Trans Widows' Escape Committee 4 - A New Hope

[TinselAngel]

Who would have thought we'd make it to thread 4?

Let's have some mutual pats on the back for the amazing support women on these threads have given to other trans widows, and the accidental consciousness raising that has come about as a result of this community.

This is a support area for women who are, or have been, in unhappy relationships with male partners who are transitioning, or exploring their "gender identity"

If you are in that position-

1. You are not alone
2. It is not a situation that you should be expected to tolerate, let alone celebrate.
3. There is always a way out, if you want it. The thread is called Escape Committee for that reason

Remember: women talking to each other is a powerful weapon!

We now have a website which has been very well recived, and if any women who have contributed to these threads would like to write their story for inclusion on the website that would be wonderful.

Do post to get the new thread going. Links to the website and previous threads will follow.

As ever our thoughts are with the women still stuck in these relationships- check in, we do worry about you.

If you can turn "my arse" into about 1000 words.....

I'm pondering it, Tinsel. It's a complicated one though; I fear my personal circumstances make me a less than ideal representative of the transwidow perspective on this one.

As you clocked quite a long time ago, I may call him ex but we're still quite entangled, and I'm currently looking at being the one who comes out as gay; and I know how much that hurts because I was once in love with a woman who took about six years to decide that, actually, she was straight after all.

And it's not like the ex ever actually made the leap to transitioning, and he was honest about his penchant for women's underwear from the start.

Like I say, bit complicated, possibly not the best representative!

Well it is different because no one expects a couple to stay together and be sexually happy when one of them comes out. People do have mixed orientation marriages but people don't expect that. The first thing they think of is divorce.

For us, people think we have a choice. They don't expect a gay man to love his wife for who she is as a person and say he should be perfectly happy with her body and having sex with her. They don't tell him he should change his sexual preference. But we are expected to change ours?

I have talked to many women who were married to gay men and they say they can't imagine the level of grief we go through. It's on a whole other level. Seeing this person totally transform into some one else you aren't attracted to or who find repulsive physically is totally different than finding out your husband is gay.

Although newly out of the closet gay and lesbian people do go through an adolescent period to do the things they always wanted to do, they don't demand things like taking over mother's day, they don't screech about their rights or fetishize being a woman, they don't take hormones that harm their health, cause mood swings, and have surgeries that are dangerous and expensive and also hurt their health. We can end up footing the bill for their wigs, surgeries, hair removal, clothes, make up. A lot of them insist on getting feminine tattoos, which costs money as well.

There isn't the fight about names and pronouns. There isn't the "I thought you loved me for me, not my penis."

And when some one is gay, they are just gay. There's no confusion usually unless they think they are bi or pansexual. Most of the time its straight forward. With these guys, we don't know what they are. Was the bad sex because they are only attracted to themselves or because they are only attracted to men?

Also a lot of them want to look like their wives and it's very disturbing to have some one initiate you like the movie straight white female. I know one guy wanted to take a picture of her breasts to the surgeon because he wanted his to look like hers. They steal our clothes or go change and put on an outfit that looks like outs, dye their hair the same color, imitate our mannerisms.

One of my friends just had stbx tell her "well I have boobs now, so our figures are the same now." I have a friend who cleaned out her closet and get husband offered to take her clothes to Goodwill and then hid them. After she moved out she saw pictures of him online wearing her clothes. I have another friend who heard this and when her husband offered to take her clothes in she said no and he had tantrum.

I

Sorry about typos.

OMG, there's one bullet I dodged, my ex at least never tried to wear my own clothing.

Then again I am a fairly extreme tomboy from working my entire career in tech wearing jeans and t-shirts and no makeup, so where's the fun in that when he could be wearing dresses and fancy shoes? It is all such fetish bullcrap.

Having said I'm not the best person, I find myself mentally planning out an essay anyway. Need to clarify a bit first though. Who exactly is the accusation of homophobia being levelled at? Those of us who don't stay when our husbands transition? For not wanting to be in a "lesbian" relationship? Or just those of us like Molly, whose husbands are actually gay?

I get people on twitter saying basically why are you all making such a fuss, it's just like if one partner in a marriage comes out as gay- and then implying it's akin to homophobia for us to object.

So it's not really whether we stay or not that's relevant, the implication is that it's a benign thing that wasn't a choice for them and so no blame should attach to them. If we attach any blame it's akin to blaming gay people for being gay when they can't help it. They were born that way.

It misses all the ways in which it is different for us and the correlation between AGP and domestic abuse.

Its a bizarre argument. Do they think people who realise they are gay should stay trapped in a heterosexual marriage?
If they actually think we're homophobic (and aren't just trying some ridiculous gotcha) its because they don't see women as actual people.

.

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This sort of thing also spills over into the Straight Spouse Network IMO. If you treat it all the same (relationships breaking down because one partner is either LGB or T), the implication is that we should try and be kind because the poor things can't help it.

I wouldn't worry about goady accounts who are trolling you, they aren't making sound arguments.
Women who speak out on an issue that affects them aren't concern trolling. We're often left managing without child support payments as the money is spent elsewhere; thats economic abuse.

Right, yeah, my answer to that is pretty simple, but it's going to get political.

We're not the homophobes here. A spouse who's secretly gay doesn't use that status as a mechanism of coercive control. A spouse who's AGP and forcing his wife (with societal backing) to accept him as a lesbian, does; the commonalities of our stories are testament to that.

Are women who don't want to stay with gay husbands considered homophobic for not wanting to subsume their needs and wants in order to play emotional nursemaid? Or is it accepted that they're not sexually compatible and the relationship breaking down is to be expected?

The AGP spouse who declares himself to be a lesbian, and castigates his wife for not playing along, is himself a homophobe. Specifically, it's lesbophobia.

The idea is that we should reimagine ourselves as lesbians in order to validate their identities. This presupposes that lesbianity is a choice that women freely make.

Speaking for myself, AGP was the final nail in the coffin that made me realise I find male sexuality repellent. Understanding AGP as an extension of male heterosexuality was most illuminating in that respect.

When I get round to telling him this, if his response were to declare himself a lesbian, this would be a homophobic act that denied my own sexual orientation. (This isn't likely to happen though; I chatted to him briefly about it and he looked quite perplexed and said basically what others have said here - people change and become incompatible and that's fine.)

Anyway, the short version is: we don't leave them because they're trans; we leave because they use transness as a weapon against us.

If you treat it all the same (relationships breaking down because one partner is either LGB or T)

This is the crux of it, and this is where it gets political.

T is an identity, not an orientation; and it is not benign. It's rooted in misogyny.

When your husband comes out as trans, he's coming out as a raging misogynist. Why the hell should we accept that?

I don't worry about it Inebriati, I generally just block them, but I thought it would be an interesting argument for us to tease out.

we should try and be kind because the poor things can't help it

The trouble with that is, it's not their being trans that turns out to be the major problem. It's their abuse of that status. The T identity becomes a vector for emotional and economic abuse.

So really what's being said is that the poor things can't help being abusive.

Actually, let me correct that.

The T identity becomes a vector for both emotional and economic abuse and also sexual coercion.

Yes you're spot on Tyro, us not wanting to stay in the relationship is never just about them being trans (although that is often a deal breaker in itself), it's all the other stuff that seems to inevitably go with it.

We are led to believe I think, that the wives who stay must just have the trans part to contend with and not all the other stuff somehow, but I just don't buy that.

I actually think it's really disingenuous of them to lump T with LGB in this context.

I don't think women leave their freshly-decloseted gay husbands because they have a problem with gay people. There's no homophobia in it; it's just a) incompatible sexualities and b) the fact of having been lied to.

When they come out as trans, both a) and b) apply, but there's also c) the fact that the progressives of our society hold trans to be the sacred caste, who can do no wrong and must be centred and championed at all costs. This gives them licence to abuse us, and those who accuse us of homophobia for not accepting this treatment are compounding the abuse.

Gay husbands aren't excused from minimum standards of civilised behaviour on account of being gay. The same cannot be said for trans-identified husbands.

As for why they're calling it "homophobia" I think there are two important drivers there: it confuses and obscures the issue; and they've realised that 'transphobia' isn't going to wash as a mechanism to shame us into submission.

As I said, they're the homophobes; and so are their supporters who've swallowed Stonewall's homophobic redefinition of the concept of orientation.

Yes, and if you're part of a sacred caste who not only should be able to do what they want in order to fulfil their stunning and brave destiny, but also must do it or they will die*, a partner's needs and desires barely get a look in.

Who wouldn't end up being abusive when you've been given a licence to do it?

*by suicide

Bold fail- there was supposed to be an asterix referring you the death being by (inevitable), suicide.

No bold fail so far as I can see; it worked as you meant it to.

I know we're supposed to hold abusers entirely responsible for their own actions; but this is a clear example of the fact that society also bears some responsibility, for facilitating males' abuses of women.

I don't blame individuals for the fact that society encourages them; I blame them for uncritically going along with it and grabbing the opportunity with both hands.

It's so bloody inconsistent too, this charge of homophobia - they're trying to have their cake and eat it, to my mind.

If they're truly women (as they claim to believe) then we're well within our rights to leave on the grounds of incompatible sexual orientations; and it's homophobic to expect us to try to change our orientations to accommodate them.

If they're truly men (as we believe) then we're well within our rights to leave on the grounds of their being abusive misogynistic arseholes, and also on the grounds of no longer being remotely attracted to them.

We're up against a juggernaut of refusal to accept facts on this one though - one of the twitter posts you shared upthread shows that clearly.

They think this is about us rejecting T as an identity?

No.

A major component of this - the component that can be justifiably compared to having a secretly-gay husband - is about us rejecting AGP as a sexuality that's incompatible with ours.

My ex wasn't AGP (as far as I know), but his decision to go down the trans path meant he was going down a route that was incompatible with my sexuality.