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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Women's hour right now - on transitioning husband?

90 replies

fastwigglylines · 11/01/2021 10:33

I just caught a snippet of Women's Hour but won't be able to listen properly till later - getting the DC set up with homeschooling now.

Please don't tell me it's a segment on how to be a doting wife to a transwoman with no balance? That's what it sounded like from the bit I caught. I hope I'm wrong!

OP posts:
Melroses · 11/01/2021 16:19

[quote ErrolTheDragon]I didn't catch who it was - seems like it's the case in this ongoing discussion:

From now on, I was in an LGBTQ+ family’: my husband came out as trans while I was on maternity leave www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4123411-From-now-on-I-was-in-an-LGBTQ-family-my-husband-came-out-as-trans-while-I-was-on-maternity-leave[/quote]
Yes, the PR machinery has been working hard - she has been everywhere since Christmas.

they will be tethered together for at least the next 18 years It is a very long time. Things change.

I am always suspicious of books where someone has found the answer via unconventional means. It never seems to have panned out that way, when someone catches up with them later on, if it ever had in the first place.

Melroses · 11/01/2021 16:21

@MissingLinker

Sorry, I've missed this and have just read through the thread. How isn't the baby genetically her's?
From what I remember, it was just a strange result from a genetic test that was sorted out.

It adds a bit of mild peril to the story.

TeenyTinyDustinHoffman · 11/01/2021 16:23

Ah, thank you @Melroses Smile

PearPickingPorky · 11/01/2021 16:28

@MissingLinker

Sorry, I've missed this and have just read through the thread. How isn't the baby genetically her's?
It was a mistake with the harmony test she had. The baby was hers, but the first test gave erroneous results. They investigated further and all was well. Think they got someone else's test results or something.

She said this in her Guardian article.

Such an enormous level of stress she must have been under during her infertility years and then this happening when she was pregnant. Then the baby is born and your narcissistic husband makes it all about them.

jhuizinga · 11/01/2021 16:29

I didn't hear WH but I did hear most of AH's interview with Mariella Frostup this afternoon. The husband came across as incredibly self-centred. As well as miscarriages, IVF treatment and pregnancy she had been sexually assaulted when nine months pregnant and the perpetrator had been found not guilty, leaving her completely unable to challenge the verdict. She described hiding her breastmilk in the fridge as her husband was doing all the feeding. She certainly didn't come across as happy as she said she now was. I can really believe she is still quite traumatised. I don't think the issue of her baby not being genetically hers came up (though I might have missed it) but, from an interview I saw in the Times recently, it was later decided that the baby was genetically hers. I've no idea how the uncertainty arose.

HecatesCats · 11/01/2021 16:34

I agree, she has been through a series of traumatic events that must have put/be putting her under enormous psychological strain.

PearPickingPorky · 11/01/2021 16:42

Remember when the Guardian used to run articles like this:

www.theguardian.com/society/2012/nov/02/my-husbands-sex-change

Some excerpts:

Yet Tom was interested in my relationships with other women. Too interested. Whenever I began a friendship, he would edge suffocatingly close. One time he called a new friend in secret to ask for babysitter recommendations so he could take me out for my birthday. After that, he often found some pretext – it always felt like a pretext – of doing something nice, and got his hands on a friend's phone number, calling for advice or information and asking her for secrecy. It felt creepy every time.

And

For his part, Tom's perspective was that if I loved him, I would accept that a transsexual has to do what a transsexual has to do – and sacrifice my own identity accordingly. When he wasn't telling me that the person I thought I had known had never existed at all, he'd say it was a sign of my limitations that I couldn't grasp the idea of same person, different package.

Then:

" What if you knew that doing this would destroy one or all of the children?" I asked him. Ice cold, the man I had once thought a wonderful father replied, "I would do it anyway."

So many more parts to quote, but I'd be here all day. It's really worth a read.

The Guardian would never publish something this good, and honest, anymore.

Hollybutnoivy · 11/01/2021 16:45

The genetic test mix up was worrying because she had IVF but using her own eggs. When the result came back that she was unrelated to the baby, she had the extra worry of wondering whether there had been a mix up at the clinic and the wrong embryo had been implanted. Thankfully it turned out to be a mistake in the testing process and the baby is hers genetically.

Angryresister · 11/01/2021 16:48

She almost choked at the beginning from trying not to use the word father... I am in no doubt that she is being gaslit and erased in that relationship. Trying to do what she can, but to repeat twice that it’s the anti trans narrative that is the problem is disingenuous to say the least

Hollybutnoivy · 11/01/2021 16:57

She also lives in Brighton. I can imagine it being quite isolating in Brighton if you want to support trans people but don't go along with the TWAW and always have been mantra.

ArabellaScott · 11/01/2021 17:05

@happydappy2

Right at the end she talked about 'getting over' her possession of the word Mummy, how in the great scheme of things she couldn't fight over that (it's just a word.) So I imagine the man she fell in love with, who fathered her child, is now insisting on also being called mummy. The thought of co parenting with someone like that is extremely worrying. I wish her and her child all the best-I fear they are in for a rocky ride with an extremely selfish individual.
That really makes my heart ache.

You don't have to get over anything, AH. You are and always will be your baby's mummy. You and nobody else - you are the only person who carried and birthed your baby.

The mother/baby dyad is the strongest human bond. It makes me angry that anyone would try to infringe on it, lessen it or make a mother feel that they were somehow less entitled to it or required to share that bond.

If it's 'just a word', then why does she have to surrender her 'possession' of it? Of course it's not 'just' a word - it's a word with the strongest associations, meanings and emotions attached to it. In the word is a representation of the bodily reality of having carried and birthed a baby!

To think that someone would make this kind of statement just after a long and difficult maternal journey is - well. What kind of a person would do that? Deny their wife the language of her experience?

You can't have our words. You don't have our bodies. You don't and can't and won't. Ever.

Why not expand the bandwidth of 'father', ffs?!

MichelleofzeResistance · 11/01/2021 17:06

f I loved him, I would accept that a transsexual has to do what a transsexual has to do – and sacrifice my own identity accordingly.

We're back to the whole mummy thing again, aren't we? Curry used to talk about that in the context of this kind of relationship.

I miss Curry, they talked a good deal of sense.

Bigbirdbetty · 11/01/2021 17:08

@Hollybutnoivy

She also lives in Brighton. I can imagine it being quite isolating in Brighton if you want to support trans people but don't go along with the TWAW and always have been mantra.
Can I just ask what Brighton has to do with it? Just curious
ArabellaScott · 11/01/2021 17:11

'Join Damian and Alex, author of 'Running Like A Girl' and 'Leap In', in conversation on Instagram Live at 8pm on Thursday 14th.'

www.instagram.com/p/CJ5-NGKgDfv/

blue25 · 11/01/2021 17:18

I felt very uncomfortable listening to this. AH needs to take time to realise what has actually happened to her. Her husband is a bully and abusive. She sounds beaten down.

Hollybutnoivy · 11/01/2021 17:22

Join Damian and Alex, author of 'Running Like A Girl' and 'Leap In', in conversation on Instagram Live at 8pm on Thursday

So Damian is now totally rehabilitated and is allowed to champion trans rights despite his tweets? Seems perfectly fair...

PearPickingPorky · 11/01/2021 17:26

It's the city of Woke/Trans, BigBird.

Hollybutnoivy · 11/01/2021 17:30

Yes - and it seems to affect everything. Brighton was also where a female patient was banded as transphobic for asking for a female to carry out her mammogram, for instance.

Jocasta2018 · 11/01/2021 17:33

I feel for the child and also for the mother, trapped in 'woke' Brighton & trying to co-parent amicably. Still not sure why she had to write a book about it.

I've been mulling it over.

If you have a trans husband/wife & you have children then surely their title should amalgamate both their roles?
If you are a father that becomes a trans woman, Daddy + Mummy = Maddy.
If you are a mother that becomes a trans man, Mummy + Daddy = Dummy.
Sorted.

JoodyBlue · 11/01/2021 17:47

She wrote a book because she is a writer. I remember how vulnerable it feels when you have young kids. You need to parent and you need to provide. So if the way she earns money is to write that's what she does. I haven't listened to the interview yet. I will. I've read her other books "Running like a Girl" and "Dive In" (or something like that). I am interested to hear her speak. I also think from the tone of her interview in the guardian and the story of what has happened that she will be traumatised by events.

MichelleofzeResistance · 11/01/2021 17:59

In gay families where both parents are the same sex I've always known the children have their own name for each parent, so one is daddy and one is da or one is mummy and one is mama. I've never known the children to be expected to have the same name for both parents.

Its one thing to no longer want to be called daddy and to negotiate with your children on finding what they may call you instead. It's quite another to try and commandeer and appropriate your children's name for their mother. Taking names is not a small thing, and as the quote above, it is changing and removing parts of identity. It's messing with your children as much as your partner, it shows so little respect, or care or awareness of them and their needs.

And as parents know with grandparent names - (looking at my MiL) you may have planned since early pregnancy what you intend for a child to call you that you will just melt to hear their little voices say ..... the children however may develop a totally different name for you, and there will not be much you can do about it, because language and the concepts of language belong to the speaker.

ariel333 · 11/01/2021 18:08

What I thought was odd was that she seemed genuinely frightened of the tide of 'anti-trans sentiment' she and her partner would encounter - and she lives in Brighton! I think you would have to look pretty hard for any anti-trans sentiment there.

ThatIsNotMyUsername · 11/01/2021 18:10

I suspect negative attitudes (for that’s what is more likely) is her ex partners behaviour, at the time it happened and their behaviour. Yes live your life, be you etc but don’t hurt others.

Hollybutnoivy · 11/01/2021 18:12

What I thought was odd was that she seemed genuinely frightened of the tide of 'anti-trans sentiment'
Well seeing as she interprets JKR saying "I want trans women to be safe" as being virulently anti-trans, I would say that maybe she interprets everything that falls short of enthusiastic approval as being menacing.