This seems to be a thing. I wrote about it a bit here but very interested to hear other women's experiences, observations, and analysis of what's going on here.
This seems to be a thing. I wrote about it a bit here but very interested to hear other women's experiences, observations, and analysis of what's going on here.
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21 comments
I read it this morning! Love your articles; I share them with my partner.
My thoughts are that it can be as simple as the gender nonsense being like a brand new exciting way to get attention. That's just how all the TiFs to whom I've spoken make it sound.
The cases I know of are usually married to an AGP TIM, and I think they do it for a few reasons: Wanting to feel like a "part of the transgender community" is part of it, the same generic reasons any woman goes TIF are part of it (eg wanting to be viewed as a human rather than a sex object, wanting clout if you live in a progressive bubble). But the top reason I think is out of some idea of "validating" their husband. They can't simply exist around their husband constantly reminding him what he is NOT - a woman. Their husband's precious feefees are much too important for that. They think if they hide any trace of womanhood that will appease the AGP. Some of them I think are also brainwashed so much, they look at their male husband, a grotesque pornified parody of femininity, declaring he is a real woman, and they think -- "Well, I'm certainly not like that, so it must be me who is not a woman". This can happen on a greater societal level too but the cognitive dissonance must be very intense when you have to keep up the charade day in and day out even within your own home.
I don't know of many cases of a non-TIM man sticking around with a woman who has a beard and removed her breasts.
I suppose there's also the they/them types, the women who continue to be women who perform femininity (okay maybe they'll wear pants now and then) but identify as transgender despite not even "trying", again because of the gendie clout. In those cases I suppose their male partners put up with it because there's effectively no meaningful difference and pandering with a "they" here and there is worth it for getting laid in their minds.
I sometimes wonder if the partners are gay
Could be midlife crisis with a side of empty nest syndrome. Realizing your life is half over, your youthful beauty is spent, nobody cares what you say anymore, your kids are off doing exciting things, your husband is more interested in his phone than you, you never became all those things you thought you’d become.
Maybe it’s the realization that the progressive movement has little use for middle aged white women and transing helps them stay relevant and have a place in the movement.
Maybe there’s something to the story that’s not being told about porn, fetishes, sexual abuse / rape.
Whatever the cause, this trend signals the end of trans as a solution for the mental problems of teenage girls and maybe boys too.
But OP's article features two women, one who was 27 and the 41 at the time they went tranz. Moreover, she said she's observed this phenomenon in
The 35-40 age bracket seems a bit young in my view for "progressive" white women to be going through empty-nest syndrome. Lots of white women in that demographic don't have children until they're in their 30s.
Also, are we even sure all the white heterosexual women doing this have children? It's not clear to me from the links to reddit threads that OP gives in her article.
Lots of them don't have children.
I suspect they have the same issues as straight teen girls who come out as trans—they don’t like being female, never have and would have transed as teens if this had been a thing back then.
They want to escape.
Transgenderism is escapism.
I can only speculate, but I think women who are already in a hetero relationship and trans themselves are likely unhappy in that relationship.
They're either making themselves less attractive for their partners (in which case one may wonder why a woman wants to be less sexually appealing to her partner ... there's quite a few ugly reasons for that) or they are with men who find surgically mutilated women more attractive, which ... would be extremely disturbing.
Also, let's not forget that there's quite a few gay men who marry women and do not disclose that they are gay. A woman might subconsciously (or consciously) pick up on what her husband really likes and try to become it.
The case of the midlife-crisis transing seems to me a result of social contagion, similar to ROGD in teen girls - whenever someone feels vaguely unhappy with their life, without being able to pinpoint the reason, transing is prescribed as cure. The current trend for navel-gazing makes sure that people notice that they are vaguely unhappy.
Isn't this just a new version of a mid-life crisis for women? It seems that if your husband is loving and you love him, you are likely having issues with health things or perimenopause or just "shit, I'm getting older" and that's a NORMAL HUMAN LIFE STAGE. In fact, shaking up one's life is a known reaction to these issues, but they usually didn't involve lying about reality and fucking up your endocrine system.
In a group of women I was a part of until my teen had ROGD related, I'm certain, to her being a lesbian and mentally ill, I watched them (all about ten years my junior) leave their husbands. For a few, there were definite reasons everyone could appreciate -- cheating, addiction issues on the husband's part. But the bulk seemed to just want a big shakeup. Some also determined they were lesbians. One, famously, decided she was a lesbian and went off on social media, but kept her husband tethered and wouldn't allow HIM to move on.
Turning your emotional/mental health/midlife issues into medical ones, though, is some insane shit from therapists.
Good question. My impression was that the earliest TIPs were mainly gay men, but then they were overtaken by AGPs. All the TIPs I've met in the last few decades were exclusively interested in dating women, so AGPs and former lesbian TIFs. Now I'm reading about all these "gay trans man" TIFs and it really makes no sense to me. My only guess is that they have similar motivations as AGPs. Instead of trying to escape homophobia, both seem to be reacting to our porn saturated culture that objectifies women. AGPs develop a fetish where they want to be similarly objectified, and TIFs are trying to escape it. Many seem to start off obsessed with MLM anime stuff, they see male homosexual relationships as the only egalitarian option for dating men.
I wonder if it's partly fear of aging. Elliot Page (not straight, I know) said that one reason she transitioned was because she couldn't imagine herself becoming an old woman. But that's just the fear of becoming old, unattractive, and irrelevant to men in particular, but society in general, that women commonly feel.
These women are self-identified leftists and middle-aged, middle-class, straight white women, aka Karens, are perfectly acceptable targets of misogyny for the left. The contempt leftist men especially express towards this group of women is shocking. I think these 35-40 year old straight female transitioners are partly trying to avoid becoming what they and all their peers despise.
She said that? Now she’ll look like a tiny old man, and testosterone is making sure that’s soon
Yes, she already looks like a shrivelled wannabe boy who’s got old.
Uhhh did no one blink an eye at the absolute misogyny of "Elliott's" statement??!
I very very rarely come across any men that want a boyish looking female partner... every man I know wants an unreal, massively curvy blow up doll with the face of a child with swollen lips. Thats not to say that there aren't plenty of pedo-y men out there but my experience with that has been the polar opposite of what you're describing and it makes it hard for me to believe that very many women are transitioning because of that :/