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.

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by SecretAgentMa'am

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

I put it in your rep notes just now.

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

YES!

Also some obnoxious people have followed her to her blog to yell at her in the comments. I want to find each one of them and do them bodily harm.

I hope that nobody HERE is harassing her. And if you are, know this: I don't fucking like you.

[nycfem]

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[betenoire]

Originally Posted by SecretAgentMa'am

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 forgot to respond to this part. I almost choked on my coffee when I read it!

Because, honestly, it is wildly inappropriate that these groups operate any other way. They SHOULD be just for non-trans partners. PERHAPS if the trans partners weren't always fucking THERE in those groups people would tone down the performative "look how supportive and happy I am!" rhetoric and just be honest for 30 seconds.

[SecretAgentMa'am]

Originally Posted by betenoire

I forgot to respond to this part. I almost choked on my coffee when I read it!

Because, honestly, it is wildly inappropriate that these groups operate any other way. They SHOULD be just for non-trans partners. PERHAPS if the trans partners weren't always fucking THERE in those groups people would tone down the performative "look how supportive and happy I am!" rhetoric and just be honest for 30 seconds.

This. Seriously. Could you imagine if you were in therapy and your partner demanded to come to your sessions to monitor what you were saying? Or if they got access to your therapist's notes so they could bring up things you'd said in your "safe space" later on in an argument? I really doubt that anyone would think that was okay, but apparently in this case it's supposed to be okay.

The really sad thing is that my experience was in Portland, OR. We have a huge LGBT community here. Sometimes I think the transmen in this town outnumber the female ID butches (they probably don't, but it feels that way on occasion). I think part of the problem here is that we've gone so far to the other side of the pendulum swing. So many people just don't have any access to support groups at all. Here, there are so many they're competing with each other, and they all seem to have decided the way to compete is by being the very most inclusive of all the inclusive groups. A large part of the Portland ethic is that you can never, ever be exclusionary about anything, ever. That sounds great on the surface, but what it actually translates to is hundreds of groups that aren't actually *about* anything. We have knitting clubs where half the members don't knit, cooking clubs where half the members don't cook, I recently joined the campus Queer Club, and only about 1/3 of the membership is actually LGBT. It used to be called something like LGBT Students of {college} but they changed it to Queer Club because people felt excluded. Because, you know, we're inclusive and that means it doesn't matter what the group is actually for, everyone who feels like coming is welcome whether they care about the stated purpose of the group or not.