Thank you: Debbie Hayton in the Mail

How would mankind have evolved an innate love of tights?

Indeed.

If you're going to use children as justification for an adult fetish, you really shouldn't tell people that it's an actual fetish.

Although bonkers, the born in the wrong body narrative did at least start from the premise that you were born that way.

You're not born with a bloody fetish.

He's trying to weave two stories together, to justify the claim that even though he's admitted to being a fetishist, it's really not that bad, it's not his fault, and it's not a big deal.

(Thanks Rachel!)

Exactly, i remember having to make sure my daughter didnt wear tights on PE days in cold weather, because it would have taken her ages to put them on again, if at all.

And they were robust woolly childrens ones, not thin adult ones.

Especially tights!

The message is: don't have children with a self-confessed cross-dresser, because he may well 'transition' later.

Yes. I hope one thing that comes from this whole fight is that a lot more women see this as a red flag. Or ideally like a Russian doll of red flags, except in this case more red flags come out of each doll even though the dolls get smaller.

His obsession for convincing everyone that his love of tights is innate is bonkers. We get it, he likes tights, we dont need to hear about it.

It's unusually capable behaviour from a five year old. Mine certainly could not surreptitiously remove clothes from the bin, put them on, and take them off again, all without parental involvement.

Adult tights would be ludicrously too big for a 5 year old anyway.

How, at 5 years old, did he know he had to 'hide' his rummaging in the bin for mummy's tights? Why didn't he just ask to put them on? Oh - because it's not true, is it?

The message is: don't have children with a self-confessed cross-dresser, because he may well 'transition' later

Can confirm.

(Not that I regret DD obviously).

I think this piece is valuable as a public safety message.

The message is: don't have children with a self-confessed cross-dresser, because he may well 'transition' later. And no-one is going to be fine with that, are they? The least bad scenario would be an amicable split, which is still not great.

The comments are mixed. But many people appear to have wised up to Hayton already.

it's interesting watching this play out in real time. Those who appreciate his honesty and think he's refreshing, and a force for positivity. And those who...don't.

Almost all of them pissed off at the telegraph calling him she, tho.

Even if they've never read the piece, most people realise that pronouns are, indeed, like Rohypnol.

There's a...well, I'm not sure I'd call it a review...gushing fluff piece in the Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/review-transsexual-apostate-debbie-hayton/

https://archive.ph/lHLkc

The person who wrote it is totally buying what he's selling, except for a little push back on the AGP!

Although the subheading claims he's 'enraged all sides', the only examples given are from tras and other tw.

There's an underlying current of "it's only abuse, if someone gets hurt" which I can hear.
Sounds like those abusers who say "they enjoyed it" or "they asked for it". There are cases where the abused shack up with their abusers. It is still abuse.

Nice lively couple with mutual consent to abuse each other lovingly, is still abuse.

It's like the once you've agreed someone can legally be the sex they want rather than the sex they are you've opened the door wide to a guy of 50 legally forcing admittance to your kid's nursery.

You may think it's extreme and silly, and a rational person has lines and boundaries. Yes, we've all fallen for that one;

Oh yes that ship has sailed.

Only last week, a 50-year-old man not only competed with the 13 to 16-year-old girls at a swim meet, he waltzed into their changjng room and changed in there.

And the activist who was there with his microphone and camera was told to leave, otherwise the police would be called on him.

I read the BTL comments on that article and was shocked, but not surprised, at how many didn't get why what the OP had been doing was so bad. A really scary amount of folk who didn't seem to understand consent.

I'd happily make a large wager that most of those who couldn't see a problem were men...

@RethinkingLife It’s the all or nothing hard and fast statements that I’m questioning.

Some interesting btl comments here about non-consensual fetish enjoyment:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/09/foot-fetish-wife-no-longer-let-me-near-her-feet

People are more sympathetic to trans than to fetishism, so DH is taking a risk. I hope there's lots of pushback.

I understand that, and I don’t agree with it. I’m not saying it’s not prevalent; just it doesn’t characterise some of trans relationships that I have been around and some of the personal testimony I have listened to.

One particular focus for transvestic fetish is or used to be nursing uniforms.

How many nurses are accepting of men's fetishisation of their job's uniform? How many could live with a spouse who constantly minimised their physically demanding, psychologically gruelling, high-responsibility job as something to masturbate over?

If that's a case of TLDR: disrespect and abuse to others is not a valid sexual orientation. It's a choice.

And that is why I prefer to avoid false syllogisms and stark binaries.

The paucity of the evidence base is remarkably disappointing so I will continue to recognise my perspective as tentative and still to be fully formed. The lived and wider experience of contributors like Tinsel will continue to shape my understanding of promoted narratives designed to promote empathy and sympathy for one part of the story. Tinsel and the transwidow thread remind me to acknowledge empathy bias and the missing narratives of those affected by this.

(I paraphrase but Helen Joyce discusses this when she proposes that unaccountable decisions tend to have a parent with a trans child or a personal narrative at their heart. Everyone rushes to demonstrate empathy for the person at the heart of that well-designed narrative rather than pausing to consider the people who aren't present and the consequences for them. And this is why we have women excluded from major reviews of our rights when the likes of Jess Bradley, Aimée Challenor, Jane Fae et al are honoured and esteemed invitees.)

If you're easy on non consenting people being involved in other people's sexual experiences and fetishes - which is abusing them - where are you going to put the line?

How do you say it's ok for that guy to get his kicks undressing and playing with tampons in a women's changing room, even though it revolts, annoys and scares some of those women (which often adds to the sexual thrill of someone doing this kind of thing, their distress is arousing) and means that some women can no longer have any changing room, cos poor guy, it's apparently his sexual orientation to be a sex pest to women rather than awful behaviour choices being indulged - but say it's not ok for another guy to get his kicks stripping off and wagging his bits in a children's soft play area? If that's his orientation?

What about the guy whose orientation is rapist? Or serial killer orientation?

It's like the once you've agreed someone can legally be the sex they want rather than the sex they are you've opened the door wide to a guy of 50 legally forcing admittance to your kid's nursery. Because if you can choose one reality and enforce it, there's a powerful precedent to all other realities too. The door is open, the precedent is there. And the guy's really sad!

You may think it's extreme and silly, and a rational person has lines and boundaries. Yes, we've all fallen for that one; it's a good faith belief being used against you. Go and see how the salami tactics and the thin end of the wedge has been used in the past eight years to smash women's rights and child safeguarding. Is being used right now.

It is not ok to use other people sexually. Breaking other people's consent boundaries is not ok. There are no grey areas on this. And females are not born with a biological duty of needing to make male people's dicks happy. They are really not.

It is maybe worth having a read up of the ICD-10, although no doubt this has been carefully adjusted to remove any suggestion that there's ever anything harmful in what was called 'transvestic fetishism'.

Most paraphilias depend on or involve non-consensual participation of others.

a sexual orientation rather than a paraphilia

'A total of eight Paraphilias are listed in the DSM V and include pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual sadism, sexual masochism, frotteurism, fetishism, and transvestic fetishism'

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554425/#:~:text=Introduction,that%20are%20atypical%20in%20nature.

'Fetishism is the use of nonliving objects, most commonly shoes and undergarments, for sexual pleasure.[8] Transvestic fetishism is the derivation of sexual arousal from cross-dressing or dressing in clothes of the opposite sex.'