Thank you: Debbie Hayton in the Mail

I think that @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision 's thesis is that cross-dressing is abusive per se, whether it leads to transition or not. Like you, I had got confused and thought that pp were talking about DV and CC.

I differed on one aspect, I wasn’t aware you considered your perspective an absolute.
I don't consider it absolute but I'd expect, given I've got so much experience on the matter, that somebody who challenged it who wanted to be taken seriously would back that challenge up with more than "just contributing".

I have great respect for women working in this area. And I’ve worked with women in abusive relationships myself.

But if we go back to the original interaction, TA’s phrase “a new way of describing domestic abuse” - what are the implications of that?

Either a. All cross dressing/trans relationships are abusive - in which case I would disagree and feel there’s a reasonable evidence base for that; or b. Some cross dressing/trans relationships are abusive - in which case I would agree and feel there a reasonable evidence base for that. Granted that in the circs we are including personal testimony as evidence as there’s not a great deal of research.

I differed on one aspect, I wasn’t aware you considered your perspective an absolute.

Whether you think any spouse can be truly unaffected by transitioning spouses and tolerant of it must surely depend on whether you think that some men might have mislocated gender essences.

I don't at all now. Babies aren't born with gender dysphoria or AGP; they develop it in reaction to pervasive cultural misogyny (and sometimes homophobia). How can one develop either condition without the underlying misogyny affecting how they treat the women in their lives? How is it not hurtful for the man you love to reduce your life as a female human to props?

When I was a child, I had a significant speech impediment. Gradually, I got rid of it, but before I did, I'd experienced a lot of children (and adults) mimicking it. Mostly male, but sometimes female. It was always demeaning, because grotesque imitations of other people's personal traits are!

I'm sure you can find adult women with continued speech impediments who put up with their husbands mocking it, but I don't believe you could find any who genuinely didn't care.

Never claimed any authority,
Yet you feel qualified to contradict me.

The problem with thinking there are a significant number of women who are okay with it is, is by the nature of control, you're not going to know.

But then, when the man dies, you see that the marriage they all said was fine, was shit. See Jan Morris. Zoe Tur too, I think had a daughter who spilt the beans.

I've seen the transwidows accurately predict the pattern of behaviour of these men.

It really doesn't make me think that there are many 30-year-old marriages which would buck the trend.

I can only really speak from a combination of these and personal experience of people I know or have worked with.

Well, you may well have that in common with many of us who may be a little more tentative about forced teaming or making assertions without an evidence base.

However, by virtue of Tinsel's advocacy, interactions, and experience, I'd expect her to have a more extensive and rounded range of experience than most of us. Especially as it's not unusual for her to be present for bewildered women and children and to support them as they gradually lose their scales upon scales over extended periods of time.

I know that there are relationships where the wife is fine with the husband being a TV, but surely transition is different, because public, and involves physical modification?

Never claimed any authority, simply contributing to the discussion like everyone else.

There is some, but still woefully little research; as you know discussion is more confined to articles, blogs, books, films, individual testimony. I can only really speak from a combination of these and personal experience of people I know or have worked with.

From what I have seen there are abusive relationships in which trans is added as another spoke to the abuse wheel; there are relationships where women do not report prior abuse (however one interprets that) where the partner changes unrecognisably on announcement of trans to display control, bullying, gaslighting etc; there are relationships that end over the issue; and finally there are relationships where the female partner genuinely seems to be fine with it (fwiw I wouldn’t really count Stephanie in that).

I don't think someone with a sexual fetish that involves the reactions/actions/involvement of an audience should be teaching.

It's clothes and pronouns.

Don't forget the tits!

Depends on the relationship. There’s abuse in some late transition relationships (ie control, bullying, isolation, gaslighting, boundary erosion etc) but not all.
What makes you an authority on this?

And those trying to push that women have some duty to pacify paraphilic suffering men by being non consenting sexual objects, and accepting that this means some women are excluded from all resources so that some men can get their rocks off better, really need some sessions with said therapist and some help to sort out their boundaries.

This.

I'd also to remember that their flexible boundaries aren't mine

Yes, I have to agree with this.

I have long noticed that I haven't read a single narrative from a man who says they're trans, that isn't loaded with sexism at best, and misogyny at worst.

Don't get me wrong, many are very polite. But the entire concept of using womanhood to ameliorate your own distress, is sexist.

Because it's not womanhood, by any real understanding or appreciation of it, is it?

It's not suddenly deciding you want to take on all the mental loads, do the housework, write all the Christmas cards, etc, and all the other stuff that 'womanhood' might confer on a woman.

It's clothes and pronouns.

it's using their own concept of womanhood, repackaged to suit their needs.

and those are the ones that people might consider really, really nice. They are few and far between anyway.

I'm plausibly not the only reader interested in your evidence base for that assertion and why that should be regarded as a counter-balance?

Some people are very keen to show how open-minded, metropolitan and cool they are; so arguing that society accepts public elements of AGP as a reasonable accommodation, or that we see it as a sexual orientation rather than a paraphilia, is how these people are going to demonstrate how wonderfully liberal and tolerant (ie 'better than you frigid frumpy feminists') they are.

It’s this hey-man-just-be-cool behaviour which got us so many broken societal boundaries over the years because some sections of society apparently needed strict boundaries to make them behave with consideration (whether genuine or not) for women, children, and the vulnerable.

Depends on the relationship. There’s abuse in some late transition relationships (ie control, bullying, isolation, gaslighting, boundary erosion etc) but not all.

I think in those days we were also a LOT more naive and uninformed about what was happening in the heads of those men in women's spaces.

The TRAs have sorted that. The mask has been ripped off and metaphorically pissed on, and that genie is permanently out of the bottle. I get that Hayton and others have lost that nice illusion they benefitted from, and they regret the loss of this, but it doesn't make it any better that they did it to women in the first place.

Perhaps it is important to bear in mind that the pre-TRA period in which some women and not others felt more or less ok with the 'compromise' of politely acting as if a person were their preferred sex was also a period in which we weren't torn to pieces if we made a distinction between transsexuals and cross-dressers.
I'm prepared to bet that very few women were ever happy to play along with cross-dressers in their spaces - because these were the people acting out a fetish, and co-opting the women they encountered along the way. The concept of a male-bodied 'transsexual' to most people would have meant a same-sex attracted male who presented as female, or in some cases a heterosexual male whose presentation was the result of a very extreme gender dysphoria amounting to mental illness (rather than simply the playing out of a fetish). These were the individuals who may have benefited from the 'compromises' that trans-activism has put a bomb under.

I don't mean to say anything about whether those compromises were a good thing or not, or about how many women were ok with them (and in what situations). Just wanted to point out how the forced re-engineering of language has made it hard to state certain relevant distinctions that used to be taken for granted (just as it has attempted to make the category 'woman' unsayable)

Anyone who hasn't yet read Lundy Bancroft's book 'why does he do that' from the perspective of a therapist with a career working with domestically abusive men, many referred from the court and prison system, it's useful.

He talks about how many abusive men adore a good wallow in pop psychology about the intricacies of themselves and their wonderfully fascinating motivations and what it all means and getting people to splash about in the bucket of them. It isn't something he encourages. It isn't in any way a healthy thing, it's a part very often of how they are busy evading responsibility and creating double standards that allow them entitlements without reciprocation.

the frictional dynamics of a cross-dressing spouse.

That's a new way of describing domestic abuse.

'Accommodate' and 'understand' -

yes, it's what women are told to do aren't they? Understand him (and why he abuses you) and maybe you can learn to handle and manipulate him so that you're safer, and gosh he's so complex. Where as you? Well he's not wasting any of his time wondering what goes on between your ears, is he?

Fgs. Normal human relationships do not involve one sided intensive study of someone else unless they're your child with significant SEND (in which case please see 'burn out') or you're their therapist. And you have very strong boundaries and are in the relationship to move them somewhere better rather than being a nicer and more co operative enabler.

This stuff is not healthy. I have no interest in how a man gets turned on by women's stuff, or what bits of it I am not signing on for a fascinating voyage and lecture tour around the magical wonder of Him, no matter how happy that might make his penis. I am not co dependent. He can do whatever he bloody likes if he doesn't invade women's spaces, resources and whatever else.

And those trying to push that women have some duty to pacify paraphilic suffering men by being non consenting sexual objects, and accepting that this means some women are excluded from all resources so that some men can get their rocks off better, really need some sessions with said therapist and some help to sort out their boundaries.

Using and involving non consenting others in your sexual experiences is a hard line. It's never acceptable.