Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

Women who refuse to be silenced must seek refuge in online anonymity. One is ‘Tinsel Angel’, who lives in the north of England. She met her ex-husband in a nightclub two decades ago. Before she moved in with him he told her that he used to cross-dress, but hadn’t since he met her. They married three years after meeting, and had a child a year later. Then followed several years when he cross-dressed but tried to keep it secret, and repeatedly promised to stop. ‘It made him unattractive to me at a visceral level,’ she says. ‘There was a pattern of lies being discovered, compromises being made and broken, boundaries being put in place and overstepped.’ One New Year’s Eve, her husband said that his resolution was to ‘do more girl stuff’. Tinsel insisted that he visit their family doctor, who referred him to a gender clinic. The year in limbo before full assessment was ‘hideous, terrible, horrible’. When he was finally seen, he received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and decided to present as a woman full-time. ‘That was my red line,’ says Tinsel. She left soon afterwards. ‘If I told someone who didn’t know me well why my marriage ended, they would say, “that must have been very difficult for him,” ’ she says. A couple of years later, she came across the expression ‘trans widow’. ‘It’s very descriptive. He’s not dead, but his identity is dead. Actually, it’s worse: you’re supposed to pretend it never existed. I have heard widows say, “my husband and I adored each other, and I ...