A long time ago my friend's male partner left him for another, much wealthier man, and (then in his 40s) immediately went on to transition on the new chap's dime. Friend moved on, has been in a new relationship for ages, seems happy. I hadn't thought about it for years until I read the new trans widows thread this morning, and it popped back into my mind.
I'm home sick and sitting around bored, had a look at friend's ex's FB page, where their photos include a naked pic of them as a young boy, taken by their 'first boyfriend'. It was posted over 5 years ago. A public (? whatever FB calls it) pic I guess since I'm not their FB friend. Over a hundred likes. Dozens of comments praising their beauty, femininity(!?) and precociousness. One person saying, hmm, you look quite young there before doing an immediate volte-face.
There's no doubt that it violates FB rules, aside from waving a million red flags to anyone, especially anyone who cares about this person, who seems to be disclosing historical child sex abuse.
This is the second male-born person in my social sphere who is open about seeing no problem with relationships between adult men and male children a la Peter Tatchell.
I was reminded of the artist Sally Mann, who was dragged into a controversy about photos of her own children playing and swimming, sometimes nude (pre-internet so the discussion and implications were different then) and the controversy around G Greer's book The Beautiful Boy.
It has made me feel quite cross and sad for people who work hard to centre children's interests, that this is what they're dealing with. Not just the evils of paedophilia but all these go-girl apologists with no clue and no concerns. And women taking photos of stickers that talk about women's erasure are being visited by the police.