then they are asking you to behave differently to them and treat them 'like a woman'. This is an explicit rejection of your previous relationship with them and saying they are a different person (even though everyone says they are the same person). @

What I am sure about is the person’s gender identity needs to be respected and accommodated.

Does it hell!

No one said, 'where's your compassion for her? Have you no compassion for having inflicted on her for twenty years a life of sexual denial, of being made to feel repulsive every time she tried to instigate sex, of being denied the family she so longed for, of being gaslight and controlled and used as a beard against her knowledge'.

This. And it's impossible for the wife of a public figure who is used as a beard like this to voice her grief without being accused of homophobia or being unsupportive. No one is willing, in public at least, to recognise her as someone who has had her life unilaterally and irreversibly changed by her husband. We can acknowledge that historically, gay men and lesbians have been under pressure to marry to avoid homophobia and at the same time acknowledge that marrying someone to use them as a beard is a really crappy way to treat someone. The beard is simultaneously a co-victim of homophobia along with their spouse (because only married them because of homophobic pressure) and a victim of their spouse's selfishness.

Even if it is like being gay, and I can see some correllation, there's no excuse for gay people to come out in this way either I remember years ago watching an episode of Oprah or some other daytime chat show where a man had come out as gay and was beside himself with fury at his wife's reaction. He wanted all the compassion in the room for the torment he'd experienced at living such a lie for twenty years. No one said, 'where's your compassion for her? Have you no compassion for having inflicted on her for twenty years a life of sexual denial, of being made to feel repulsive every time she tried to instigate sex, of being denied the family she so longed for, of being gaslight and controlled and used as a beard against her knowledge.' This was decades before trans issues became mainstream. I remember feeling absolute fury on behalf of the woman and longed to be in the studio audience to be able to say: the issue here is not that you are gay, it's that you are a selfish piece of controlling, narcissistic shit.

@RoseRobot Thank you for this. Gay widows have never managed to amplify their experiences in the same way as transwidows. Like Mrs. Schofield we fade into the background, our abuse erased by rainbows and glitter.

I’m just catching up after work and so many good posts on this thread articulating the upheaval and impact on everyone, not just the trans person. One of Jordan Peterson’s recent interviews with Miriam Grosan referred to parents having PTSD except it’s not P, it’s still going on. That trauma is not acknowledged at the moment in public discourse.

I’ve been struck by how many midlife transitioning males seem to be inspired to transition as a maladaptive response to the onset of balding.

Which I would imagine is quite similar to the more traditional midlife crisis behaviour (you can’t see a bald head under motorcycle helmet).

Is it though?
In the same way that teen anorexia and self harming have been replaced by "I was born the the wrong body" and the only solution is surgery, isn't a middle aged man buying a bike just the old solution to to a mid life crisis that's been replaced by new solution of deciding he's non binary?
Both have the same root cause, the mid life crisis, just the way to deal with it has changed, the motorbike got replaced by fancying yourself in a dress and AGP. Both are attention seeking, focus soley on the man's view of himself, and the family bears the brunt of the fallout.
I would argue that they are not a world away from each other but symptoms of the same issue, just the new symptom is more modern and en vogue.

Absolutely!

Coming out as trans is far more damaging to the family unit than a frivolous hobby.

Usually far more expensive too.

Being trans or non-binary really is a world away from this example of a man buying a motorbike and leathers, then getting bored of it and selling them on.

I think society was much better off when a man having a mid-life crisis just went out and bought a motorbike and leathers to feel young again. At least you could sell the motorbike on to the next one when it was over.

My parents divorced when I was in my early 20s and my mum insisted we had not been a happy family. I felt what I would now describe as gaslighted, I remembered being happy so was being told my memory was wrong.
I imagine this is very common among divorced parents but this bloke is doing this on steroids.

o
longed for, of being gaslight and as a screwed up floated controlled and used as a beard against her knowledge.'

Shades of Philip Schofield? I remember thinking exactly this when he came out. But then I’m not neutral. I had a boyfriend once who I think was a screed up closeted gay man in deep denial. Appalling behaviour in my experience.