Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

In 2017 Tinsel started a thread on Mumsnet and discovered other women whose marriages had ended when their husbands transitioned. Their experiences were very similar, she realised – and in many ways echoed those of women whose husbands subjected them to physical or emotional abuse. Women whose husbands are transitioning frequently have their sanity questioned, their memories discounted and their judgment undermined, says Tinsel. Another similarity was boundary-pushing: promises are made, for example not to cross-dress in front of the children, only to be broken. A third was emotional manipulation. ‘[My husband] insisted that everything he did, and the decisions he made, were the consequences of his identity, and if he had not done those things he would have killed himself,’ says Tinsel. ‘That’s a tactic often employed by manipulators: give me what I want or I’ll kill myself.’