From the forthcoming film by Vaishnavi Sundar, Behind The Looking Glass, about women whose partners, or fathers, have ‘transitioned’:
You’ve got to pretend that it’s all okay… You have to realise that your dad has fallen in love with himself, and there’s no part for you in that where you are not just a prop.
It’s like this person came along and said, “You know how you had a dad? Well, that was all a lie. And all that time, your dad didn’t like being your dad.” And my dad was kind of replaced by this other person. This other person who didn’t love me like my dad loved me, wasn’t interested in me like my dad was.
And his love was conditional.
Emma Thomas, the woman recounting her somewhat unorthodox childhood, also appears in this longer interview. The subjects touched on include unmentionable erotic motives, ideological capture, and the experience of watching a man publicly enacting an approximation of breastfeeding. It’s a strange listen, necessarily, a little sad, and sometimes darkly funny.
Ms Thomas also has a blog, Children Of Transitioners, in which she relates her experiences, and those of others, and where she attempts to parse the phenomenon of dads in dresses:
Most people wouldn’t post a picture of themselves in their underwear in this context.
For instance.
Update, via the comments:
Pete SJ visits Ms Thomas’ blog and quotes this:
While many people assume that autogynephilia is all about the clothes, the fact is that children of transitioners are often familiar with the other markers of the condition. When your father wants to go to a bra fitting or make up session with you, or wants to know all about your period, that’s autogynephilia too. If your father is doing this, he is involving you in his erotic world.
Adding,
“Involving you in his erotic world” – an economic summary that catches the ambiguous or boundary-transgressing aspects of the behaviour.
At which point, this eye-widening saga came to mind.
And note that those applauding Mr Yates, the star of the link above – the bewigged man quizzing schoolgirls about their panties – are overwhelmingly ladies of a progressive leaning. Selling out their own daughters, and the daughters of their neighbours.
In order to be seen holding fashionable views.
Or, as Ms Thomas recounts in the embedded video:
I lived this very, quite sheltered life, really, in some ways, and then I moved to this situation where there are a lot of people who were cross-dressing and, you know, selling sex. There was a guy who was a prostitute. He’d left a wife and two little children to sell sex. He moved in with us for, like, three months.
So again, some boundaries being tested.
Given the current near-ubiquity of trans activism, it’s curious how little attention is given to estranged wives – ‘trans widows’ – or, as above, estranged children. Who, I suppose, would be ‘trans orphans’.
To which dicentra replies,
When they stick their heads above the parapet they are told to get over their transphobia and affirm their new mum/wife. The term “trans widow” is considered to be transphobic, because of course it is.
Before citing the following scolding comment, directed at Ms Thomas by a disaffected reader:
“‘Trans widow’ is an appalling term, centring others where the focus should be on the trans person becoming his/her true self. Of course, there have to be difficult adjustments, but this is not death!”
Yet the popular activist term deadnaming.
And you’d think the news that your husband no longer exists and that your entire marriage was a farce – or that your dad no longer exists and is now competing for the title of mom – or some bizarre hooker aunt – might be a legitimate basis for some, shall we say, irritation.
Even so-called “phobia.”
Update 2:
The entire documentary can now be viewed here.
Recent Comments