Why Trans Partners Should Tell Their Stories
Posted by helenboyd – January 31, 2013
http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/2013/01/31/why-trans-partners-should-tell-their-stories/ (http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/2013/01/31/why-trans-partners-should-tell-their-stories/)
The other day I published a brief interview with Christine Benvenuto, who wrote a book about her marriage to and divorce from a trans woman.
I blurbed her book, let me admit up front.
I blurbed it because despite some transphobic tendencies (not respecting her ex's change to feminine pronouns, most notably), I think it's important that partners get their stories out there – as important as it is for trans people to do so. I've been enabling the latter for a long time, and I'm proud to have done so. But I see so often that partners who are having a hard time or who are bitter about a divorce or angry about transition are told – in trans community spaces – to STFU, pretty much. And that really sucks, a lot.
The thing is, nothing about her memoir struck me as patently false. I've known a lot of trans women and a lot of wives of trans women over the past 13 years. A LOT. And Benvenuto's story, just as she told it, is pretty g-----ed typical. I have seen behavior by trans women that is sexist, misogynist bulls---. I have seen trans women spend their kids' college money on transition. I have seen 401Ks emptied. I have seen all of that, and more.
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A Clarification or Eight
Posted by helenboyd – February 1, 2013
http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/2013/02/01/a-clarification-or-eight/ (http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/2013/02/01/a-clarification-or-eight/)
I'm aware that publishing a brief interview with Christine Benvenuto has caused some chagrin, and my explanation for why I did so even more.
So I'd like to point out a few things:
I was unaware, when I read Ms. Benvenuto's book, that her ex was Joy Ladin, who has also written a book about her transition.
I will be reading Ms. Ladin's book and doing a brief interview with her, in future.
I do not claim to know what "really" happened between them. No one does but them, and they don't agree, so really: no one does.
I would like to point out the phrase "despite transphobic tendencies" – which I used to describe Ms. Benvenuto's book. Her transphobia is not lost on me, by any stretch. Some of the most vitriolic transphobia comes from ex spouses, specifically of trans women.
Personally, I try to tell my story as often as possible because it's *not* like Benvenuto's. :) I don't think she should shut up, but in my *own* experience, I never found a single partner who didn't sound like her except (ironically) Helen Boyd herself. I ended up suicidally depressed after being told over and over that every couple divorces, that there's no point in supporting partners because they all leave, that my wife should just divorce me and get it over with, etc. My only real issue with Benvenuto is that it's a heck of a lot easier for someone who is bitter and vitriolic (and, yes, viciously transphobic) to get a publishing contract and media attention, because that's the narrative the cis world prefers. And that helps neither partners nor trans* people themselves.
I admit to being very disappointed that, after Boyd was the one small beacon I ever found, she blurbed this book. But it now sounds as if she did so without the full context, which is a different error.
Every (middle aged) MTF's wife's anger and rage about a spouse who (very late into a relationship) turns out to be MTF is completely justified.
She's even entitled to that.
And staying with a MTF spouse actually means everything is gonna revolve about the MTF spouse, leaving the wife in emotionally, sexually etcetc cold and with a identitycrisis of her own, caused by the MTF spouse.
I'm quite pleased to read that not every wife of a MTF turns out to have a masochistic personality without her own needs, feelings, thoughts etc.
Dahlia - It's entirely possible to not be "masochistic personality without her own needs, feelings, thoughts etc." and also be ultimately happy about the transition experience. That is, unless you'd like to join the chorus telling me I don't exist, which I think would be a tad rude. Those sorts of generalizations are unhelpful precisely because they erase those of us who don't fit.
For the record, although everything did revolve around *transition* for a bit, my wife has always put me first and continues to do so; she's actually inclined to be too self-sacrificing and self-effacing if I let her.
(I suppose we may not be "middle-aged," since we're both in our mid-30s. But we'd been together nearly the same length of time - 17 years - and met at around the same age as Christine Benvenuto first got involved with her spouse.)