Stephanie Hayton in The Times

Exactly, many of us felt the article would have benefited from being longer.

I’m keen to from different points of view from different people, all except the porn addled and frankly DH’s publicly available comments on the sissy porn he was viewing mean he fits into the group I’m not interested in hearing from. Comments I understand are in his book so I won’t be reading.

This is almost completely an aside, but the purity spiral equivalents used to be called circular firing squads in that they are doing the job for the enemies of whatever movement we are looking at. Or perhaps the circular firing squads were created partly as a consequence of the desire for no disagreement within the movement?

Feminism is susceptible to this, perhaps more than any other political movement, possibly, because it is about something very central to so much of women's lives and disagreements about the tenets and strategies can feel like some women's concerns being ignored or even attacked and ridiculed.

I used to agonise over this phenomenon, a lot, because splintered movements don't achieve as much as movements which can come together, at least very temporarily, for pragmatic reasons, to achieve one goal at a time. Even if the movement splintered, the new sub-movements should try to keep communication lines open and sometimes come together to support shared goals.

But I have no idea how to fix this tendency toward splintering, except that I have noticed in myself an acceptance of the imperfection of all of us as we grow older and also an ability to decide when a disagreement is about something negotiable for me, and the (very few) cases where it is too fundamental to be ignored. So perhaps discussing this issue in advance and training for how to cope with it might help, by discussing past splintering, what caused it, and how it could have been avoided?

The gender identity ideology is an even more complicated case, because what is loosely viewed as 'gender critical' is really at least two, perhaps three completely different ideological movements. The anti-feminist right-wingers oppose gender identity ideology for reasons which are almost completely opposite to the ones radical feminists have, for instance. So here a certain kind of coming apart is going to happen.

I get the vibe of a damage limitation PR puff piece. She is being trotted out to show how lovely it all is...

I also wouldn't be surprised if DH announced his intention to run in an election or something in the near future, or we are being primed for his new media career.

IME DH and SH would likely have been viewed very favourably by publicly acknowledging a fetish, DH still being a man (rather than a lesbian) and staying married.

That’s a bit different from my experience of evangelical churches. In them, SH’s choice would be seen favourably, but DH’s confession of his fetish and his transition would, I think, have been viewed with suspicion - the acknowledgment of the fetish would be applauded, but the continued practice of it would not. Unless, of course, the church members and clergy were successfully gaslighted, which does seem possible.

I am remembering when an apparently upstanding church member turned out to have been physically abusing his family. His wife and children were supported, particularly in practical ways, and his behaviour was not condoned.

And of course, no one wants to believe that someone they love is capable of treating them badly, being selfish or manipulative.
People are very good at convincing themselves that the situation they are in is their choice, that they have control and freedom.

Chilling.

This comment is weird as well (sorry can't remember who made it)

There seems to be a desire to shut down SH because she doesn't say the things, or respond the way, some GC people would like.

I've only heard people wishing SH would speak out more. They'd like to hear her views.

@CantDealwithChristmas

The intimacy comments are obviously a friend consoling her when sex was taken out of the relationship by Hayton's operation.

Or....it could have been what SH actually thinks?

My comment was based on this from the article. Presumably the friend didn't just randomly present Stephanie with a list. She obviously found the lack of physical intimacy hard or it wouldn't have been raised at all.
"Shortly after Debbie transitioned, a friend gave me a list of different types of intimacy. Genital intimacy was one, but there were many others."

Oooph. So much coercion by enlisting helpful allies in high places- trade unionists, the media, school governors, etc. Seeming ‘reasonable’, ‘open’, ‘honest’, ‘brave’ clearly works much better for asserting control, getting others to pressure and enforce, than by being overtly demanding yourself.

We all make compromises and take decisions in life that we know will entail inevitable restrictions and frustrations. As a Christian she might use the circumstances of her relationship to hone her conmmitment to her vows - and in some ways relish the discipline of having to overcome adversity to do that.

I can understand that myself. I've done similar.

I always presumed that was why MPs in the 80s got the clutching wife's hand photo op done the morning after she'd discovered he had a thing for... Well exactly the same thing DH has a thing about actually. So that by the time the wife is over the shock and raging she's already declared she will stand by her man to millions of people!

It makes it all the more difficult for you to ever leave of course, when you've been forced into the press to declare you're not leaving. This is probably not a coincidence.

Staying married, despite being on the receiving end of some pretty awful behaviour, is also generally lauded

Does that work both ways?

If it was Stephanie plastering her sexual proclivities all over the national press, and writing a book about what gets her off, while saying she'll leave her entire family about it if she has to, would her husband be expected to keep quiet and support her?

IME DH and SH would likely have been viewed very favourably by publicly acknowledging a fetish, DH still being a man (rather than a lesbian) and staying married.

I can well believe it.

But I don't think many people would set much store by the credibility of the church over sexual shenanigans, in the first place, to be honest.

I grew up in the evangelical wing of the church and divorce is still seen as being really quite shameful, particularly if you've grown up in that tradition (I don't know whether that is the case for the Haytons).

Staying married, despite being on the receiving end of some pretty awful behaviour, is also generally lauded because forgiveness, sanctity of marriage, yada yada. IME DH and SH would likely have been viewed very favourably by publicly acknowledging a fetish, DH still being a man (rather than a lesbian) and staying married.

Not quite sure how they/the church square the vow "with my body I honour thee" with DH's transitioning...

Well that was utterly unilluminating...

Yes it's a far cry from the posed shots, @TrainedByCatsToBeScathing

And I'm sure I, and every other woman on here, is vastly uncomfortable picking over the words of this woman. Who we all have tremendous compassion for.

It does feel invasive and a little prurient.

But that's down to Debbie Hayton and his unstoppable desire to release his beachball.

This 100%.

As an aside the top photo of the two of them DH looks like any other aging tech dude/scientist that affects the straggly long greying/white hair look to appear unconventional.

So even the long hair says male to me in that picture.

I hope Stephanie understands the reason for people talking about her is because her husband has been so open and attention seeking. He’s responsible for bringing attention to her no one else (well maybe a wee bit Stella O’Malley as well).

Didn’t the previous article describe them as evangelical Christians?

The advice Stephanie was given on different kinds of intimacy will likely have been from a church-going friend invested in “helping” Stephanie to remain married to her husband despite the potentially marriage-ending course of action Hayton had announced to her.

'Well, I've got nothing here. All along, you've been saying that, if necessary, you will leave and eventually I've got to the point of saying okay, you need to leave. And you're now saying you refuse.' So again, actually that was a turning point for Debbie. I think Debbie realized that if she wanted to stay within the family, she needed to actually start thinking about the family a little bit more, rather than just what she wanted and how she was going to do things. And after that, I started having a little bit more of a say and Debbie would ask my opinion about things and I felt that my opinion was actually making a small amount of difference, maybe not huge, but a small amount of difference. And we got through my daughter's exams and, at that point, you know, it was then three months after I'd said, 'I think you need to leave'. And things were better, though a long way from perfect but much better than that very, very low point.

So it would appear that Stephanie felt she had wrested some form of control back from Debbie, under the threat of kicking him out. Stephanie had a little bit more of a say, her opinion was being at least asked, and a tiny amount of difference was being made.

But now? He's bloody written about their entire lives, in every newspaper who'll have him, and is publishing a book.

And I'm sure I, and every other woman on here, is vastly uncomfortable picking over the words of this woman. Who we all have tremendous compassion for.

It does feel invasive and a little prurient.

But that's down to Debbie Hayton and his unstoppable desire to release his beachball.

The first thing that occurs to me is that when Debbie transitioned it was under the belief they were a man in a woman's body. Then down the line (when it was too late) DH realised they had AGP.
Now that must be a really difficult thing for a wife to reconcile - losing their husband and sex life over what is essentially a fetish.
When you love an actual person, that's right in front of you, with whom you had children and a life, I suppose it's hard to cut your losses. So maybe a woman in that situation looks for alternative forms of intimacy in the relationship, so as not to lose their husband altogether? Idk. It would be hard to reconcile being GC while faced with a person you love being unhappy. And having committed to remain married and being so far down the road, is there a point at which you just feel stuck ? Again idk. In her shoes, you wouldn't have seen me for dust. I think that married men (especially with children) who transition are so very selfish.

I read that article as her saying she's fed up of being used in everyone else's arguments, that she's an individual with her own life and thoughts and doesn't exist to prove points in other people's debates.

Re use of 'she's by JT, I think most people would do this as a social nicety. But no one should be compelled to use preferred pronouns because we all know that she = female and it's a lie to use it to describe a male. No one should he compelled to lie.

Agree with this, she certainly doesn't come across as 'feisty and tough'. As PP says, it has a sadness to it.

She’s committed to stay with DH so what she says is going to reflect that.

This was how the article came across to me. It seems as if she has decided to stay (as the right thing to do) and is trying to rationalize that decision. It doesn’t seem like the writings of someone who is fully accepting and at peace with the situation as it stands. Only time might resolve this, I think.

There is a theory called "non-overlapping magisteria", advocated by Jewish evoloutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, which states that religion and science are entirely different lines of enquiry with no overlap. So no conflict if you're interested in both. Gould was much less aggressively confrontational than Dawkins in dismissing creationism, and therefore more successful in my opinion.