Living with trans ideology

submitted by themiserychick from self.GenderCritical

I don't know if this is the right place for this, but there aren't many options for honesty for women in my circumstances.

My partner came out as trans 3 years ago. It devastated me at the time, then a while later he decided that he sure that he wasn't. Fast forward to now, and he is again. I found out (through a Reddit post to a trans sub) that he bought hormones from overseas and had started taking them when I was 7 months pregnant with our second son. That made it easier for him to go to an informed consent doctor and get a legitimate prescription. They call it gatekeeping when doctors won't let them start transitioning straight away, so they find ways around it.

Throughout this time I have tried to understand. It made me question my femininity, because I'm not one of those stereotypical women they all aspire to be. Why is it that they all want to look cute, have long hair, wear makeup, and sexy feminine clothing? Their "goals" are anime girls, pinups, and models.

There is so much support, validation, and hugboxing for them. The amount of trans subs he follows is almost staggering. All I get is a few online support groups, all telling me that it's not transphobic to have preferences, and that I can leave if I want. I don't know if I will or not. He's a great dad, not really a TRA, just wants to transition.

I still don't understand how this is even a thing. Why did he suddenly decide at 37 that he wanted to be a woman? I wonder if he would have made that realisation if he wasn't depressed and on Reddit looking at fetish subs. The subs like transtimelines, manmadepussy, and postoptrans make it seem like fantasy becoming reality.

I can't accept that TWAW. I can accept wanting to experiment with gender roles, and doing what you want to be happy. I don't wish them harm, they should be able to go about their lives however they want. But I just hate that it's even a thing.

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[–]MarkTwainiac 51 insightful - 1 fun51 insightful - 0 fun52 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

So sorry to hear what you're going through, OP. I'm supplying some links of places you can find support, and some articles and threads on Mumsnet by other women in your position. Though it's located in the UK, women from all over post on Mumsnet - and there are lots of "trans widows" there.

Hearing the stories of other "trans widows" will show you that it's very common for men to decide to "come out" as trans when their wives/partners are pregnant (or their teen daughters are in the full flower of adolescence like Jenner did), that they all lie and sneak around behind their partner's backs, and that these men are not "wanting to experiment with gender roles" - they're wanting to devote their entire lives to pursuit of their own fetishistic sexual fantasies about becoming "feminized" and "sissified" and "forced into bimboification" coz they find it to be incredibly sexually arousing, it really gets them off and they are addicted to their own onanistic sexual pleasure, which they call "gender euphoria."

https://www.transwidowsvoices.org/

https://twitter.com/transwidows?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

https://uncommongroundmedia.com/which-side-are-you-on-girls-trans-widows/

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3101834-trans-widows-escape-committee

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3471122-trans-widows-escape-committee-2-the-trans-widows-strike-back

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3666000-A-plea-for-help-for-feminists-from-a-trans-widow

https://naefearty.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/gas-mark-six/

https://childrenoftransitioners.org/links/

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/2685811-Trans-widows-and-autogynephilia

Why is it that they all want to look cute, have long hair, wear makeup, and sexy feminine clothing? Their "goals" are anime girls, pinups, and models.

Why did he suddenly decide at 37 that he wanted to be a woman? I wonder if he would have made that realisation if he wasn't depressed and on Reddit looking at fetish subs. The subs like transtimelines, manmadepussy, and postoptrans make it seem like fantasy becoming reality.

Cozi it's a sick, selfish, self-centered male sexual obsession that is both a fetish and an expression of narcissism called autgynephilia or AGP.

Some links to learn a bit more about AGP:

https://quillette.com/2019/11/06/what-is-autogynephilia-an-interview-with-dr-ray-blanchard/

https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22005209/

A number of trans widows have told their stories on videotape. Here's a TED talk from 2017 by Shannon Trace, whose husband and partner of more than 15 years decided he was "trans" at age 40, in which she debunks a lot of the pro-trans ideology and tells hard truths: https://youtu.be/M3mnUMmUAHQ?t=263

I'll post links other links later if I can find them.

Best of luck. You are NOT alone.

[–]Cicerosolo 18 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 0 fun19 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Great stuff. I'm going to save this post and use it to truth bomb people who've never heard of the cancer that is agp. It really shouldn't make me as mad as it does I just really despise men like this

[–]themiserychick[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks so much, it's so hard to find resources that aren't geared towards supporting the trans person.

[–]just_lesbian_things 34 insightful - 1 fun34 insightful - 0 fun35 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Well you asked for honesty so I'm going to try to give you that.

Full disclosure, I am a lesbian, I am probably younger than you (in my 20s), have never been with a man and I am not a parent. Also, I think men like your SO is incredibly pathetic. I say this to acknowledge my biases and ignorance.

You say your SO is "a great dad". My previous experiences with bihet mothers is that the bar for "a great dad" is incredibly low. It takes almost nothing for a man to be considered "a great dad". I think you need to take a long, objective look at who he is and what he's bringing to the table. How much childcare duties does he take on? How much household chores does he do? Think about these things and remember them. I ask this because transgenderism is not only inherently rooted in sexism, it is rooted in ignorance. It is a collective of men who have some of the most ignorant and ridiculous idea of what it means to be a woman getting together to roleplay. It is quite literally the opposite of progress and "woke", and if he has no idea what it means to be a woman, then he likely has no idea how much work you take on. He wants to experiment with gender roles- does that include doing the majority of domestic and childcare duties? Does he take on the brunt of emotional labor the way women do in a lot of relationships?

I don't want to attribute bad intentions because I don't know him, and I have zero experience with heterosexual relationships, but it seems like a lot of men are incredibly self-centered and cannot handle not being the center of attention when their SOs get pregnant or have a new baby. In a lot of these cases, men resort to abusive behaviors, or in the case of male trans people, transitioning and seeking attention elsewhere. There are also more nefarious interpretations like men "trapping" women in relationships by getting them pregnant before showing their true colors, but I won't go into that. I just think it's incredibly selfish and irresponsible of him to do all of this when he is a father and should be putting the needs of his children first. If he cannot handle this, he has had years to get out of your relationship or put off having children to figure himself out. He also went behind your back to take hormones from the sound of it, which I think is selfish and dishonest.

I understand that relationships are about unconditional love and dedication. And maybe it's because I am a lesbian and I have no love for men, but at the end of the day, there's a balance sheet; and on average, in hetero relationships, men are takers and women are givers. Studies have shown that (hetero) marriages allow men to accumulate more wealth and maintain better health- men who have been married do better than men who haven't. Marriage has the opposite effect on women- women who have been married live shorter, poorer, more miserable lives than women who have never married. Women take on more unpaid domestic labor even when both partners have equal earning. Women are less likely to leave a terminally ill spouse. Heterosexual marriages was, for a long time, a model of male ownership of women and the only model of hetero relationships. Even though we technically don't do that anymore in most parts of the world, it's easy for to fall into old patterns. I say all of this because I see a lot of bihet women getting milked dry by the men in their relationships. I think you should take an objective look at your relationship and decide what you're getting out of it and whether it's worth staying in.

[–]themiserychick[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply. He actually does do a lot of the work. 50:50 with childcare, and he does more domestic duties than me. Most of the emotional labour falls to me though. I guess I can't see from the outside, but I do feel like he's not your stereotypical selfish man. He has issues though, as do I.

[–]MarkTwainiac 24 insightful - 1 fun24 insightful - 0 fun25 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I find it worrying that on a thread on which the OP, a woman, has asked for support in dealing with her partner's AGP, one poster has used this as an opportunity to thump his chest and tell us how masculine and straight he is, and to use terms that disparage people who are physically and intellectually disabled.

Then another poster has come along to defend the use of dehumanizing terminology towards people with disabilities by claiming

being a retard is never going to be a positive thing no matter what word you use to label 'being a retard' with.

Sorry, people with views like this are not people I want to be associated with.

OP, sorry your thread has gotten derailed. I made a long post offering what I hope is support. IMO, offering support is all we posters should be doing here.

[–]Kai_Decadence 21 insightful - 1 fun21 insightful - 0 fun22 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Their "goals" are anime girls, pinups, and models.

This crap right here... Eugh. See okay I'm a feminine gay man myself and my look is not masculine in the least but even when I was developing my style, I never wanted to aspire to be those things nor did I understand what the appeal was with that until I started reading more of those "How I knew I was trans" stories and point blank, they honestly believe that these things are what define what women are. Looking sexy and getting dominated. Marktwainiac's answer was right on the money. It's not about wanting to break gender roles, it's about their own porno-fueled fetish to get off and it mostly does happen when their wife is pregnant. It's sissy/bimbo fetish, at least for most AGP (Autogynephelia, though some Gay men - HSTS - fall into this as well).

In any case I'm so sorry that this happened to you. It's never nice having to read these stories because it comes out of left field and leaves the family devastated...

[–]lefterfield 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Best case scenario here, he was deeply in need of qualified, professional counseling for depression, but instead found a way of self-medicating and yes-men to push him into it. Which is horribly tragic. I think, if possible, you should try to have an honest discussion with him about all this, and encourage him to either go into therapy or get off of reddit/social media. Ideally both. I'm sure there are many people in the world who don't have many friends and are unhappy with their lives, even if they can't say so. Even if it's only their own perception that this is so. The trans cult provides easy answers and artificial support to them.

[–]themiserychick[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thanks, I kinda have the feeling that a lot of this applies, he thinks that it will solve all his problems. I think he's going to try therapy again, finally, even though he says he's too screwed up to be helped.

[–]lefterfield 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's good, though! It's important to take that first step, even if you don't know if it'll work. I hope it helps him, and you!

[–]Monchichi 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think the fact that he's been hiding this from you and lying to you is enough of a reason to leave him. Trans or not doesn't excuse doing things behind your partner's back. Also, his needs/fetish do not take priority over the needs of your children to have an intact family with a present father. Trans women are not women. It's not hateful to recognize that. Humans cannot change sex. He is not a woman. If he thinks he feels like a woman, that's because he views women only as stereotypes, he has never lived as a woman, he has never experienced being a woman, he does not view women as full, complete, complex human beings, just a bunch of stereotypic attributes. Recognizing this is not harmful. He's looking at manmadepussy, does he want to transition? If so, he's looking at making himself a life-time medical patient. You and your family will have to sit by while he goes on HRT, gets breasts, starts wearing women's clothes, you'll have to fund and sit by while he gets extensive surgery to change his body, you'll have to sit by while he dilates several times a day, you'll have to sit by while he gets more and more entrenched in the trans community, you and your children will have to deal with his pain and surgical complications and his psychological issues.

Check out mumsnet, there are several threads there about trans widows. They're very informative.

[–]jet199 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Pregnancy is a big trigger for men with autogynephilia to transition because they aren't the centre of attention and the world doesn't revolve around them anymore. This is not acceptable when there is a helpless child who actually needs attention and looking after full time.

You need to look at it this way, not that you are unfeminine or not enough but that your grown man is trying to compete with your baby and you just because they are a spoilt, self obsessed brat.

It might be worth looking into James Shupe because his wife was also not particularly feminine and he went through AGP then came out the other side and realised he was the arsehole the whole time.

[–]MarkTwainiac 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Pregnancy is a big trigger for men with autogynephilia to transition because they aren't the centre of attention and the world doesn't revolve around them anymore.

Yes, that's true. But it's also a big trigger for another reason: womb envy. It really sticks in these guy's craw that they can't get pregnant, grow a new human being in their bodies and give birth.

What's more, as Blanchard points out and the social media posts of many TIMs show, many AGPs have specific fetishes about particular female bodily functions and processes, pregnancy and childbirth among them. In the twisted imaginations of these men, being pregnant is the ultimate erotic experience. Lots of women spend the 40 weeks of pregnancy often tired, vomiting and nauseous, with hemorrhoids, back aches, skin rashes, swollen and achy feet, sore breasts, stretch marks, indigestion and insomnia - and feeling fat, ungainly and not particularly attractive. But in the imagination of these men, if they were to become pregnant, they'd spend the 40 weeks of gestating a fetus in a constant state of extreme arousal, looking super hot and sexy and orgasming constantly.

[–]crodish 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

OP, I'm sorry for the shit you're going through. What MarkTwaniac has suggested is pretty great already, but if you want to cross post to Ovarit, which has a much wider female audience and therefore more shared experience / advice and listening ears, I've sent you an invite code. There are many women there who are more than happy to listen to you and share your frustrations (I'm not contributing to the conversation personally as I have neither experience nor advice on this matter, only empathy.) You are not alone.

[–][deleted] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I am disturbed by how many stories I am hearing like this. Just a word of warning, apart from him transitioning, it sounds like he may be a porn addict as well, which is concerning. My husband is an recovering porn addict and I would have left if he hadn't got into recovery with Sex Addicts Anonymous and got clean. The lies and betrayal and the devastation of my self-esteem and sense of femininity were extremely traumatic. We still use internet monitoring software because my trust was completely broken. But I am lucky in that he has taken to 12 step recovery like a duck to water and made fundamental changes to his life, perspective and priorities. We don't have children. What if one of your children sees what he's looking at by mistake. Other people have posted links to support resources so I will just wish you luck, and again, I'm sorry you are going through this.

[–]Dravidian 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I would advice against staying with him honestly. Something you will see time and time again in trans widows stories is that all the savings of the household went through gender affirming crap like dresses, manicures, way more lingerie than you'd ever allow yourself to buy becuse there's more important stuff to be bought, like nappies, and then down the line, surgeries. Some transwomen get as many as twenty surgeries and revisions. Multiple facial feminisations, adam's apple shaving, hairplugs, electrolysis for their hair, vocal cords shaving, boob job, and eventually, some do get the penile inversion. This is the money that is not going to go towards your children's future and your wellbeing as a family. Please flee.

[–]chrysthefeminist 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think "trans" is a thing because it's less threatening to a lot of men to have people "transitioning" to a new "gender identity" that preserves male invented misogynist sex stereotypes that glorify men and demean women than it is to just smash the male glorifying damn things. The latter they just can't face.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

OP, here are two video interviews with two other women who've been in your shoes:

https://youtu.be/i5k2osnQ_tc

https://youtu.be/hMt-oCxpQqY

[–]MaleFriedanFan 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I am biased here, but I think that something that might help is to look at the first of the Second Wavers that Betty Friedan wrote about. Many of these were women around his age, who, after their children were grown up, realized how desperately unhappy they were, and that they had no idea how to fix it. While it will depend on your partner's career, there's a good chance that at 37 to 40 that their trajectory is fixed. Maybe other aspects of their life as well. Comparing their own lives to that masculine mystique and not having "give it time..." to fall back on anymore can leave some men feeling just as trapped as those 60s housewives struggling with The Problem With No Name, stuck between the reality of their lives and the ideals that they did not create and yet feel they must live up to.

Men never had a Betty Friedan, though. So the idea of just adopting another mystique that seems more doable, rather than questioning why this burden has been placed on them to be something other than their honest selves, whatever it may look like, is very tempting.

I find it helps to ask, "When they were surrounded by bad choices, was this the worst choice?" For some people, this was their alternative to suicide; so while there are other choices you would hope that they could make, at the time they couldn't see those choices.

Things get complicated when you involve social media because of how powerful advertising is nowadays. The Cold War and battles over hearts and minds changed things for the worse, I feel. People like to assume that they are rational, but sometimes it seems sort of like "I'm a rational person, I won't fall for advertising" is the same as "I'm an athlete, I won't get sick". Maybe that is normally so, but there are limits to anybody's physical or psychological immune systems.

I guess the best place to start is to try to find a common ground that doesn't involve you or them compromising or fearing that one will drown out the other. That becomes a place where you can start before figuring out what to do next. There is an old book I quite like on this subject called "Getting to Yes" by Roger Fisher and William Ury; it is their attempt to translate the tactics that diplomats used for managing relationships between countries into principles individuals can use in their day-to-day lives.

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Men never had a Betty Friedan, though.

Huh? Men didn't need a Betty Friedan! Middle-aged men in the 1960s and before had "identity crises" all the time; that was the term used. In fact, it's one of the few times the word "identity" was used in common Western parlance prior to the emergence of today's identity politics. Men in the 1950s and 60s had Kinsey, Masters & Johnson and the "sexual revolution" engineered by men for the benefit of men.

Sometimes when men back then had their mid-life "identity crisis, " they would just grow their hair or sideburns long or get plugs and start smoking pot; other times they'd buy sports cars. But a whole lot of the time, they simply walked out on their wives and children to take up with a new woman half their age - often the babysitter of their own children.

Tons of men in the 1950s and 60s were screwing their secretaries, going to brothels and strip clubs and Playboy clubs, paying for the services of call girls, chasing their female employees around the office, trying to cop a feel in the stock room, hitting on the pubescent female friends of their young teen daughters, consuming porn and sneaking off to peep shows. Just as men had been screwing their parlor and scullery maids, cooks, slaves, governesses and nannies forever. Look at movies like "The Apartment," "Butterfield 8," "Georgie Girl," "Blow Up" or "Auto Focus." Men have felt free to "have their way" with girls and women since the dawn of time, as novels like Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Ubervilles show. They've been dumping, impoverishing and even institutionalizing their longstanding wives who've given them many children for "sweet young things" for generations, as the life of Charles Dickens show.

For a picture of how married, middle-aged men behaved in the West in the 1950 and 60s, check out the TV series "Mad Men." The behavior of Don Draper and all the other married men screwing around and mistreating their wives and children in that series about the US in the 1950s and 60s was depicted realistically. Sure, not all men behaved so badly. But a whole lot of them did. Screwing around and having the "male mid-life crisis" were both entirely normalized back then. And men who behaved that way were lionized for adopting the "Playboy lifestyles" of the "swinging sixties."

Some men back then literally got away with killing women whilst pursuing their "no holds barred" lifestyle of male indulgence, as the case of Teddy Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne shows. It's not like Bill Clinton's middle-aged dalliance with the young intern Monica Lewinsky was an aberration, and that sorts of things only started happening recently. The "Profumo affair" of the early 1960s was a huge political scandal that finally culminated in the Tory PM resigning and a Labour government being voted in.

Men of the era Betty Friedan's book focused on had famous men like Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Normal Mailer, Pablo Picasso, John F Kennedy, Ted Hughes, Roman Polanski and a zillion more championing men's right to devote their lives to the selfish pursuit of their own sexual desires, career ambitions and personal fulfillment. They didn't need a male version of Betty Friedan.

Also, there were lots of best-selling books in the 50s and 60s that addressed the issues facing men and male psychology, such as "The Organization Man," "Lolita," "Culture of Conformity," "Invisible Man," "Catcher in the Rye" and "Man's Search for Meaning."

[–]MaleFriedanFan 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Men of the era Betty Friedan's book focused on had famous men like Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, Normal Mailer, Pablo Picasso, John F Kennedy, Ted Hughes, Roman Polanski and a zillion more championing men's right to devote their lives to the selfish pursuit of their own sexual desires, career ambitions and personal fulfillment. They didn't need a male version of Betty Friedan.

Maybe I am misunderstanding here, but I don't think that Betty Friedan championed women's right to devote their lives to the pursuit of their own sexual desires, career ambitions and personal fulfillment at the cost of others -- that seemed to be part of the problem, being forced to make these false choices. She seemed to hope that there would be a way that a woman could explore her sexual feelings without needing to become a Playboy Bunny, have career ambitions without needing to abandon marriage or children, not to be forced to choose between personal fulfillment and the happiness of others, but to find a more stable identity that encompasses all of these hopes as a full human being rather than defining oneself as a choice from a set of lifestyle brands a magazine created.

I guess why I said, "never had a Betty Friedan" rather than "never had a Feminine Mystique" is that she didn't just write a book and move on, like William Whyte with The Organization Man, who was more interested in urban design. Unlike the academics like David Riesman who wrote The Lonely Crowd, she saw intellectualization of the problem as a dead-end; after the release of The Feminine Mystique, there were government task forces, and academic round-tables on "The Woman Problem", but they never seemed to go anywhere. So she went back to her readers to try to understand a path forward. David Riesman kept writing on the "Lonely Crowd Problem", but seemed content to merely be a public intellectual, and because of this the books never really turned into anything concrete.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Maybe I am misunderstanding here

I think that assessment is correct.

You made a claim that erroneously insinuated that the situation of men and women in the US in the era Betty Friedan wrote about were entirely analogous and equal. Worse, you complained that

Men never had a Betty Friedan

You further tried to switch the attention to men in Friedan's era whom you consider to have been equally or more oppressed and constrained by something you call "the masculine mystique." In your own words, you said we should turn our focus to the men in Friedan's era who might have been

feeling just as trapped as those 60s housewives struggling with The Problem With No Name, stuck between the reality of their lives and the ideals that they did not create and yet fee

Men never had a Betty Friedan, though. So the idea of just adopting another mystique that seems more doable, rather than questioning why this burden has been placed on them to be something other than their honest selves, whatever it may look like, is very tempting.

These words of your suggested that you see men in the Friedan era as just as - or more - oppressed, voiceless, constrained and put-upon than women, and that "men's issues" didn't get the same attention that "women's issues" did back then.

I provided examples from real life and popular literature of that era showing otherwise. I also showed that the concerns and life goals of these men were nothing like the concerns and goals of the women Friedan wrote about. Now you've come back to say that I'm suggesting Friedan was arguing for women to define their liberation in exactly the same way male libertines of the era did. Which is hogwash. Friedan didn't say any such thing, and nowhere did I say it either.

Now you are saying that because Friedan

didn't just write a book and move on

Like the various male authors mentioned, that this somehow disadvantages men and obscures their issues.

The reason Friedan and other feminists weren't free to write books about women's issues and then "move on" to other topics that interested them/us is coz women then or now have not yet won the battle for women's rights - nor have we been successful in getting women's issues to be taken seriously in the press, public sphere and politics as human rights issues that affect more than half the human race.

You really don't seem to have a clue about women's experience or history.

[–]MaleFriedanFan 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I apologize for being a poor communicator.

Friedan created the term "the masculine mystique", I believe. She talks about it using that name in her second book, "It Changed My Life", a collection of her articles written after The Feminine Mystique and essays explaining the context in which they were written.

I think I should have said "the men of the present who need one don't have a Betty Friedan", to clarify that I was not talking about men in general from the era the book was written, but was trying to address the original topic of trying to understand the mindset of the subset of men today who decide the solution to their problems is transitioning, which some people want to understand because while they don't believe it is the right choice, those men are close friends, spouses, or family.

I think maybe another form of confusion is that I had trouble understanding how the examples you gave were examples of being liberated, having a voice, being free or unburdened (I think these would be opposite words for oppressed, voiceless, constrained, or put upon). Feeling powerless at work so screwing your secretary to feel powerful doesn't sound like it fits in there, but maybe I am misunderstanding again. Could you help me understand what you mean?

Friedan talked about women who started affairs because it was the only thing that made them feel alive when they were trapped at home, but she didn't seem to see the affairs as a sign of liberation but as a coping mechanism for a problem that hadn't been solved.

I think maybe an equivalent to "The Lonely Crowd" might be "The Second Sex". Ms. Friedan was inspired by this book, but when she got to meet Simone de Beauvoir, she was frustrated that Ms. de Beauvoir did not seem especially interested in concrete actions, only big ideas.

I think the quote from the second book was:

the authority with which she spoke about women seemed sterile, cold, an abstraction that had too little relationship to their real lives. I felt almost like a fool, struggling with those mundane questions that women have to confront in their personal lives and in movement strategy. Those questions did not seem to interest her at all. Somehow she did not seem to identify with ordinary women trying to make something new of themselves, or to feel at all involved with their everyday problems.

I agree that I don't have a clue about women's experience; after all, I can't experience being a woman. However, I do believe that the issues Ms. Friedan wrote about in regards to women can help people to understand similar struggles in others, which is why I thought she might be worth a look.

This has been an interesting conversation, thank you for taking the time to write to me.

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Thanks for being polite. Sorry if I have been short and harsh with you. But this is a thread in which a woman in a terrible situation due to the selfish behavior of her male partner came seeking support - at a time when the whole world is applauding, centering and doting on men like her male partner whilst women like her are being told to STFU and just put the men's need to indulge their sexual fetishes first. Yet you and another male poster have tried to make the thread all about how sorry everyone should feel for MEN coz MEN have problems and issues too.

Five days ago, before you made your first post I made a post that said in part:

I find it worrying that on a thread on which the OP, a woman, has asked for support in dealing with her partner's AGP, one poster has used this as an opportunity to thump his chest and tell us how masculine and straight he is...

OP, sorry your thread has gotten derailed. I made a long post offering what I hope is support. IMO, offering support is all we posters should be doing here.

After that, you made your first post theorizing out of the thin air that the OP's partner's gaslighting, lying and utterly selfish, abusive and irresponsible behavior to her and their children was probably coz he felt stalled in his career at mid-life and was frustrated for not living up to what you called "the masculine mystique." Which only showed you have no understanding whatsoever of the the nature, etiology, manifestations and trajectory of the obsessive male sexual fetish called autogynephilia, or the damaging, often devastating impact it has on these men's female partners and children, as well as on others in their lives. And it showed you have no clue about what it's like for women to live under coercive control or with a male narcissist, either.

Worse, you recommended that the OP read

"Getting to Yes" by Roger Fisher and William Ury; it is their attempt to translate the tactics that diplomats used for managing relationships between countries into principles individuals can use in their day-to-day lives.

As if women in intimate relationships with emotionally abusive autogynephilic men just need to brush up on their diplomacy skills and adopt a more positive, collegial, accommodating attitude towards these men so they can "get to yes." When the reality is, what women like the OP need to say to the men in their lives is, NO, just no!

Now you say

I agree that I don't have a clue about women's experience; after all, I can't experience being a woman

You don't have to experience being a woman to learn about or obtain an understanding of women's experiences! You just have to listen to women. And see us. Which means stop spending all your time focusing and sympathizing exclusively on men. Or at least stop coming to forums for GC feminists and our male allies and attempting to turn the convo on a support thread for a woman dealing with toxic man into a discussion that centers men's feelings and problems.

Most of us have an awareness and understanding of the experience of people who are very different from us - not just by sex, but by age, nationality, race, religion, and so on. Coz we are curious about others. We read books about and by people different to us. We watch documentaries and movies about people in different cultures and different time periods. And coz empathy is a thing. I've never been a whaler in the 19th century, a Chinese farmer in the early 20th century, a Hobbit, a victim of the Holocaust, an astronaut, or a young boy growing up in Afghanistan under the Taliban - but coz of stories by and about such folks I feel have some understanding of their experience.

You can easily get an understanding of what women in OP's shoes are going by making use of all the informative links I included in my very first post up at the top of the thread, as well as the later one containing links to two eye-opening videos.

There are tons of "trans widows" out there who are telling their stories of how their families and own lives have been damaged by their male partners' AGP. Children of these men are starting to coming forward and tell what they've suffered too coz of their dads' selfish, exclusive focus on pursuit of their own sexual pleasure and narcissistic fantasy lives. These women and children need to listened to, given support, and encouraged to make this their theme song: https://youtu.be/ccenFp_3kq8

Again, sorry I am so sharp. But every place on the internet that women try to give and get support for issues and problems we are dealing with coz we are women gets invaded by men who try to derail and make the convo all and only about men.

[–]MaleFriedanFan 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thank you for your response! It encouraged me to re-read the OP carefully -- I am not sure, but think maybe I see where I became confused.

In the original post, OP asks a question, "Why is it that they all want to look cute, have long hair, wear makeup, and sexy feminine clothing?" I took this to be an earnest question (perhaps the other poster did as well), but after your explanation, I realize that this was a rhetorical question, and, as you pointed out, the actual purpose of the post was not to get an answer to that question but for the other purposes you outlined.

I see now that I was misunderstanding. I should have realized as this happened once in reverse, with a male friend who was trying to have a "Women, am I right?" where I did not get the drift that he wasn't really looking for help solving a problem.

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you for your response in turn. Now that I understand you took a rhetorical question of OP's as an earnest one, I can see where you were coming from in your first post. In a classic example of "not reading the room," you seemed not to get - or perhaps read - all the posts that preceded yours, either.

I hope if you are interested in the experience of women affected by the current trend of so many heterosexual men claiming to be women - particularly when they are married, have already fathered children and have a new baby on the way - you will avail yourself of the links I shared at the start of this thread.

For more insight into why so many heterosexual men - including many married fathers - are claiming they are women and they

all want to look cute, have long hair, wear makeup, and sexy feminine clothing

I suggest reading such works as "The Man Who Would Be Queen" by J Michael Bailey, "Galileo's Middle Finger" by Alice Dreger, "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Trannssexualism" by Anne Lawrence (an MD sexologist who is also AGP trans; the book is available for free on Lawrence's website), Janice Raymond's seminal 1979 book, "The Transsexual Empire" (available for free at janiceraymond.com), the papers of Ray Blanchard (all available for free - check his Twitter), and the utterly misogynist recent work "Females" by Andrea Long Chu, a man who says that "sissy porn" made him trans.

Chu, another heterosexual man with AGP who now "identifies as" a lesbian, says he

transitioned for gossip and compliments, lipstick and mascara, for crying at the movies, for being someone’s girlfriend . . . for feeling hot, for getting hit on by butches, for that secret knowledge of which dykes to watch out for, for Daisy Dukes, bikini tops, and all the dresses, and, my god, for the breasts.

What's more, Chu says the defining essence of being female is

an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes”

A view that I hope you can see is profoundly offensive and insulting to those of us who actually are female.

A review of Chu's book: https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/january-2020/sissy-porn-and-trans-dirty-laundry/