What confuses me about Shaaba and Jamie Raines is Shaaba’s relatively recent announcement that she is Bisexual. I just watched her ‘coming out’ video on YouTube yesterday. They are about to be married to Jamie and I think intend having a monogamous relationship but felt the need to make a video stating that they are now proudly labelling themselves as bisexual. They admit to quite fancying women and if they were ever on Love Island they would want it to be 60% male and 30% female. It’s such a pointless, thing to announce unless what you are really saying is that you regret not having had a proper relationship with a woman or still want one. Which is a bit sad. Or that if Jamie was run over by a bus she might try a relationship with a woman next (and not one that has transitioned into a trans man complete with a metoidioplasty)
Even if this is something you pondered every once in a while, why the need to say it out loud, on video, as if it was actually important to anyone else but yourself?
My first thought on hearing this announcement was that if you believe yourself to be bisexual then of course you are going to be more likely to be attracted to someone who you knew as a girl/woman before they transitioned into a transman. But of course this has nothing to do with it.
It smacks to me of her wanting to have ‘Queer” credentials because being a ‘straight’ woman in a relationship with a trans man is too ‘heteronormative’ and she might end up getting treated badly by the Queer/Trans community like Amanda Jette Knox, who has a trans husband and a trans daughter (or are they non-binary now?) but is just a boring old woman who now thinks of themselves as a lesbian. It’s another flag she can now wave along with her trans ally flag at Pride.
Shaaba and Jamie are the very media friendly couple who made a video to explain to the world how wrong JKR’s statement was and how transphobic it was and how she should educate herself.Even Margaret Atwood was seduced by the sheer, ‘testily-exasperated-but-maintaining-our-niceness’ of this couple after watching their video. I think they both seem lovely people but they just don’t seem to engage at all with the deeper implications, arguments and impacts of their pronouncements. They just think anyone with any objections is not a nice person or are a bit stupid because ‘look at us - we’re lovely’ a la Jake Graf & Hannah Winterbourne. Real fingers-in-the-ear merchants.
I think it is lovely that people can still maintain their loving relationships through adversity. Many seem to accept that sex no longer plays a part. Some seem resigned and have perhaps had a life of playing second-fiddle in a relationship and this is just another chapter in that book. Some seem to accept the role of ‘protector’ and it becomes more like a mother/child dynamic (which I feel particular sympathy for because not many of the men who are late life transitioners seem to embrace the stereotypical domestic duties of ‘womanlyness’ just the clothes and make-up so the wife is still left cleaning up after them)
I am not surprised that The Guardian didn’t go out of their way to find less rosy stories. But I think there was an air of sadness in some of those stories that wouldn’t have passed many people by. Many people seem to accept change because they don’t think they could ever find love again and some want a quiet life with someone familiar even if they no longer entirely resemble the person they embarked on a relationship with. I hope they are all as happy as they say they are.