<p>First, I appreciate the kind comments from people, very much.</p>
<p>Second, to AnuddahMom, I know you’ve been very supportive of me. And I do understand where you’re coming from. So I’m trying to remain calm.</p>
<p>But this is really upsetting me. At a time when I’m already anxious enough over my medical situation! And my klonipin prescription has run out! (I’m waiting for my doctor to send me a new one. I have really major anxiety issues sometimes, for which the anti-depressant I take, which does significantly reduce my continuous low-level anxiety, doesn’t always help.)</p>
<p>You could have PM’d me to raise the issue of what happened in my marriage, which obviously isn’t the subject of this thread. I could have explained some things privately which might have given you a somewhat different viewpoint, but I’ve made a decision not to discuss them on a public forum, and I feel that you’ve put me in a position of trying to explain the situation with a hand tied behind my back. It makes me very uncomfortable.</p>
<p>What I find it particularly upsetting is the implication that I don’t give “equal respect, regard, and consideration” to trans partners or their issues and concerns. I simply don’t think that’s so. I’ve been a member for almost six years, and a moderator for about three years, on what I believe is the only forum on the Internet that gives equal voice and equal standing to trans women, and to their present and former spouses and partners. It was founded by and is run by my good friend Helen Boyd, whose spouse is a trans woman, and who’s written two books focusing on partners of trans people and their issues – in one of which she actually wrote about me, and both of which I reviewed and commented upon in draft form. Helen is probably the leading advocate in the country for partners of trans women. (She also runs a yahoo group exclusively for trans partners in which they can talk in private.) I don’t think it’s unfair for me to say that I’m considered one of the biggest supporters and defenders of trans partners on that Internet forum. And I can promise you that for every sad story you’ve ever heard, I’ve heard 100. (By the way, I’ve heard quite a few sad stories in my time from trans people themselves about how they were treated in or after their own marriages; the worst, by far, are the nightmarish, tragic cases in which they are deprived of their children, and prohibited from even seeing them – something that used to be sanctioned by the judicial system, but, thank God, doesn’t happen so much anymore.) You don’t have to educate me about the difficulties of being married to a trans person, or about the fact that some trans people treat their spouses and families badly. Really. I know all about it. But none them was my story, and I’m still not sure why you felt it necessary to imply that it was. I am not here to serve as a representative of all trans people, for any purpose, and I’ve never presumed to do so. I would appreciate not being treated as if I were. I’m just me; one person.</p>
<p>In any event, the position you seem to be taking here is that I’m uniquely disabled from ever making an offhand venting comment here about my former spouse – in this case about something that happened 11 years ago that came to mind when I was talking about my medical history, something that had nothing to do with my transness and that upset me at the time as it would have upset anyone – without first figuratively tugging my forelock and offering some kind of simultaneous mea culpa about how my transness presumably hurt her. Certainly other people here have made comments about things their former spouses did (far more pejorative comments, and far more serious things), without your reprimanding them for failing to bring up their own contributions to the end of the marriage, or for being disrespectful. Even though none of us is perfect so far as I know, and most divorced people would, I hope, agree that the failure of a marriage is rarely the responsibility of one person alone. Believe it or not, that’s also true of marriages in which one spouse is transsexual or otherwise transgendered. Can you at least see a little bit that your position is effectively privileging all non-trans people over me, and treating me as if I have some kind of scarlet letter?</p>
<p>I’m not even going to address the “getting out of my way” comment. That’s not how I look at things. Again, this thread is not supposed to be a dissection of my marriage, so all I’ll say is that we did each other “favors” if you want to put it in those terms. We gave each other our son; it wasn’t a one-way street. And, yes, it wasn’t working. For me, either. For reasons that really had little or nothing to do with transness. And if she hadn’t decided to end the marriage when she did, yes, I would probably have ended the marriage myself eventually, but certainly would have tried to stay as I was, and continue the marriage, for longer. For our son’s sake, mostly. Since he was only 10 at the time. And was the primary reason I had continued the marriage to that point in the first place. As may have been true for my ex as well. But I do still respect her, and do not spend my time badmouthing her, <em>because</em> she’s my son’s other parent. And because once upon a time I loved her very much, and we were happy for a while. </p>
<p>Now I’m really uncomfortable, because talking about this, especially in this vague way, was not something I ever wanted to do. In this thread, anyway. </p>
<p>Finally, I wanted to point out that referring to trans partners as “the straights,” by contrast to “the GLBT persons,” may be accurate for gay and lesbian people, but not so much for trans people. First of all, there are many women in lesbian relationships whose partners transition from female to male, and become straight men themselves, assuming that they’re still attracted to women. Whereas those women, who still identify as lesbian, are involuntarily deprived of their often hard-won lesbian or queer identity, and are suddenly perceived, to their dismay, as being straight. In other words, the precise opposite of your paradigm. Plus, of course, there are many trans women (even though I don’t happen to be one of them, so far as I know) who find themselves attracted to men, and consider themselves straight women every bit as much as their former spouses. So, really, that kind of terminology doesn’t always work in the trans context. </p>
<p>I’m really not trying to be confrontational. But I don’t think any of this was a necessary reaction to the comment I made.</p>
<p>Donna</p>