Loving a Transman Isn't Easy

[SecretAgentMa'am]

Originally Posted by betenoire

I went and checked out her personal blog, and I promise she's still talking. I'm glad about that.

Oh good. Is her blog linked in the article? I didn't see it. Can you direct me?

What I am -not- glad about is the part where I read that some jerk actually went so far as to email her husband to talk about what a horrible giant meanie pants transphobe she is. That's inappropriate behaviour right there. Whoever did that is a jackass.

Weren't we *just* having a conversation about that sort of thing?

I disagree so incredibly strongly with what you said. She's not talking about not getting to say "omg you have mangina!" without being called transphobic. She's talking about not getting to admit that she's hurt and not 100% on board without being called transphobic. Those are two different things.

And I've got news for you: there really is a culture of shame around our honest feelings about our partners. i've been on message boards, email lists, newsgroups, and in-person "SOFFA" groups and not once have I seen an environment where it's not okay for us to not be 100% okay. I'm not talking about transpeople creating a hostile environment for partners who have misgivings - I'm talking about us doing it to each other.

Example: I am transphobic because I said that playing the "is that a new hair?" game is not a fun way to spend my time. No, it wasn't a transperson I heard that from - it was somebodies girlfriend.

Because that's how it fucking works. The expectation is that we leap around excitedly. It's almost like an olympics of proving how exceptionally accepting and supportive we are. And any time that somebody doesn't do "dating a transperson" correctly everybody else gets to lift themselves up higher at their expense.

All of this.

It happens from all sides. The support group I was banned from started out being just for non-trans partners. Then some of the trans partners felt excluded, like they weren't allowed in the group because there was something "wrong" with them. Well, no, they weren't allowed because the group wasn't for them. But they put up a stink, and no one wanted to be called transphobic, so they were allowed into the group with the caveat that they were just there to observe and the group was still a safe space for partners to talk about their feelings. Then a few of the trans partners felt "silenced" by that caveat, and you know we can't have that. I entered the group while all of this was going on, and it didn't take long at all for it to become clear that while the group's mission statement said it was a safe space for partners of transfolk to discuss their feelings, it was anything but. There was a faction in the group who seemed to be there solely to lie in wait for someone to say something they didn't like so they could pounce. By the time I was banned, the group had turned almost entirely into a competition to prove who could be the most supportive of trans people and call out the most transphobia. It certainly wasn't a place where any partner of a person in transition could express that they weren't feeling so great about that.

I found the same thing all over town. There were at the time 4 or 5 in-person support groups in Portland that I was able to track down, and every one had an inclusive policy that pretty well defeated the purpose of a support group for me. The whole concept of partners discussing transition and related issues out of earshot of trans people was apparently offensive. I asked a couple of the organizers of those groups if they knew of any groups that were *just* for non-trans partners, and I got called transphobic for that, too.

I'm glad to hear that there are such groups elsewhere, but I didn't have access to any of them.