My definition of "transphobic"
Phobia is a fear, not a hatred. My wife is afraid of the whole transgender thing. Because it's me she can't bear to look at it on TV or in real life. She doesn't hate trans people. She doesn't hate me, though she is angry right now. This is just too painful for her to deal with anything about gender issues. Honestly, I think pure cisgender people have a hard time understanding this because they have never once thought about why they are in the body they have. So I get it, and I also get that this is worse, weirder, more publicly visible than leaving her for another woman or even coming out as gay. That attitude, and my obliviousness to what was wrong with me my whole life, are artifacts of a generation that won't be the case with younger people going forward. They'll know what it is and they'll just deal with it when they're still young. I realize that I'm inflicting pain here. That's what makes it hard.
Maybe she will climb down from her stance that once I said the words, "The gender thing never went away and I have to deal with it," our marriage was over and that we have to sell the house. I would stay married, but not under the condition that I do nothing for the rest of my life to address my gender dysphoria. I told her that after some exploration and therapy and medication it might turn out that I don't transition and that we could go on as before, but she's not going to go along with that or even believe it's a possibility, and thus it's her choice to split up immediately, which I understand.
Can a person who knows what they have to do to find their true self be called selfish for doing it?
elizabethamy
