Allies, partners, admirers, and tolerators (10)

Mine field!

but it's a good question - where are partners supposed to go for support if all the forums for them are filled with panic and hatred?

Has nobody invented a space for partners who are ok with transness? Maybe someone could? Is there a way trans groups can compensate? i suspect we'd screw it up due to our lack of understanding. So it needs to be created or controlled by partners, I suspect.

One of my ex partners had the same problem trying to find a supportive place to discuss things... and found partner orientated forums useless for her as someone who has fundamental respect for trans people but still needs some support with the changes, including it's affect on her orientation. People didn;t know how to talk to someone who isn't just having a problem with the whole thing and they seemed unable to hear what she was saying.

De

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Edited 18 Jan 11, 3:55 PM by Degenerate

The need is big for a support group. Events like Sparkle and old Transmission/Stormes (when they was going) are very supportive of partners to join in together.

Magic Theatre is another that has a broad mixture of people to meet up together. Social events i recommend for Trans and partners

http://empressm7.uboot.com/ Vampire pro/lifestyle ts dom and switch. Age play mummy/aunty/AB ,medical play,domestic, energy and outdoor specialist. "Beyond the government,above the police ."

I think it was their yahoo group. The Beaumont Society seems to be very heavy on the wives of cross dressers who a that time i just thought were a bunch of lucky cows... fancy complaining if your husband/partner is JUST a crossdresser

The support seemed to be mostly based on not letting the husband 'get away with too much' and ultimately that most relationships would fail (usually when the husbands habits couldn't be kept under control ie he had the temerity to decide cd was just a step on his way to wanting to transition). There was a horrific amount of vitriol (but a few very sweet people, who i connected with off board but none of them were the partners of transsexuals..just people who were willing to try and understand their partners).

If you think how samll the number of people transitioning is....minus those already single....then minus those whose partners immediately fuck-off (quite a large percentage I'm told) there aren't many people in a like position to connect to. (I guess its the same problem as the trans community has itself....divide into ever smaller factions or get under a big trans umbrella).

My alternative reaction is to information gather..to immerse in anything I can find.... I still havn't found anyone or anything that quite matches my situation (going from a none cross dressing partner, to being told, to going to her first first gender clinic appointment all within three weeks - thats one fuck of a steep curve of experience) But now a year in, similarity of experience isn't that important, we are who we are and are where we are. I'm passed needing support groups specially for me but can understand the issues political and practical issues involved (sometimes more than a trans person early in their journey -shock horror)I'm also pretty good at being able to help people understand what their partners may be going through.

I did a lot of the early research for my partner, all the practical stuff about GP code of conducts and PCTs etc whilst all she wanted to think about was nail varnish colours. I'm in this as much as she is.... I don't get the same personal positive outcome...our highs and lows are often diametrically opposed...

I guess its a bit like being the partner to a pregnant woman...some men fuck off, some men hang around on the outskirts and have a look at the outcome...some people simply support...others read the manuals, practice the breathing with their partners and go to the classes. It doesn't make them pregnant or know exactly how it feels but it gives them a good dose of empathy and a working knowledge of pregnancy.

I'll never feel what it is to transition but I have a fair working knowledge of the practicalities, some of the political issues and every day stuff. Its not the same as personal experience but sometimes its just as useful so where I'm interested enough i join in on this board (or memo people.)

I'm still not sure I get the whole cis privledge thing...I get the basic concept and I think thats the basic form that gets used as a stick to beat people with...but I'm told its a far more subtle issue than that and probably one for someone to explain to me sometime in simple terms..(preferably over a bottle of wine) I suspect its one of those Zen type things that to understand it you have to cease to be it (or something).

Buy a copy of Beyond the Circle CAAN statement of principle.

Trans-mission and Stormes were fantastic clubs that catered more for Hetro TVs but was not exclussive. It was there i met and made friends with the Beaumont Society crowd. They were a conservative TV group so i see your point there.

Try this link (you may know it already)

http://www.trans-mission.org

I knew a Wife of a pre-op TS a while back. She was very supportive but i'm afraid i thought She was overlooked for her feelings. The man she married for better or for worse and enjoyed sex with was heading to be a Woman and basically used her during the cisgender period. Feelings to be who we are, are strong but getting hurt is not all one sided for some and we should not forget that as a Trans community.

I will ask about for more info but for a good night out, non fetish and glamoured up I recommend the magic theatre. I think it could be a place you will find people in a similar situation to yourself.

http://www.magic-theatre.co.uk

Dont worry about the Cisgender thing as i'm sure someone here will soon correct you as we are helpful like that, ("But in the best possible taste").

regards, michelle xx

My definition in the other post was: Cis privilege is a set of entitlements and liberties given to cis people (and conditionally given to people who pass for cis), which are denied of trans people as part of wider social inequality. This can be a fairly broad reaching thing with some unexpected results.

In some versions of it, it's a human rights balance sheet measuring differences between a cis and a trans person.

moo

thats the bit i get... and can see that that may be enshrined in social behaviour and legal stuff.... but with in that on a personal level you get some trans people who are far more privledged than some cis people... simply becuase they are more effective at interacting with the world, or have had better opportunities etc.

Just like some cis people are more privledged than others but who may have the same starting point and chances.

It just doesn't feel so black and white that cis are always more effectively privledged.

Though I can see that trans people come at it from a lower base point of rights.

Jane tells me its a lot about esentialism and language and I think thats where i get lost.

I just reread her blog on it http://sexualitymatters.wordpress.com/2010/11/29...

which in turn leads through to Julia Seranos blog on it http://juliaserano.livejournal.com/14700.html

and I get it.... I just can't 'get' it...but I guess thats the Zen bit...I'd have to cease to be it to understand it properly.

Buy a copy of Beyond the Circle CAAN statement of principle.

It really isn't black & white, That "cis privilege" document shows this up simply by the sheer number of issues which I've seen apply to cis people as well. I have the vast majority of that "privilege" and I'm not cis, as much as I like to leave people to assume that I am.

I don't think anyone ever truly understands other person's grief, to give a specific example I wouldn't say anyone understood what my life was like when I was 10, my mother died after a very long struggle with various illnesses including cancer, I was severely bullied at school and my life was utterly desolate for some years after.

It's probably hugely impacted my emotional development, I don't know what I'd be like had that not occurred though it would be silly to cite "trauma-free childhood privilege" and apply it to everyone who did not experience what I did.

I think the whole setup of that document is ill-thought out, it comes across as a guilt trip instead of a simple educational outline of the kind of crap non-cis people may deal with.

A social theory buzzword that might help you out here is "intersectionality". Which is to say that oppression doesn't just exist along linear scales but there are intersections of power and disempowerment creating conditional circumstances in which it happens. Trans people, women and people from ethnic minorities may be systematically disadvantaged, but you get the occasional Georgina Beyer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgina_Beyer) in the world, who will also be facing widespread systematic disadvantages, and *at the same time* be privileged through her (hard earned, but nevertheless relevant) membership within the political class.

Privilege and inequality intersect in various ways in society. It's not black and white because there are a huge number of different axes inequality exists. At the centre of it all there's the supreme cadre of the ultra-privileged (frequently shorthanded as "straight white upper class middle aged cis men" in political mudslinging although occasionally the odd woman or person of colour or whoever else gets token membership).

Hope that is useful.

moo

Buy a copy of Beyond the Circle CAAN statement of principle.

Edited 19 Jan 11, 2:06 PM by redcat