Angry with my non binary brother- how to help SIL

[Angrywithmybrother]

I’m a long time lurker on these boards but feel confounded by this recent situation in my own life. I’m thinking just typing it will help.

My brother (in his 40s) came out as non-binary last year. He was quite tearful when he told me as he thinks I’m a TERF and probably thought I’d react badly. I didn’t say much - “I can see why you would want to go move away from narrow gender constructs” or something like that. My parents didn’t say much either apparently. I don’t think they understand the issues.

I saw my SIL recently at a family event and got chatting to her. She basically said that she is devastated by the whole thing. Apparently my brother just announced it to her and their friends at the same time. He has started to go to work and social events ‘as a woman’ now. Dressed in a stereotypical female way. He has also started to repeatedly correct their children’s use of pronouns towards him, even though they don’t understand. If my SIL questions it he calls her a transphobe and a bigot. She said she is at breaking point.

I’m just wondering if anyone has had any luck talking to someone about this and getting them to see both sides. I feel like my brother has been radicalised.

Even if it is like being gay, and I can see some correllation, there's no excuse for gay people to come out in this way either I remember years ago watching an episode of Oprah or some other daytime chat show where a man had come out as gay and was beside himself with fury at his wife's reaction. He wanted all the compassion in the room for the torment he'd experienced at living such a lie for twenty years. No one said, 'where's your compassion for her? Have you no compassion for having inflicted on her for twenty years a life of sexual denial, of being made to feel repulsive every time she tried to instigate sex, of being denied the family she so longed for, of being gaslight and controlled and used as a beard against her knowledge.' This was decades before trans issues became mainstream. I remember feeling absolute fury on behalf of the woman and longed to be in the studio audience to be able to say: the issue here is not that you are gay, it's that you are a selfish piece of controlling, narcissistic shit.

@RoseRobot Thank you for this. Gay widows have never managed to amplify their experiences in the same way as transwidows. Like Mrs. Schofield we fade into the background, our abuse erased by rainbows and glitter.

No one said, 'where's your compassion for her? Have you no compassion for having inflicted on her for twenty years a life of sexual denial, of being made to feel repulsive every time she tried to instigate sex, of being denied the family she so longed for, of being gaslight and controlled and used as a beard against her knowledge'.

This. And it's impossible for the wife of a public figure who is used as a beard like this to voice her grief without being accused of homophobia or being unsupportive. No one is willing, in public at least, to recognise her as someone who has had her life unilaterally and irreversibly changed by her husband. We can acknowledge that historically, gay men and lesbians have been under pressure to marry to avoid homophobia and at the same time acknowledge that marrying someone to use them as a beard is a really crappy way to treat someone. The beard is simultaneously a co-victim of homophobia along with their spouse (because only married them because of homophobic pressure) and a victim of their spouse's selfishness.

What I am sure about is the person’s gender identity needs to be respected and accommodated.

Does it hell!

And then they are asking you to behave differently to them and treat them 'like a woman'. This is an explicit rejection of your previous relationship with them and saying they are a different person (even though everyone says they are the same person). @

@RedToothBrush thanks for articulating this so powerfully. I hadn't been able to.pinpoint some of the pain I experienced when one of my dc changed their name and identity - but this is a big part.

Brilliant- she can play those bullshit gender

He has also started to repeatedly correct their children’s use of pronouns towards him, even though they don’t understand. If my SIL questions it he calls her a transphobe and a bigot. She said she is at breaking point.

He’s a selfish, abusive dick.

Let your SIL know are has your full support and that it’s ok to leave him.

*…play those bullshit gender roles- do all the housework and be quiet. Unlikely, I think.

99.99% certainty he has a vicious porn habit concealed somehow. It'd be upsetting but looking through his computer files might provide useful insights and some idea just how rotten things are below the surface. If he has a Discord account, that's also a likely mine of TRA porn and reinforcement and will clue her in to how long this has been gestating in him. Likely longer than she realised and might give her clarity on what she actually wants to do. Also potentially useful during divorce if he has lots of degradation or fetish porn.

Honestly, I want to just straight up say divorce him and now, but that would be irresponsible as I don't actually know them. Still, she might want to have a look-see and see what she can see. If he's got it all locked down and she's not tech-savvy herself, a tech-minded friend may be able to help.

You are making an assumption here that most people who are trans become so owing to porn use. This is simply not true.

Also what you are advocating here is an invasion of personal privacy and possibly hacking.

You are making an assumption here that most people who are trans become so owing to porn use. This is simply not true

how do you know that?

No, she's making an assumption about most middle-aged male late transitioners, which sadly tends to be true.

The teen girls presenting at GIDS are also often transitioning because of what they've seen in porn, but to escape being the pornified object of desire, not to become it.

I'm not assuming most people who are trans become so due to porn habits. Young girls drawn into it aren't. Young boys may not be either. That can be gender dysphoria, a need to feel special or just out and out confusion due to gender stereotypes. I do indeed suggest that adult men who suddenly transition later in life do so out of autogynephillia which I think is heavily influenced by porn habits.

As to it being a major invasion of privacy, obviously. I'd say he has given SIL very strong grounds for concern about what he might be into or up to online. She's in a dangerous position frankly. As our her kids. You have an objection to my implying the trans movement is tied to abusive sexual fetishes. I say in the case of autogynephiles, it is so and one should act accordingly.

I know my parents had given considerable thought and love to my brother's name. It was in part a reflection of heritage and that wasn't replaced with equivalency. It meant a lot to them so I don't know how they must have felt. It must have felt like a rejection and an erasure of something in the family they wanted to honour and remember.

It's hard to explain it to people who have not experienced it with in their own family. I really found it upsetting in my own right.

I find it hard writing about him here and I waiver between they/he and sibling/brother because that's my history. I can't bring myself to rewrite my history and use she or sister because that's not my experience.

He transitioned as an adult and I can't say our relationship was close so in some ways it's easier because there hasn't been this forced maintenance that still living in the same household brings. My mum accepted it without question and my Dad just went along with her. But he pretty much doesn't keep in touch with them even then.

We were told at the time by my brother that family estrangement was common even in families that accepted it, because family were a constant reminder of the past. So he knew this himself but it all got framed as DH and I being awful - even though at first we tried. It was his appalling behaviour and the way he treated everyone that broke us and we didn't tolerate it. It wasn't his identity.

I ultimately think that some people want to simply reject family and cast themselves into this victim role because it gives them power in other ways going forward.

I don't think there is any level of empathy or consideration going on though. It's so self absorbed and inward looking.

None of that goes on with being gay (unless you marry a beard which I think is equally appalling).

I think I'm fairly at peace with it all now. There isn't anything I could have done differently. I don't think anything but estranged was ever on the cards for us both. I doubt my parents will ever share that though for various reasons.

Agree totally. It is not the identity part, it's the power and behaviour that is always the issue: which is supposed to be excused by the identity. It is wholly unreasonable and abusive to require someone else to re write their life, their history, even the evidence of their eyes and ears, to lie as required for another person's benefit. A well, socially functional person would not do this to strangers, never mind loved ones. Not a healthy relationship in any way and what is in it for the person required to surrender their reality? Other than a rather Christian-reminiscent sort of belief in the virtue of subservience.

I find it very interesting to read the accounts of women who have detransitioned, many of whom mention a need for control as being part of their transition. There are as I said above, a lot more links to addiction and anorexia than to a family member coming out as gay.

Just want to wish you well. Its a very difficult situation with estrangement as the constant threat hanging over everyone.

It's not usually true about women who become trans but it's highly, highly co-morbid with straight and even bisexual men who do.

Unquestionably.

Given you are so confident this person has become trans as a result of pornography (earlier you said ‘99.9% certainty’) I am confused as to why you are advising the SIL to violate the person’s privacy and hack into their accounts. Ethically and legally speaking that is a dubious step to take, and by your own analysis, there is little point in doing so anyway.

What do you mean by ‘become trans’ @DancingTortoise?

And no one is suggesting ‘hacking’ anything!

Have you ever spent any time on the ‘Relationships’ board, @DancingTortoise, or is it just this one that your frequent?

@RedToothBrush thank you for your posts. Your post about identity was truly educational.

How does someone become trans, @DancingTortoise ?

I find it remarkable how tortoise seems to see the worst in the women involved / on this forum but deadbeat dad should get a free pass for his appalling behaviour.

Funny isn't it?

Hear hear. 👏

I'm suggesting it as something the SIL may wish to do because - and I think I already stated this did I not? - it may her some certainty. She shouldn't be taking anonymous strangers on the Internet at their word. More to the point, given as yes, I am very confident that this is a fetish given the age and sex it's suddenly manifested in, it could give her a degree of gradiation in how bad it is. I mean, obviously it is bad - by the time someone brings these fetishes into real life, it's usually pretty deep rooted. But even so, it might give her some idea of if she's in physical danger or their kids are.