There's a big Reddit community called /r/AmItheAsshole/ where people post (purportedly) real stories about how they may be in the wrong but are not sure. And yesterday a guy happened to post an absolutely brilliant story (archive). If it's a troll, it's god level trolling.
Long story short: the guy and his wife were staying with the wife's parents. The guy woke up very early and, still being groggy from sleep, went to the kitchen where he found his father-in-law in a robe, bra, and panties. The guy couldn't decide how to react to it. He pretended he was still not quite awake and returned to his room. Now he wants to know if he should tell his wife about her crossdressing father.
When I was writing this, the post had close to 500 comments. Almost every single one of them was panicked Reddit troons going beyond themselves shouting at the guy that he will absolutely without any doubt be a raging asshole if he dares to tell his wife that her father is likely a perverted sex clown who masturbates while wearing women's clothes. Their arguments were as follows:
- That's NONE of your fucking business! NONE! Never so much as think about outing an unconsenting gay or trans person! It's not your story to tell!
- It's just clothes, it can't hurt anyone, why does it even matter to you! It's harmless! HARMLESS!
- Your mother-in-law may already know and be totally fine with her husband's little kink! Why must you inform your wife about her parents' sex life? What do you even hope to gain by this?!
- He may have just lost a bet with his friends! Or need a bra to support his moobies! Or he was wearing a medical device that happened to look like a bra! What do you know anyway!
- Women wear men's clothes all the time, and you only have problems when it's a man wearing women's clothes! It's discrimination!
- If you are asked about it in the future, you must pretend you weren't completely awake and didn't see anything clearly! You haven't seen anything! Remember: NOT A THING!
- The old man was in his own kitchen minding his own business! You are a houseguest who doesn't have any rights to tell him what to wear in his own home!
- But if you caught your father-in-law watching porn, won't you cover for him? It's basic bro code!
- If you are bothered by people wearing clothes, you need to see a therapist! Get help!
- Wait, but you admitted that you REALLY weren't quite awake when you saw your father-in-law. So you essentially didn't even see anything. Problem solved!
The gaslighting is palpable. You didn't really see anything. And if you saw, it was a medical device. But you must lie and keep it a secret. You have zero obligations to be truthful to your wife, your unswerving loyalty must first and foremost lie with your fetishistic father-in-law. It's of grave importance to care about a trans person's consent to be outed, but you must completely disregard your own consent to being subjected to an old man's perverted desire to parade his disturbing sex fetish.
The gaslighting is so hard precisely because troons of Reddit know that the guy is a sane individual who has witnessed something deeply unhealthy. The guy is subconsciously aware that he was not really groggy enough to mistake a medical device for a bra on a man. He is subconsiously aware of the fact that normal men don't walk around in women's clothes. He is subconsciously aware that women, unlike crossdressing men, almost never wear clothes of the opposite sex for sexual thrills. He is subconsciously aware that even men who crossdress as a kink do not engage in their kinks when their relatives are around. He is subconsciously aware that there's no 'bro code' connecting him to an autogynephilic man, and he doesn't owe said autogynephilic man any loyalty. And this is why redditoids are shitting their pants: the guy may spill the beans, and it will end the comfortable life for the old feminine penis. He will be shunned by his family and friends, just as he deservedly should be. And the same fate may await any redditoid.
