#trans widow

Are Transwomen Women?

“I don’t identify as a woman,” my spouse said. “I literally am one.”

“There are different types of women,” my spouse said, “and I am one of them.”

Later: “Transwomen are a subset of women.”

Actually, though, transwomen are not a subset of women. Transwomen are a subset of a superset that contains transwomen and natal women. The superset is new and has been named the same as its older subset (women), in order to be intentionally confusing.

The old set “women” had an objective definition (let’s not waste time hashing out what we already know about chromosomes and reproductive organs). The superset does not have an objective definition, except, “A set that happens to contain these other two sets.” You could similarly invent a set that contains apples and Siberian huskies. That’s semantically possible, if not very applicable to reality.

When a group of activists redefines a word, or more accurately, creates a new word by the same name that serves to supercede and erase the old word, does that act redefine the underlying reality? It does not. There are still some people who were born with female reproductive organs and some other people who were not.

“Transwomen are women” is a semantic trick. I get that it’s an important one for transwomen, but it is a trick nonetheless. My spouse, a MtF whose primary “womanly” quality is the application of makeup and feminine clothing, has nothing in common with, for example, a particular butch lesbian friend of mine. I’ve asked my spouse, and others, for the traits that overlap in that venn diagram, but they can’t be produced because they don’t exist. It is logically nonsensical to say that these two types of people are both part of the same “woman” set, however politically expedient that may be.

There are objective realities that apply to one set and not the other, as with our apples and Siberian huskies.

Radical feminists are not excluding transwomen from the set of women. Reality is excluding transwomen from the set of women. Math and logic are excluding transwomen from the set of women.

If I decided I was a dolphin, it would not be the dolphin community that kept me from being a dolphin. It would be my lack of dolphin chromosomes, flippers and tail fin. I could redefine the word dolphin to include dolphins and humans who feel like dolphins, or even dolphins and apples, but that would neither reflect nor change reality.

Everyone knows this. Those who have chosen to call transwomen women are being nice. And hey, it’s great to be nice, and I get that. Sometimes being nice is more important than being accurate. Often it is.

But saying transwomen are women is a denial of reality. It’s a political, semantic move to make transwomen feel better about themselves.

What difference does it make whether we deny reality? That’s a topic for many other posts.

A 75-year-old trans-identified male has won in an unopposed race for Chair of the Rhode Island Democratic Women’s Caucus. 

Donnie Anderson, formerly known as Donald, lives in Providence, Rhode Island and serves as a minister at a church in neighboring state Massachusetts. Anderson began to identify as a “woman” in 2018 at the age of 69.  

I married a man who fathered my daughter in the conventional way.  Ten years later he decided that he had been a woman all along and so our marriage ended. I left the marital home, taking my daughter with me.  The man I married, no longer exists and I am forbidden from referring to him by his former “dead name”.

Having your boundaries gradually and forcibly broken down and compromised over a period of time until your marriage becomes nothing like the arrangement that you signed up to, feels exactly like Sarah describes-  a slow death with everything you thought you knew about yourself being gradually crushed out of existence.  But with the support of other women, we trans widows can rise again.

My experience is becoming more and more common and I have spoken to many women who have found themselves in a similar situation.  Women who previously felt completely alone in their struggle.

What can you do to help women like me?

Don’t call my ex “she” when you talk about him to me.  Call him what you like when you speak to him, but describing him with female pronouns to me, makes my life not make sense and my daughter’s life not make sense.

Don’t, under any circumstances, refer to him as my daughter’s mother.  She only has one mother and it is not him.

Seek out and share the stories of trans widows.  Help our voices to be heard.  Late transitioning men leave women and girls in their wake- wives, mothers, daughters and sisters who are asked not only to rewrite their past but to celebrate a new future that they do not recognise.

Many trans widows report feeling gagged by everybody else lauding their partners as “stunning and brave”.  Our ex’s are often celebrated twitter personalities, newspaper columnists or the subjects of documentaries, but those of us wives who leave are forced to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. Support those women who put themselves and their children first.

When you hear of a late transitioning male, let your first thought be for these women and how they are affected. If it is somebody in your circle of acquaintance, seek out the wife or the mother and let her know that she has your support.

Defend our use of the term “Trans Widow” as some people question its appropriateness.  However it is the name that we have chosen for ourselves and it is enabling us to find each other and to share our experiences. Women talking to each other is a powerful weapon.

Don’t exclude some women from feminism in the interests of inclusiveness. Imagine seeking support from other women, only to find that your husband or father had got there first?

When you allow our ex partners space in your feminism and give them platforms in your organisations and at your meetings, you exclude their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers from accessing these spaces and making use of resources that were set up to support women like them.  Prioritise women over your desire to have a “get out of jail free” card to hold up against hostile accusations of bigotry

Growing up as a tomboy, Laura related on some level to Galen’s feelings of not quite fitting into stereotypical gender norms. Plus, she felt that these conversations confirmed what she already knew about Galen: that she wasn’t your typical cisgender man. 

“She would say things like, if there was a magic button, I would press it to change the way my body was,” Laura said. “But because she didn’t say anything about being trans, or wanting to see a therapist, or wanting to make changes in ways that felt really practical, I just sort of thought of it as, ‘Oh, you know, she wishes things were different, but she’s OK that they aren’t, and she found a little niche for herself in the world.’” 

During college, Laura also began questioning her own sexuality and realized she identified more as bisexual than heterosexual.

....

For Laura, who describes herself as an anxious Type A person, the combination of the pregnancy and the transition was overwhelming. But she said it also taught her how to deal with situations that can’t be perfectly planned or controlled. 

“The little person kicking around in my belly was a constant reminder of the choices Galen and I had made over the years that led us to the point of wanting to start a family together,” Laura said. “It helped me slow down and see the important thread through all of this: We loved each other fully and completely.”

The Curated Woods:

A Grass Widow in the Months of Remembering by Ute Heggen

I finished boxing up the Progeny boxes, and I feel it is well and proper to pass off almost all of the photos of their father over to them to decide what to do. It occurs to me how it could be that the erased image of his father, in his life as Daddy, until my Younger turned four, is the reason my younger child says he cannot remember his childhood. I don’t think I deserve any credit for that. I never showed them these pictures, when they didn’t match our lives. Families look through their albums, but ours had a filter. I used to read to them from the baby journals, all the cute mispronounced words, editing to suit new sensibilities. No more “and Daddy wrote this.” There is a sacrifice there, a kind of burnt offering, I see that now. A child’s memory, the old days, made improper by the unrelated other life of one parent. I imagine that this child of mine will be angry when he sees these photos of the person who is no more. He will say I am just trying to make him feel guilty for what I went through. My interest is in when he is done with that, when the images of him at a week old, at two, at three years, have settled in. He might take time to remember some of this, and even perhaps remember what he is now looking for. They are his memories, the earliest memories of a child, and they are valid, for him.

When my voice was restricted, components of their voices were also curtailed. It is very, very complicated. I think now I should have used the pictures to work on the changes, developed a sense of humor of some kind, reflecting the facts, what happened, and tell them the hell that I had, at some point. I think if this all had happened at the end of my teaching career, when I had all the training for trauma, I might have done better. It is a kind of manipulation to tell your children not to remember what they remember, and this I believe was done. There is an extreme reaction to anyone who ‘misgenders,’ even forgetfully. Words like ‘cruel,’ ‘mean,’ and ‘vile’ come into play. I might have been able to better validate my sons’ feelings, with little picture books outlining the changes, and through that, my own adjustment. I was so afraid of what would go back to the other place they lived in. Our life was censored, skewed. The growing obsession I had with saving money, the unpopular vegetarian food I cooked, the winter coats purchased in the next size when on sale in spring. I must have saved tens of thousands on food. In some way, the transfer of these old images is the completion of a banged up circle, like the barrel hoops I tripped over at the edge of the woods and leaned up against the garage wall. I am not hopeful that a completion or roundness will re-emerge. The oppression though, is no longer invisible. I didn’t include a lot of words in my note. A few little toys, the teddy bear, a cap from my father, a letter from my mother, and a letter to them, asking them to help each other and be kind. The Friday night prayer for sons says “may you be like Ephraim and Manasseh.” These sons of Joseph are obscure biblical characters, but their claim to fame is brotherly love, the opposite of Jacob and Esau or Cain and Abel. I prayed this prayer with my hands on their yarmulkes on Friday nights when they were young, after lighting the candles. I meant the words, quite sincerely. The storm has tapered off and looks like enough of an accumulation to strap on skis and tromp out the three-looped path on my hectare, the path I designed the last time we had deep snow. The driveway needs shoveling again, too. It will be an active day. The former president has two new lawyers, taking the place of the five who left. Will this trial lead to more fascism, more violent murders? I have to get dressed and get outside in the world of snow and figure out how to feed the birds. It is a fluffy snow, and the seed will sink and disappear. This is a useful problem. I did not feed the birds. I wanted them to stay in their warm hiding places. Tomorrow will be a double portion. The shoveling was effortful, but we did it. I will sleep well again, I think. I did ski, and I did take snowdrift photographs. The sky was dark and low, the mountains black across the horizon. Intermittent light flurries, drifts and snow cliffs changing the contours of the rocks all over, highlighting the changeable moods of my place. Glad I was, for familiarity with all the crevices and outlines on my land, for a snowdrift could give way over a deep gully. To a stranger, the land could become treachery rather than beauty. The Cabinet is completely engulfed in hanging, drifted snow. I follow my own footprints back so that I don’t make a mistake after the trek to the Sculpture Garden. I was right about the stockade fence that Schmuck put up on our shared boundary. It had come down, blown over to my side. My sculptures, on the other hand, stand stoic in the cold and snow, knowing the wind will swirl, the snow will pound, but they are solidly placed. I had wondered about that. When Claes has been here for about a week, and no storms are forecast, a question looms. When are you going back? I don’t want to be alone again for any length of time, because the news is of cruel people elected by other cruel people. It feels as though he comes here, sneaking through Checkpoint Charlie, and I don’t know if he’ll make it back after another return, after a stay on the other side of

the wall. It is not rational. I imagine many others are feeling some version of this during the pandemic.

On the walk in the big cemetery, we commented how the snow on the ground took considerable height from many of the gravestones. Some tops had rounded snow caps, while others have been blown bare, suddenly looking naked and cold. We spotted some deer tracks, but I could not find any in my little woods later. There were no animal tracks, not squirrels, deer or raccoons, in the deep snow. Just one set of cat paw tracks, heading back to the neighbors’ hospitality. I scattered birdseed over the shoveled piles lining the driveway, to stay on the surface. The Juncos came right back as soon as I stepped into the house again, and so many came for the rest of the day that I did the second portion later, as promised. A nightmare woke me up at half past five. I was in the long ago past, accused of helping a runaway slave. I screamed at the people taking out a horsehair flail to whip us. Horsehair? It is so odd how the details in dreams can defy understanding. Finally, at the end of the day, Congress shut that Q lady out of committees. To avoid watching all day, compulsively making speculation about the vote, we took a morning walk. I passed off the boxes of memories to my friend from the Post Office to send. In exchange for plants and recipes, and a book to help him fall asleep, he helps me to send things without going inside over there. Now I have but a few photos of my husband when we married, when we became parents, when he had a mustache, or a beard, or was clean-shaven. It is a small milestone. I made a point of including my big belly pregnancy pictures, also the ones where I am looking at my new baby with that deep, deep love, like you have never felt before. I hope they don’t throw them away. I hope they keep them in some drawer and take them out from time to time―and think about me. I think about calling, after the boxes likely arrive, sometime next week, or sending a message that these boxes are coming, for my younger son’s memory therapy. But I figure I should give them time and avoid expressions of displaced anger, their short fuses I find so difficult to deal with, which remind me of their father. I have this fear of nights with no sleep, so I wait. * * *

After the separation, I was to imperturbably, matter-of-factly, bring my passport, the birth certificates, and the final divorce documents to every school The Progeny went to, just to prove I am their mother. My ex had submitted school records that omitted me from the blue card, the official parent listing. Or, on one of them, l was recorded as someone akin to the nanny―allowed to pick them up, my name listed on the lines at the bottom of the card. It took me some time to realize this was happening annually and then put together the package of materials required to rectify all of the official records. Usually, the school officials were terribly sorry, falling all over themselves to say that they had no idea how I managed it all. I had no idea myself. I did not cry in their offices, but rather saved that for in the shower later. I did this every year―every single year. I can now start to dismiss the patronizing attitude Neddy had toward so many details of my persona much earlier: my appearance, the way I said ‘like’ too much, the dresses and haircuts that didn’t make muster, in that former life, before children. I now see it in terms of his transference of ‘herself’ onto me. I did not have an inkling of this though, when these words were said, and wondered why I didn’t get the love and admiration my father expressed for my mother? The crescendo in 1992 was an emotional body slam, with a seventeen-year setup. Early on, when I was twenty-four and we were living in my in-laws’ basement after college, I called my mother to say I was too unhappy, something was wrong. I wanted to come home to think. She said I needed to work on my marriage, but I do not have a welcome for that kind of break from it all. I am still working on forgiving her.

Here you go!