Would you stay with your partner if they decided to transition?

[RedRobyn2021]

I'm watching an episode of Queer Eye where this transwoman's partner said they stayed with them after they decided they wanted to transition and it got me thinking

If your partner decided they wanted to transition would you stay with them?

Sorry I meant disabling yourself is much more extreme.

@Kanaloa - yes, there were clear connections made between the two in psychiatry before gender ideology really got up and running; and now of course that whole set of connections is basically verboten. There’s a very interesting article from 2000 from The Atlantic about this and Body Integrity Disorder - it’s a long read and focuses in depth first on BID, but it’s really fascinating - gets to transgender identity about half way through.

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

Oh I must have a look at it! I didn’t realise it had already been linked, I genuinely had never heard of somebody who made themselves blind purely because they wanted to be blind. Very sad situation to have that sort of disconnect between who you are and what you are and to feel you need it to be ‘real.’

The article’s really good partly because it delves into the question of how identities might not be “real” but narratively created by people, and how they essentially turn their obsessions into identities via the internet and feedback from other people.

It’s a kind of informed historical thinking about how different illnesses and identities intersect and come about in the first place, that used to be much more prevalent, but has been lost in recent years with the emphasis on identity politics. Especially good at thinking about these things as forms of social invention and contagion.

NO! If my partner did this to me and our children, I would never be able to look at him the same again.

No chance in hell.

Body Integrity Identity Disorder is a horrifying mental disorder.
I was watching, of all things, Chicago Med on Netflix and they had a character with it - he had felt since he was a small child that his left arm didn't belong to his body, and finally as an adult he tried to cut it off himself.

They surgically mended his arm and tried to help him via therapy but he ended up damaging it again so it had to be removed - the need to be separated from his arm was so strong, and he was only happy once it had gone.

It's not an easy situation for docs to deal with because they're not supposed to purposely damage someone's body for no medical reason - so BIID sufferers do often try to take things into their own hands, which then does necessitate medical intervention to patch them up.

So it beggars belief that BIID sufferers are classified as having a mental health disorder, and are routinely refused their demands to have healthy body parts removed just because they don't want them/don't feel like they belong to them, but if you mention GID then ta-dah! People fall over themselves to validate it. Of course, most BIID patients don't need to go onto lifelong medication as a result of their condition, so there's not as much money in it...

Yes, exactly - and GID is going to involve a whole lot of expensive procedures and more become available all the time - facial feminisation surgery, etc. In that it’s quite like Body Dysmorphic Disorder, in which if patients actually do have cosmetic surgery, it doesn’t help because the focus shifts to another bit of the body, so they want even more cosmetic surgery and then even more.

When it comes to gender identity procedures, especially in the US, it’s a massive market with a lot of actors very interested in “growing” that market.

Nope, but then I'd be seriously reconsidering our relationship if he so much as started plucking his eyebrows and wearing nail polish. Just don't find any of those things attractive and no amount of be kind is going to allow me to orgasm whilst watching a bepolished hairy hand stroke and caress me.

I've just read that article - why am I not even remotely surprised to see John Money's name in there

@speakout

No one has yet to why this is any different from deciding to become a person of colour. I could change my hair and skin to look like a peson of colour but I would never be so. Because I have never lived that life, been subject to the challenges, carried those historical wounds, living even now in a society that discriminates and undermines those that are not white. As a white person I can try to understand those challeneges, but I can never live them- I can never actually know. Same with men- a man can never know what it is like to be a woman, and those that say they " feel" like a woman- how would they even know what that feels like? They are identifying to a fantasy, a cloud of smoke that they think constitutes womanhood. And they are in a priviliged position to choose now apparently.

Exactly. There's no difference so they can never answer this other than saying 'it's different'. There's no actual explanation as to how because there isn't one.

Not a chance. X

However I think in our hearts a lot of us would see signs that our partner wasn't happy with the gender they were born as so it probably wouldn't come completely out of the blue.

The problem is that it's very often not this fairy tale and involves fetish and abuse.

And poor kids if there are any.

www.transwidowsvoices.org/

childrenoftransitioners.org

No. I'd lose respect for them and feel they were blind to what a woman actually was/ who I actually was. The audacity and entitlement of just jumping on the woman train halfway down the line for the short ride that doesn't involve periods/menopause etc... I'd assist them in getting some good therapy for the sake of our children.

Absolutely not (and I have bi tendancies)
But he's as GC as I am luckily anyway

My partner looks like a v tall, broad typical rugby build man and still would if he tried to dress up steretypically as a woman, how would he find size 12 stilettos?

I certainly would not be interested in seeing him in drag.

Stilettos in any size you like are readily available. Haven't you heard of Kinky Boots? With the arrival of the Internet you don't have to make an appointment at a special shop to try them on either.

No.

There must be a reason for that, I can guess. I feel sorry for trans widows.

And they are in a priviliged position to choose now apparently.

And I think a lot of the male privilege mindset is what drives the Trans movement. They don't want to lose the privileges that are inherent in a male dominated society, but as 'women' they automatically do. And so they have to 'create' a new privilege; that of invading female spaces and co-opting female experiences, such as fake 'periods' and all that goes with them, and demanding that we, as women, accept their 'female experiences' as real and equal to our own.

Absolutely not. Deal-breaker

If he decided to change his name to Anna one day and wear the female versions of his clothes - which are basically nice, understated trousers and shirts and jumpers of varying smartness depending on the demands of the day, so the women's versions wouldn't be that different, just some skirts and dresses thrown into the mix I guess - that might be quite fun, if nothing else changed. If he didn't fuck his body up with weird superficial or invasive treatments; if he didn't adopt strange contrived mannerisms; if he didn't drop his current interests in favour of an obsession with something incredibly boring and self-centred; if he didn't start talking metaphysical rubbish that makes literally no sense, or demand that I parrot it back; if he didn't demand anything special from me except the normal reciprocal emotional support we give each other because sometimes life is tough - well if that was how it was, it would just be my man deciding to wear a skirt sometimes, and so what? I am not the most conventional person in the world either.

But that isn't what transition is. Transition is incredibly demanding, it's basically a whole project and all consuming and I have no time for it. Also, sorry to be shallow, it usually involves body modifications which usually make the person much less attractive. When I was younger I would have done anything to change my body, I hated it. Now I am older (middle aged, like the people who had no sympathy with me then because of course to them I was young and healthy and gorgeous and what was my problem) I have come to see what they saw: healthy unmessed up bodies are pretty much nearly all beautiful in their own way. Hefty big women and slight delicate men can all be gorgeous as fuck, it isn't at all to do being true to some notion of one's correct gender characteristics; just the unmessed with body and face of someone who knows who are they are, or is on the path of working it out, is really strong and attractive.

🤣🤣🤣

No, I would find that deeply unattractive in every possible way.

Absolutely no. When I was younger and naive I would have done but the transwidows threads here on MN were an eye opener and encountering a number of transwomen mostly through work there’s not a chance I would stay.

Absolutely not.