Trans widow and feel so much pain for her

[Hotandbithered]

I know this is not actually my grief but DH has a good friend who we have known throughout our marriage, let’s call him Steve.

Steve was married to Jess and had two children.

We spent a lot of time with them over the years. Camping trips, dinners, bbqs, birthdays. Steve was your classic sort of male really. He was quite attractive, funny, polite, well educated and both he and Jess very successful, had a beautiful home.

Anyway getting to the point. Almost out of the blue (to us at least), a few years ago Steve began transitioning. He is not short of money and has had facial surgery multiple times, paid for himself. He is extremely supportive of the trans community and recognises he is lucky he can access this sort of treatment.

Jess stayed with him through this, went to the appointments, talked to their kids about what this meant (primary age) and tried to stick in the marriage. It’s now broken down and they are doing their best to be great co parents to their children.

Jess’ grief is immeasurable. This couple always seemed so in love, so respectful of one another. She says she feels like her husband has died yet she has to experience this new person in his place, like he’s been stolen from her. I too have felt this obviously to a much lesser degree, but its truly life changing to even be affected by it even a little bit.

I should add that I have no strong views on what or who people choose to be but I suppose I am shocked that a person can live a lie for so long and especially put their children through it? DH has tried to be supportive but I think struggles more with Steve’s new interests more than anything, as in they don’t have much to talk about anymore as Steve is consumed by this (I suppose understandably) and his focus on what makes him a woman rather than anything else.

I don’t know what I am asking really. Just feel grief for Jess and for DH and wonder if others have been through similar how they navigated it.

It’s certainly a sad situation, but it’s one with no happy options unfortunately. Either Steve is unhappy or is wife and your husband are.

Your friend does not have to remain in the marriage though.

Edit: sorry I saw the marriage had already broken down.

There was a story about a happily married man (I think he was a detective in a lot of high profile police cases and at times appears on TV), who then went through a rough patch where one child killed themselves climbing an electricity pylon.

Through all the grief he and others convincing him that the trauma was actually due to him being a "woman trapped in a man's body". He spent a lot of money on facial feminisation etc, and I think just before he was about to have the full sex change operation a moment of clarity and he realised that he was a heterosexual man and detransitioned.

Steve has blown up his marriage and his family, but I can't help to think that in 10 years time he will have desisted and then be desperate to reset everything. No doubt he will question why no one ever told him NO.

How old are you? When I was a child the forerunner of Lego, Meccano was emphatically a boys toy and in the early days of Lego I remember it being the same.

It was a construction toy and construction toys were for boys.

Sorry this is not much of a contribution to the actual topic of the thread but here's this ad for model railways to back up your point.

There was a very brief moment where children were allowed to be children rather than sugar/ spice/rats and snails, then the backlash began.

Lego was a Danish brand and they did definitely promote it as being for children with girls and boys in the advertising in the 80s. Now of course we are back to pink and purple Lego Friends for girls and black and grey Lego Star Wars for boys, which is a shame. Although, tbf, I dont think the advertising precludes either sex now at least. And if you go to a Lego Store it is very mixed gender and ages. My son works in one and, while the cars and spceships attract mainly boys, he says there are a few girl collectors too. And the Marvel stuff and ga.ing stuff is much more unisex, he says. And now there is Lego Botanicals for Mums! Again, the advertising seems pretty non-gendered to me, tbf to Lego.

Meccano, yes, very boyish. But I was a girl in the 80s and I still had Meccano, Lego, a model train set and airfix models, along with the Sindy house. There was definitely a lot more freedom to play with whatever appealed to you, in my house at least.

Jess has lost a life partner and friend, she has not regained one in the process. Jess needs lots of support for the life she thought she had but has had whipped away from her.

If Jess had lost Steve because he had an affair with a younger woman he would not be getting this 'sympathy' from you - because he has betrayed the family unit. But as he wants to pretend to be a woman that is fine - he should admired for being brave.

If Steve was a decent person he would have discussed with Jess beforehand, and walked out of the marriage for their sake and then transitioned. It sounds like he expected his wife to stick with him through this and they continue on 'as normal'. That is just so disrespectful to his family I have no words - only a man could think that is acceptable.

Steve will not care about the life before as he spends family money I suspect without Jess's knowledge or input (not his as he is married and that contract states it is a shared resource) thinking this lifestyle choice he has made will make him (and him alone) happy.

I've been looking up the 1950s adverts for Lego. They do feature girls. All the boys are building trucks, bridges, aeroplanes. Every picture of a girl I can find is building ...... a house, still the stereotype of "homemaker".

I'm another baffled and indeed furious that we started this century with gender stereotyping put firmly into a "that was back then" box but have moved solidly backwards now for years.

But not all of this is a trans generated problem, by any means. Lip fillers, bum padded pants and nail bars everywhere will tell you that much.

Meccano is not a ‘forerunner’ of LEGO - it is a different toy produced 50 years earlier. LEGO was produced specifically for children to just be children. The bricks were primary colours because the inventor was a pacifist. The very first adverts include girls building.

I've already said those adverts had pictures of girls. They are all building houses, some open sided like a dolls house while the boys build fire trucks and bridges.n One has a girl with a house .... and a pram.

Meccano was a construction toy which was displaced by Lego. For a while both were available but Lego won.

Meccano was also for children. I used to play with my brother's set.

I have absolutely no idea why you seem to want to pick such a fight about this.

Meccano was a construction toy which was displaced by Lego. For a while both were available but Lego won.

They are both still available.

Yes but Lego won the marketing war hands down.

You won't be visiting a Meccano theme park any time soon and you'd have to find a rare toy store to be able to buy it in the high street.

The comment was made in jest and referred to a comedy show. I dont need your condescending lecturing, thankyou very much. Read my other posts.

Sexist Lego advert showing girls building houses and boys playing with vehicles. But I'm sure someone will go on to say "but Subbuteo was aimed at boys, so Lego was sexist".

I can see a girl with a fire engine (?) and a boy building a building. Did you mean to post something else?

No, I'm being deliberately sarcastic at the claims that Lego adverts always featured gender stereotypes.

Lego was a gender neutral toy for decades and gradually become more gendered. Although a lot of the adult sets today are gender neutral.

I'm not sure what you are saying here? That the ad isn't gendered? Because there's only one child in the picture actually constructing anything and the implication to me, who lived through that time at that date, is that the boy built that little town and his sister plays with it.

Got you ))

I agree. There was a brief time when we had the Let Toys Be Toys movement. I worked in a nursery at the time. Boys played with Barbies and wore princess dresses and girls played with trains. It was lovely. Now girls are pushed into being even more ‘girly’ than they were.

As for Jess, support her and the children the best you can and take your lead from her. If she is happy with it then follow that and bite your tongue if you don’t agree.

oh come on. Thats a boy and a girl making a Lego airport. Lego most dedinitely did start off as non gendered. My family member collects Lego and has boxes and literature from the 70s and 80s and it was primary colours and boys and girls.

Regressive gender stereotypes are a big part of this, and have always existed, but Lego wasnt a big part of it. And even now, isn't that guilty of it, compared to other brands (Lego Friends wasnt great though imo)

I remember very clearly in the early 2000s walking into the ELC or Toys r us and there were quite literally Blue and Pink aisles. It was ridiculous. The ELC had a blue globe light, which I bought and still have, with the normal coloured seas and countries and whales in the sea. But at the time I could have bought a pink globe, with pink continents, pink seas and unicorns and mermaids, actual fictional creatures, in the seas. Ridiculous. No wonder it went out of business?

Its not quite as bad now in toy stores at least, but yes, the girls love pampering narrative isnt helpful is it? I guess that's why we now have deluded men that think women adjut each others bra straps and offer each other tampons in the women's toilets.

Out of interest are there many cases of this happening the other way around? Of women coming out as trans in a marriage and expecting their husbands to stand with them?

She isn't making anything, she's pushing a toy car.

It's subliminal and quite deliberate. "Making solid things" toys were marketed for boys. "Dolls and making soft things" were marketed for girls. In the 50s if Lego had genuinely been marketed equally in the UK/US for boys and girls it would have lost sales to parents with strict gender stereotyping, which was almost all of them.

The GRA 2004 underpins why we’re here. And similar in comparable countries.

When asked "why are you dragging in total irrelevancies" there was a reply I recognised immediately from other posters on other threads who make the same claim..

Thatannoyingone
Because people brought up nonsense and then asked me questions, so I'm answering them.

Of course you are. But only questions you feel like answering with irrelevancies (and inaccuracies), right? It's standard stuff. DFOD.

In the matter of Lego, I was bought one of the very first set sold in this country, which cost one guinea. The bricks were red and white, the base-plate (just the one) was grey, and I am fairly sure the windows (no "glass" in them) were white. It was very basic, but more fun than stickle-bricks – just barely, but it was. I rapidly got more with every birthday and Christmas present of money, which tended to come in the form of one pound notes, to which I added a shilling saved from my pocket-money.

Meccano was invented by Frank Hornby, who also invented Hornby Railways and Dinky Toys. I had and played with all of these, because my father had been bought them between the wars and they escaped being bombed in his parents' house in London – they'd been put in store in a friend's attic in a house in a village on the Berkshire Downs whilst he was in the army.

None of which has any more to do with poor Jess than the other irritating derailments, but at least is not actively unpleasant about her and doesn't imply she has no business being upset at having lost her husband of 22 years.

I don't think so. Another point I (and others) have made over and over again in the last ten years is, if the huge increase in young women and older men transitioning is because of lessened stigma, why are so few older women transitioning? Could it possibly be because younger women are extremely prone to social contagion (documented for centuries) and men are motivated by quite different reasons to women?