Stephanie Hayton in The Times

[nythbran2]

Share token: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/14e32be1-7d9e-41e9-833d-04defedc9cad?shareToken=7730fec65ff9cf9bf7f92cc29de3781c

Because she's very religious, and has claimed they are both celibate now.

Janice Turner was not constrained to write female pronouns. She made it quite clear she did it out of respect, despite knowing that it was a characteristic of a sexual fetish.

People are concerned that a leading newspaper and highly popular journalist don't understand the nature of a sexual fetish, despite the person who has it being unequivocal about it.

I don’t want to tell other people what to say. But I don’t want to see our media and judiciary etc calling men women as they have a responsibility to be honest. Or you’d think they would anyway.

That is a very odd article.

Talking about truth and reality, and that you can't undo evolution and that everyone knows the difference between men and women, but then saying she's upset because people won't accept female pronouns for Debbie Hayton?

It doesn't really make any sense.

I hope he doesn't fucking make it to woman's hour; that will be a final straw.

If you look at any successful reform/protest movement (from abolitionism to suffragism and beyond), it tends to start with the energetic radicals, then the intellectuals come in (for better or worse), and then as it moves into the mainstream it requires more moderate voices to convert the general public.

If we collapse into a purity spiral and silence the more moderate voices then we give ammunition to our enemies - people like Owen Jones and Adrian Harrop who are desperate for a chance to paint us as misandrist harridans who can't stop squabbling.

Personally, it's got fuck all to do with a purity spiral, and everything to do with safeguarding.

If a male teacher tells you he gets sexually aroused when you call him by a female pronoun, and you keep doing it out of respect', you're telling everyone it's okay to drive a horse and cart through safeguarding.

We've got simultaneous articles where half of boys think you can't rape someone if you're already having a sexual relationship with them. And now we're telling children everywhere even respected and influential adults will pander to a sexual fetish out of 'politeness'?

Nothing to do with purity spirals.

I think this must be bloody awful for Stephanie Hayton. And their children.

Who wants their personal, intimate details splashed across every newspaper in the land, as a precursor to an entire fucking book about it??

I believe the children must be in their late teens early 20s now? Jeez, what a thing to have to be carrying around.

It's a kind of exhibitionism, isn't it? Discussing your lack of sex life all over the papers/in a book and trying to look respectable while doing it? My fear is that it's a mutation of the same malaga impulse that people are going along with. It is, of course, a matter for their own judgement but I can understand the perspective of women who've reached the limits of their tolerance with indulging this stuff.

It seems as if there is a level of intimacy between Janice and Debbie - given how quickly this rushed response has been published.

Very sad article that is missing an end paragraph or something.

If she is as strong as she says, and her marriage must have been hell, then why does she say she stays away from social media followed up by saying she's upset about social media comments.

Are we not allowed to say we believe her life is hell. They are the ones in the media. Are we only allowed to comment if we fawn over the presentation of their marriage.

They present themselves as a rock solid marriage, why would you care what people on the internet say. It doesn't affect who you are, your husband has written a book for public consumption, he's forever out there. It's a very controversial subject. Did Stephanie expect only bunnies and roses.

She is an admirable Christian for sticking with her marriage and for being supportive of Debbie in his AGP. I also admire Debbie giving us a rather honest description of his AGP. It must be a very difficult thing to have lived with. But he was wrong to deceive his wife into marriage. There's is an interesting contribution to understanding trans, and AGP in particular. It was fascinating to read how Debbie lost out of teaching union leader because he refuses to toe the TRA line.

You follow a lot of 'ultras' do you? Are we accepting that term now?

I listened to most of the Robbie Travers space yesterday. Apparently 'ultra' has some really nasty connotations in the football world and a lot of contributers were very pissed off about being called that.

I've seen a few accounts take on the term in a tongue-in-cheek way since JT's tweets, the same as they took on labels such as 'domesticated zombie' and 'pound shop le pen'. Do you follow a lot of domesticated zombies too?

I'd quite like to hear him interviewed. And also Stephanie. But not together. Might give us more perspective on their lived reality and in particular what it is to be a woman married to an AGP man. Debbie has been a good counterbalance to those that want to force us to accept that men can be women. So his is a very valid contribution in this discussion.

Despite claiming to follow er, 'ultras' and knowing all about it, that person clearly doesn't know anything.

Speculating that Stephanie Hayton could be having sex outside her marriage is a clear indication that you've read fuck all about it.

I think the language Stephanie chooses to use about her experience is important.

She mentions 'the trans widows who have been abandoned or abused by trans ex-husbands' at the start of the article. These are other women. She does not see herself as a trans widow.

This was also mentioned in Janice Turners article.
Stephanie, feisty and tough, balks at the idea she is a passive victim, a “trans widow”. “I feel sad at times, but I’m at peace and Debbie is so much happier.”

Stephanie seems to think that being a trans widow, or even believing that Debbie has been abusive, makes her a victim. She doesn't want to see herself as a victim, which is understandable, because for her this word implies weakness and passivity. She says that she has made her own choices. This is what she believes or wants to believe, even though she is only 'at peace' while Debbie is happier. But is she also happier?

But none of what Stephanie says or believes means that Debbie is not abusive. This says nothing about Stephanie, her reactions to Debbie's actions or her beliefs about her own situation. Abusive behaviours are abuse, no matter what the effect on the victim or how they feel about it. (I've been trying to think of another word rather than victim, which Stephanie would reject, but I can't think of one.)

Yeah, this worries me too. I suppose I am not surprised, many GC feminists come out of communities that are heavy on purity spirals, but it is so toxic.

There seems to be a desire to shut down SH because she doesn't say the things, or respond the way, some GC people would like. Or to speculate quite broadly when she doesn't choose to put all of her own personal life in the public eye. Her situation doesn't seem particularly happy to me but I find the push to try and insist she supports a particular way of thinking about her life rather distasteful.

It almost seems like half an article. Of course she doesn't owe the world anything so might just have wanted to get her point of view into the media and wasn't interested in any further discussion.

I hope that it has helped Stephanie.

I found resonance with Stephanie in her interview with Stella O'Malley in the 'It's Time to Talk' video as has every woman I have shared this with.

All this time I've been thinking, 'When are we going to hear from Stephanie Hayton?' and now we have and I feel kind of voyeuristic even for reading, let alone talking about it and speculating about what she might really mean. So I'm going to stop. I hope she and their children are OK.

My reflection is that the article is odd.

Interesting that SH doesn't use any pronouns to refer to DH.

My first impression was that she has been asked (coerced) into writing this. Hence why it is confusing with no clear narrative.

SH has important things to say but isn't allowed (possibly by herself) to express them. But her feelings still leak out.

The article made me feel very worried for her mental state tbh, especially given her implied claims that she is fine.

But that's just my impression. I was going to say only SH knows how she truly feels, but after that article I'm not sure she does; the internal conflict seems palpable.

If Stephanie is happy, then good for her.

It doesn't sound to me like a "feisty" life, personally. Or a relationship that is passionate and desirable to me. It's not a choice I'd make for myself.

But lots of people live as friends with their partners and accept a loss of intimacy through choice for very many reasons, including economics, illness or disability etc.

That said, I'd be very uncomfortable with Stephanie's life being the "expectation" of a partner in this situation and I worry that this is what is being somehow promoted. Although Stephanie does acknowledge that there are lots of other voices to be heard, she does suggest that marriages change and maturity demands acceptance - for her, this means that she needs to change what she wants from her marriage rather than dissolve her marriage due to her Christian faith, but her decision is not a template for everyone.

(I don't dislike DH and admire her in some ways, but I think she needs to clarify her position on the guidance she wrote for schools and really accept the realities that come with being an AGP).

We heard quite a lot from Stephanie in this interview in 2020. (Interview is transcribed in 4 parts, link goes to part 3.)

Stephanie had no say at all. Debbie said he would leave if Stephanie wanted him to. Eventually she asked him to leave. He refused. Then Debbie gave Stephanie a tiny space to have her input.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/4053058-Debbie-and-Stephanie-Hayton-interview-transcript?reply=100925534

Kristen [interviewer]: Did you think about leaving at any point, did you think about divorce or was it, 'let's keep it together for the kids and the family'?

Stephanie: We decided, I can't remember why, but we decided that maybe we should take time out to chat once a fortnight or so and we went out to a local arts centre on the Thursday evening and we would chat about how things were going. And Debbie's life at the time did revolve around Debbie. It was what Debbie wanted; Debbie was choosing. I had no say apart from at maximum, 'Just kind of slow down very slightly' and one of these Thursday evenings, I just said, 'Well look you keep telling me that you're going to transition, you're going to keep going. Even if you have to leave, even if you have to walk out, I think maybe we need to separate because I can't cope with it anymore,' and Debbie said, 'Okay if that's what you want, then that's what we'll do.'

But my daughter was about two months away from her first set of significant School exams, which are taken at age 16 in Britain. And so two weeks later, we went back on a Thursday evening to this local arts centre and Debbie said, 'I've been thinking and I'm not going to move out. I want to stay' and at that point, I really just felt, 'Well, I've got nothing here. All along, you've been saying that, if necessary, you will leave and eventually I've got to the point of saying okay, you need to leave. And you're now saying you refuse.' So again, actually that was a turning point for Debbie. I think Debbie realized that if she wanted to stay within the family, she needed to actually start thinking about the family a little bit more, rather than just what she wanted and how she was going to do things. And after that, I started having a little bit more of a say and Debbie would ask my opinion about things and I felt that my opinion was actually making a small amount of difference, maybe not huge, but a small amount of difference. And we got through my daughter's exams and, at that point, you know, it was then three months after I'd said, 'I think you need to leave'. And things were better, though a long way from perfect but much better than that very, very low point.

Interesting that SH doesn't use any pronouns to refer to DH.

She does. She uses female pronouns for him.

I am Stephanie, and I am married to Debbie. In case you haven’t heard, Debbie transitioned from male to female in 2012 and has written a book about her story, gender politics and why gender ideology is a bad idea. Her voice is important because she has lived through transition and challenges gender groupthink from the inside.

It seemed to just be a sort of declaration that they don't share "genital intimacy" (very weird label) but are still the best of friends and a good match and intimate in every other way. I kind of wanted to know how the transition impacted her and how she felt, but I guess she doesn't need to share that. Odd article really, wanting to claim her voice but not really saying anything (yet). They are an interesting couple though. And from what I know, I like Debbie's take.

I'm pleased that my friends helped me get the fuck out when told them what was going on, rather than giving me a list of other types of intimacy.

Thanks for pointing that out @OldCrone In the rest of the article, the use of Debbie in place of she or her is very noticeable and clunky.

The cynic in me wonders who wrote that first paragraph, the 'setting the tone' start of the article. To my eyes it doesn't quite match the rest.

But like I say, that's just me.