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 goddamned typical. I have seen behavior by trans women that is sexist, misogynist bullshit. 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.

I have also seen the wives of transitioning women take out all their rage on their trans spouse – financially, emotionally, even physically. I have seen rage that I didn’t even know was possible in the wives of trans women. And I have seen them be unwilling to let it go.

That is, I have seen a lot of awful behavior on both sides of this coin. Trans people are not excused because they’re trans just as women are not excused because they’re women. We are all faced with loss and betrayal and heartbreak and all of the emotions that accompany those things. How you choose to express them is entirely up to you.

I can buy the argument that now is not the best time to be airing our dirty laundry in public. Maybe it is. Maybe right now is the “let’s put a good face on it so the public grants us our rights” period for trans issues. But I don’t think there ever is that time, to be honest. I think that’s the kind of thinking that results in shaming some members of a community over other members of that community.

Because, I would argue, the crap behavior of some trans women who come from lives of male privilege – & here I’m specifically talking about certain kinds of later transitioning trans women – is a fact. It’s not made up. I can promise you that. And what we want, as a community, is for trans people to be happy. For them to have people to love and who love them. For them to be accepted and loved by their families.

And transition after 20 years of marriage is very, very rarely going to make that happen. It just isn’t.

So if we as a community want trans people to be happy, people need to know what kind of devastation a late transition can cause on families and wives and communities and of course on the trans people themselves. There is so, so much pain, on everyone’s part. People need to know it. People need to transition younger so that some of this can be prevented.

That said: partners deserve to tell their stories because they’re their stories. There are other reasons, but really, that’s the nut of it. There is no saying who is “right” when it comes to he said/she said. There never is. But as far as I could tell, Sex Changes felt real. It felt hard to write. There were parts that made me cry to finally see things I’d felt in print.

So no, it’s not a perfect story. It could have been kinder, but my gut still says it was honest and that is worth having in the world. Honesty can only shed light in dark corners, and transition-fueled divorce is one of the darkest corners I know of.

Five Questions With… Christine Benvenuto

Thank you so much for this opportunity to discuss my new book, Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On.

(1) Your ex husband has, as well, written a memoir about her experiences. Did you write yours in response to that? Or were you both writing simultaneously?

By the time I heard that my ex had written a book, mine had been completed and was scheduled to be published a few months later.

(2) I know quite a lot of time passes between the experiences, the writing, the editing, and the publication of the book. Have there been any major developments during that time?

The most significant recent development is the book’s publication. It took a long time for me to decide to tell my story. Now my story is out in the world where others read and interact with it, and with me. It is an amazing experience to hear from readers. I feel profoundly honored to receive letters from other women who have gone through similar experiences and felt isolated, alone and disregarded. At the opposite end of the spectrum but equally moving are the letters from readers who haven’t gone through anything like this, but have lived through other kinds of loss, bereavement, the need to start over – and feel that the book speaks to their experiences in a personal and meaningful way.

Having these wonderful opportunities to talk about the book with readers, one of the things I am offered a chance to discuss is my reasons for writing the book. One of those reasons is what I’ve just alluded to: the desire to reach out to people in despair over major life changes not of their own choosing. I wanted to offer hope to people who may wonder if they’ll survive having their lives turned upside down, and who doubt that they’ll do much more – that they’ll ever be happy again. People need to hear that it’s possible to find the strength to create themselves and their lives anew.
Another important reason I wrote the book is that I believe my experiences illustrate the importance of supporting young people who express a need to explore their gender identities. Exploration, not suppression, is essential for a young person who feels uneasy growing into adulthood in a gender identity that doesn’t feel right. Parents need to support their children in this exploration, but they must not be asked to go it alone: we as a culture need to support parents in supporting their children. I feel so strongly about this. The more parents and families are supported, not marginalized or isolated, the more they will be able to be there for their children.

(3) Are you and your ex on speaking terms? Have you met her, yet?

As I describe in the book, I’ve seen my ex regularly without interruption because we interact over child visitation. My children live with me, but one of them currently sees my ex on a regular basis, requiring me to make those arrangements.

(4) Partners and spouses often take a lot of heat for speaking the truth of their own experience, and in most online trans community, are generally shouted down for not “getting with the program” and being on board with the gender transition. Did you find any support with trans people that was supportive of you telling your truth?

I am in awe of those who have raised supportive voices within the trans community, brave souls who understand that my book tells the story of one family’s experience with one individual in transition and is not intended to be representative of anyone else’s experience, or of any group of people.

To give just one example, I felt privileged to hear from someone who describes himself as “a man with transsexual feelings” who read my story as a cautionary tale of what he would never wish to do to his own wife and children. He and his family have worked out their own compromise, but hearing that my story is helping him to appreciate his wife and children’s pain, and to strengthen his resolve to spare them further grief wherever he can, is very meaningful to me.

Not only have some in the community supported my telling my own truth, they have recognized their own truth in my story as well.

(5) How is the new romance?

Five years along, the new romance still feels new.

Virginia Woolf

“Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.”

On January 25th, 1882, Virginia Woolf was born. Happy Birthday Mx. Woolf!

The Love of Parents

I went to a breakfast to kick off a campaign here in the Fox Valley yesterday: the idea is to make sure LGBTQ people know they’re welcome. There have been too many suicides of these kids over the past few years just in this area, & I sat at the same table with one of the moms who lost her son yesterday.

You just don’t know what to say. There really isn’t anything to say. You keep doing, instead, in hopes that no other mom ever has to go through that.

So when I saw this piece by Rachel Maddow, about how PFLAG parents at pride parades *always* make her cry, I felt some kind of relief: me too. Who knows why. Maybe you can tell on some of their faces that it’s not what they’ve chosen. Or that it’s still hard for them. Or that they’re not convinced gayness isn’t a sin. Who knows? But they’re there, and they’re proud of their love.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Which is, yeah: more of what the world needs.

(This clip is also a nice piece of gay history, & so worth watching. Obama’s retelling of Morty’s arrest at the Stonewall is priceless, too.)

Roe v Wade Turns 40

Statement by the President on Roe v. Wade Anniversary

On the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we reaffirm its historic commitment to protect the health and reproductive freedom of women across this country and stand by its guiding principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters, and women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care. Today and every day, my Administration continues our efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies, support maternal and child health, and minimize the need for abortion. On this anniversary, we recommit ourselves to supporting women and families in the choices they make and redouble our efforts to promote safe and healthy communities.

40 years of keeping women alive.

Ending the Day: Amiri Baraka

Every year we read a ton of quotes attributed to Dr. King, and miss out on all the other amazing, liberatory art that’s come out of Black america. This is only an excerpt:

This is my own transcription:

But I aint come from a foolish tribe
we wants the the mule / the land / you can make it 300 years of blue chip stock in the entire operation
we want to be paid in a central bank the average worker farmer wage for all those years we gave it free
plus we want damages for all the killings and the fraud, the lynchings the missing justice the lies and frame ups the unwarranted jailings the tar and featherings the character and race assassinations historical slander ugly caricatures for every sambo stepnfetchit flick
we want to be paid
for every hurtful thing you did or said
for all the land you took for all the rapes all the rosewoods and black wall streets you jobs
all the miseducation jobs lost
segregated shacks we live in
the disease that ate & killed us
for all the mad police that drilled us
all the music and dances you stole
the styles the language the hip clothes you copied
the careers you stopped

all these are suits, specific litigation