Thank you: Debbie Hayton in the Mail

[Needmoresleep]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13011839/I-went-agonising-operation-thought-woman-finally-make-happy-devastating-revelation.html

Yes, I have to agree with this.

I have long noticed that I haven't read a single narrative from a man who says they're trans, that isn't loaded with sexism at best, and misogyny at worst.

Don't get me wrong, many are very polite. But the entire concept of using womanhood to ameliorate your own distress, is sexist.

Because it's not womanhood, by any real understanding or appreciation of it, is it?

It's not suddenly deciding you want to take on all the mental loads, do the housework, write all the Christmas cards, etc, and all the other stuff that 'womanhood' might confer on a woman.

It's clothes and pronouns.

it's using their own concept of womanhood, repackaged to suit their needs.

and those are the ones that people might consider really, really nice. They are few and far between anyway.

And those trying to push that women have some duty to pacify paraphilic suffering men by being non consenting sexual objects, and accepting that this means some women are excluded from all resources so that some men can get their rocks off better, really need some sessions with said therapist and some help to sort out their boundaries.

This.

I'd also to remember that their flexible boundaries aren't mine

Depends on the relationship. There’s abuse in some late transition relationships (ie control, bullying, isolation, gaslighting, boundary erosion etc) but not all.
What makes you an authority on this?

It's clothes and pronouns.

Don't forget the tits!

I don't think someone with a sexual fetish that involves the reactions/actions/involvement of an audience should be teaching.

There is some, but still woefully little research; as you know discussion is more confined to articles, blogs, books, films, individual testimony. I can only really speak from a combination of these and personal experience of people I know or have worked with.

From what I have seen there are abusive relationships in which trans is added as another spoke to the abuse wheel; there are relationships where women do not report prior abuse (however one interprets that) where the partner changes unrecognisably on announcement of trans to display control, bullying, gaslighting etc; there are relationships that end over the issue; and finally there are relationships where the female partner genuinely seems to be fine with it (fwiw I wouldn’t really count Stephanie in that).

Never claimed any authority, simply contributing to the discussion like everyone else.

I know that there are relationships where the wife is fine with the husband being a TV, but surely transition is different, because public, and involves physical modification?

I can only really speak from a combination of these and personal experience of people I know or have worked with.

Well, you may well have that in common with many of us who may be a little more tentative about forced teaming or making assertions without an evidence base.

However, by virtue of Tinsel's advocacy, interactions, and experience, I'd expect her to have a more extensive and rounded range of experience than most of us. Especially as it's not unusual for her to be present for bewildered women and children and to support them as they gradually lose their scales upon scales over extended periods of time.

The problem with thinking there are a significant number of women who are okay with it is, is by the nature of control, you're not going to know.

But then, when the man dies, you see that the marriage they all said was fine, was shit. See Jan Morris. Zoe Tur too, I think had a daughter who spilt the beans.

I've seen the transwidows accurately predict the pattern of behaviour of these men.

It really doesn't make me think that there are many 30-year-old marriages which would buck the trend.

Never claimed any authority,
Yet you feel qualified to contradict me.

Whether you think any spouse can be truly unaffected by transitioning spouses and tolerant of it must surely depend on whether you think that some men might have mislocated gender essences.

I don't at all now. Babies aren't born with gender dysphoria or AGP; they develop it in reaction to pervasive cultural misogyny (and sometimes homophobia). How can one develop either condition without the underlying misogyny affecting how they treat the women in their lives? How is it not hurtful for the man you love to reduce your life as a female human to props?

When I was a child, I had a significant speech impediment. Gradually, I got rid of it, but before I did, I'd experienced a lot of children (and adults) mimicking it. Mostly male, but sometimes female. It was always demeaning, because grotesque imitations of other people's personal traits are!

I'm sure you can find adult women with continued speech impediments who put up with their husbands mocking it, but I don't believe you could find any who genuinely didn't care.

I differed on one aspect, I wasn’t aware you considered your perspective an absolute.

I have great respect for women working in this area. And I’ve worked with women in abusive relationships myself.

But if we go back to the original interaction, TA’s phrase “a new way of describing domestic abuse” - what are the implications of that?

Either a. All cross dressing/trans relationships are abusive - in which case I would disagree and feel there’s a reasonable evidence base for that; or b. Some cross dressing/trans relationships are abusive - in which case I would agree and feel there a reasonable evidence base for that. Granted that in the circs we are including personal testimony as evidence as there’s not a great deal of research.

I differed on one aspect, I wasn’t aware you considered your perspective an absolute.
I don't consider it absolute but I'd expect, given I've got so much experience on the matter, that somebody who challenged it who wanted to be taken seriously would back that challenge up with more than "just contributing".

I think that @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision 's thesis is that cross-dressing is abusive per se, whether it leads to transition or not. Like you, I had got confused and thought that pp were talking about DV and CC.

a sexual orientation rather than a paraphilia

'A total of eight Paraphilias are listed in the DSM V and include pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual sadism, sexual masochism, frotteurism, fetishism, and transvestic fetishism'

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554425/#:~:text=Introduction,that%20are%20atypical%20in%20nature.

'Fetishism is the use of nonliving objects, most commonly shoes and undergarments, for sexual pleasure.[8] Transvestic fetishism is the derivation of sexual arousal from cross-dressing or dressing in clothes of the opposite sex.'

It is maybe worth having a read up of the ICD-10, although no doubt this has been carefully adjusted to remove any suggestion that there's ever anything harmful in what was called 'transvestic fetishism'.

Most paraphilias depend on or involve non-consensual participation of others.

If you're easy on non consenting people being involved in other people's sexual experiences and fetishes - which is abusing them - where are you going to put the line?

How do you say it's ok for that guy to get his kicks undressing and playing with tampons in a women's changing room, even though it revolts, annoys and scares some of those women (which often adds to the sexual thrill of someone doing this kind of thing, their distress is arousing) and means that some women can no longer have any changing room, cos poor guy, it's apparently his sexual orientation to be a sex pest to women rather than awful behaviour choices being indulged - but say it's not ok for another guy to get his kicks stripping off and wagging his bits in a children's soft play area? If that's his orientation?

What about the guy whose orientation is rapist? Or serial killer orientation?

It's like the once you've agreed someone can legally be the sex they want rather than the sex they are you've opened the door wide to a guy of 50 legally forcing admittance to your kid's nursery. Because if you can choose one reality and enforce it, there's a powerful precedent to all other realities too. The door is open, the precedent is there. And the guy's really sad!

You may think it's extreme and silly, and a rational person has lines and boundaries. Yes, we've all fallen for that one; it's a good faith belief being used against you. Go and see how the salami tactics and the thin end of the wedge has been used in the past eight years to smash women's rights and child safeguarding. Is being used right now.

It is not ok to use other people sexually. Breaking other people's consent boundaries is not ok. There are no grey areas on this. And females are not born with a biological duty of needing to make male people's dicks happy. They are really not.

And that is why I prefer to avoid false syllogisms and stark binaries.

The paucity of the evidence base is remarkably disappointing so I will continue to recognise my perspective as tentative and still to be fully formed. The lived and wider experience of contributors like Tinsel will continue to shape my understanding of promoted narratives designed to promote empathy and sympathy for one part of the story. Tinsel and the transwidow thread remind me to acknowledge empathy bias and the missing narratives of those affected by this.

(I paraphrase but Helen Joyce discusses this when she proposes that unaccountable decisions tend to have a parent with a trans child or a personal narrative at their heart. Everyone rushes to demonstrate empathy for the person at the heart of that well-designed narrative rather than pausing to consider the people who aren't present and the consequences for them. And this is why we have women excluded from major reviews of our rights when the likes of Jess Bradley, Aimée Challenor, Jane Fae et al are honoured and esteemed invitees.)

If that's a case of TLDR: disrespect and abuse to others is not a valid sexual orientation. It's a choice.

One particular focus for transvestic fetish is or used to be nursing uniforms.

How many nurses are accepting of men's fetishisation of their job's uniform? How many could live with a spouse who constantly minimised their physically demanding, psychologically gruelling, high-responsibility job as something to masturbate over?

I understand that, and I don’t agree with it. I’m not saying it’s not prevalent; just it doesn’t characterise some of trans relationships that I have been around and some of the personal testimony I have listened to.

Some interesting btl comments here about non-consensual fetish enjoyment:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/09/foot-fetish-wife-no-longer-let-me-near-her-feet

People are more sympathetic to trans than to fetishism, so DH is taking a risk. I hope there's lots of pushback.

@RethinkingLife It’s the all or nothing hard and fast statements that I’m questioning.