OurPath Open Forum

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August 12, 2021 10:26 am  #51


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

OutofHisCloset wrote:

 If there are other "trans widows" on this site who would prefer not to lend legitimacy to SSN's  "neutral" position on trans issues...

SSN has always taken a neutral position on what straight partners believe and the decisions they make for themselves. We have always encouraged them to do what works best for them and their family. We don't take a position on whether others should stay with or leave their partners, or give a precise definition of the word gay. When the organization prescribes viewpoints, we narrow the field of straights we can serve. It delegitimizes the organization to anyone who doesn't subscribe to those same beliefs and viewpoints. The array of experiences, beliefs and convictions within the straight partner community is vast. We want to support the individual, no matter their viewpoints and choices about their own relationship.

Our new website has many resources and recommended links on it - including Trans Widow Voices. These resources run the gamut on viewpoint and purpose. We respect the varying viewpoints and believe they are helpful resources. We are not opposed to viewpoints across the spectrum being expressed. We think that's valuable. We empower straight partners, and trust them to make the decisions that are best for them and their families.


You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
 

August 12, 2021 12:04 pm  #52


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

Abused women do not need the gamut of viewpoints.  A woman living in an abusive situation is not empowered by "viewpoints across the spectrum."  I doubt you would say something similar to a woman who is being physically abused.  

 

 

August 12, 2021 2:21 pm  #53


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

Gloria wrote:

I have no desire to archive my own posts. I did not post much. I am happy that Kia wants to archive hers. She is living with a homosexual so she needs all the records that she can get. I am free from mine.

 

Are you talking about me Gloria?
"She is living with a homosexual so she needs all the records that she can get"
....is quite a catty thing to say. I would like to use the record of my journey here to see how far I've come, be able to reread the advice and knowledge I've gathered from members and compare the strength and value I now see in myself with the confused and wary woman I was when I joined

You have to be in a straightspouses' shoes to know she's living with a homosexual. I've had my life upturned and ruined by a bisexual

Elle
 

Last edited by Ellexoh_nz (August 12, 2021 2:58 pm)


KIA KAHA                       
 

August 12, 2021 2:47 pm  #54


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

In cases where the straight partner or their children are in danger, SSN has always advocated for leaving the situation. Straight partners and partners of trans people are the experts only in their own situations. The answer for what to do and how/when to do it is something we believe is inherently inside each of us. With encouragement and compassion, we hope to help empower straights to make the decisions that are best for them, and to move onto healthy healing.


You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
     Thread Starter
 

August 12, 2021 4:24 pm  #55


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

Kel,
 I did not say that SSN would counsel a physically abused woman to stay.  I said that you would not offer a physically abused woman a "range" of works to read, some of which would lead her to believe that it was her duty to stay with her abusive spouse.  A woman married to a trans-identifying man is living in an inherently abusive situation, in which her sexuality, her femininity, and her physical reality as a female are being appropriated, redefined, and even ridiculed.  She is being gaslit on a level and in a way so elemental that unless you have experienced it you cannot fully understand it.  And for you to even raise the question about the redefinition of a straight woman's sexuality (your "do we now call a woman in a relationship with a transwoman a lesbian?") is both hurtful and offensive, and contributes to the trauma we experience. To tell a woman living in such a situation that there is a range of options available to her and that all options are equally legitimate is to me irresponsible, just as it would be to offer a range of options to a physically abused woman who is suffering the psychological effects of what is called battered women's syndrome.   To do so ignores the reality that choices are not made in a vacuum, and that the context in which she is living and making a choice is one in which her reality is under attack.  The "all options are equally legitimate depending on what you decide works for you" ignores this reality.  I understand that you and I will not, will never, see eye to eye on this subject.  

Longwayhome,
    You are correct.  TTT is not the same as TGT, either on an individual level--and you have articulated the reasons that is true in your post above--or on a social level.  For one thing, when gay people are allowed to live and to love as same sex people, the rest of us do not find ourselves forced to change.  A gay couple can work, study, marry and live without it affecting my marriage, my education, my job, my life. I can live and let live. (Obviously I'm not referring to gay people who have been hiding out in a straight-appearing marriage using their straight spouse as a beard.) 

  However, for trans people to live as they claim they must others are expected to affirm belief in a reality that the overwhelming majority of us do not do ascribe to, which is that people can be "born in the wrong body" (a person is not an autonomous mind separate from their body) or change their sex (a person living as the opposite SEX does not change their SEX, which remains the same as it was when they were conceived), or that biological sex is merely a social construction; or they demand we--and their own children--refer to them by pronouns properly belonging to a sex they are not and which evolution has equipped us to perceive with even a cursory glance; male people living as transwomen insist they be allowed to be included in quotas set aside for women, be allowed to work with populations of vulnerable and traumatized women (rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, prisons).  



 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (August 12, 2021 8:26 pm)

 

August 12, 2021 5:23 pm  #56


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

A straight woman living with a gay in denial partner is also in an inherently abusive situation.  Her femininity is also under assault where the husband wants to be considered better than her as a woman.  It's like being henpecked by an industrial strength chicken.  Someone I know literally took the new born out of the mother's hands and then he was ringing and telling us all that she didn't know what she was doing and so he had to step in.  not true.  but he could not stop himself from competing with her, it was inherent in him.

I agree with what OOHC says.  I would feel irresponsible if i said to a new poster oh do a bit of work on improving it and it will all be fine.

oh and Kel, thank you for clearing that up, I am glad the forum will remain open, I was lucky to find this site when I needed it and no amount of resources can compensate for losing the ability to talk together.

Last edited by lily (August 12, 2021 6:32 pm)

 

August 12, 2021 5:54 pm  #57


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

I think it's bizarre that men who have a paraphilia can now live their paraphilia full time in public and be applauded as being a brave trans person. The mass enabling of transvestism (sexually aroused by cross dressing) and autogynephilia (men who are sexually aroused by thinking of himself as a woman) isn't helping anyone.  Believe the women who have first hand knowledge of men with these disorders who will deceive, use, and manipulate anyone into believing that they are harmless victims.

 

August 12, 2021 8:28 pm  #58


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

Lily, 
Yes of course you're right that a straight woman living with a gay in denial spouse is also living in an inherently abusive situation.  I did not mean to imply otherwise.  It's that last item in my series "her physical reality as a female" that distinguishes the situation of a woman whose husband decides he's a woman. 

 

August 12, 2021 9:57 pm  #59


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

Thanks, OOHC, I didn't think you were implying different, I just wanted to include the rest of us!

yes of course - there are different scenarios and then each one is circumstantially unique.

I don't suppose it's the same thing but I think there is some commonality over the femininity thing.

The one photo from when we were young where my ex looks like he's really enjoying himself he was dressed up as a fairy, complete with spangled tutu a wand and tiara and pink ballet shoes.  It was for a Christmas pantomime for disabled children and everybody thinks he is so wonderful for doing it but you know, did he have to add the lipstick and the heavy eye makeup?  yes he did and it made him feel happy.  (looking back I just realise that was around the time this man came to work where he did.)

 

Last edited by lily (August 12, 2021 9:59 pm)

 

August 13, 2021 7:02 am  #60


Re: Amazing changes coming to SSN

I lived through several tortuous years of being married to a man who wanted to be a woman.   And since we divorced, I've read up extensively on the trans subject. 

From my point of view, the whole trans thing has become cultish.  It's okay to be trans - it's cool and edgy and there are lots of trans people who will be your friend! 

There is an ominous wave accompanying this.  Men who believe they are now women are becoming entitled and emboldened.  Just look at the term "TERF".  If you don't agree with their nonsense that they're now women, just like you and me, you are publicly shamed and in some cases, threatened with violence.  Just take a look at what happened to J.K. Rowling.  There was an uproar about a 60 Minutes segment on de-transition.  A book that I read about the subject was temporarily banned on Amazon.  It's un-PC to say a word of disagreement about being trans.  

Men are now playing women's sports, including in the Olympics, taking jobs that were previously set aside for women only, and invading our few private spaces - i.e. bathrooms, locker rooms and spas.  There is a growing movement to accept men who have had no surgery - just that they identify as female - to be considered a woman.  Children as young as four years old are being brainwashed that they are not the sex they were born as, or even any sex at all.  How can a child be "non-binary"?

In my opinion, if you are born with a male body part, that is what you will always be.  My ex-spouse inflicted life-long irrevocable damage on me. His supposed "female self" revolted me.  I was horrified that he was trying to assume something that was rightfully mine - my femininity.  

One of the worst indignations that I was subjected to was a close female relative who insisted that what my ex was doing was okay; she said  I was old-fashioned and close minded and we could work out our marriage.  

Anyway, this Forum was a blessing to me, especially OOHC's posts.  I will probably be moving along myself as it has been a few years and I've said and read just about everything I want to.  

 

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