(LifeSiteNews) — We have all witnessed the rise of the “transgender woman,” made famous by paradigm-shifting cover stories by TIME magazine and Vanity Fair featuring Laverne Cox and Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner, trans-identifying men who defiantly announced that they are women. Often, in the shadow of these men embracing a new identity and a new life, are the wives they left behind. Many call themselves “trans widows.”
Occasionally, we get a glimpse of these trans widows surfacing in viral clips on social media; sometimes, conservative media outlets will cover their almost-invisible plight. Gender-critical feminist outlets also shed some light on the suffering of the women abandoned by the men they married. Every now and again, even the mainstream press acknowledges their existence. Their suffering and confusion as the culture expects them to embrace and celebrate the gender-confusion of their partners is a pain that cannot speak its name for fear of condemnation or accusations of “transphobia.”
READ: Supporters of transgenderism are enabling sex offenders to prey on women and girls
When a man claims to be a woman, it is very often the case that he does not merely don a dress and fake breasts; in doing so, he forces his wife and children into playing along with his delusion, with weaponized compassion forcing compliance. Gender ideology, this new medicalized manifestation of the Sexual Revolution is, like the others, a source of great misery to children and families. In the name of liberation, women are expected to forgo their husbands; children are expected to give up their fathers.
One “trans widow,” Shannon, agreed to share her experience with me. Her husband began to cross-dress shortly after they were married, but at first attempted to hide it.
“As is the case with most trans widows, after our first baby he came clean about what was going on,” Shannon recalled. “While our baby was hospitalized for a serious illness he came to the hospital and told me he had cross-dressed when he was a teen and that he had the urge to cross-dress now as an adult. We agreed to go to counseling, which I believed was to save our marriage from this behavior of his which was hurting our relationship. In the past when I learned of him doing nails or shaving his legs it caused distance between us, and it was a real turn-off for me.”
She discovered that there was a sexual component to what her husband was doing – that he was aroused by dressing as a woman. This condition is referred to as autogynephilia.
“I figured the therapist we were set to see would recognize this as well,” Shannon said. “But I didn’t know he was already seeing her without me, and she was an LGBTQ therapist highly recommended by other cross-dressers and men wishing to transition. The counselor took his side and told me I was closed-minded for not allowing him to go on cross-dressing adventures with other men. She also told me I was probably a lesbian because I had fallen in love with my husband, who had this feminine side. She also said he would be a better husband exploring his feminine side by cross-dressing because he could relate to me better.”
After two sessions, Shannon told her husband that she would not be going back to the therapist, and that he wouldn’t be, either. He acquiesced – or so she thought. Things got worse from there:
Fourteen years into the marriage we were living apart while I maintained a home we were selling out of state. During that time he met someone online and grew distant and cold towards me. I wish I could say I knew things were different when I found hormones shipped to our house from out of the country, or when he fashioned a pregnancy belly and wore it around the house in my robe, or when he badgered me about wanting to breastfeed my daughter himself, or when I noticed breast development.
But he had a clever excuse for everything. It wasn’t until his attitude really shifted towards me and the kids and he wasn’t coming to see us and avoided talking to us on the phone that I started to think something was up. Soon I would find credit card charges he made at a lingerie store and a women’s department store. I figured he was cross-dressing in my absence and I asked him about the charges. He wasn’t sorry. He didn’t care how I felt.
She soon discovered that her husband had returned to the previous counselor, who had “written him a letter to transition 11 years earlier, and he had been taking hormones the entire time.” She confronted him and filed for divorce.
When he finally admitted he was going through with it all he claimed if he didn’t do this he would kill himself. That’s what he told his 10-year-old son. He knew I knew better. He told me, “This is who I am” in our final counseling session with a new counselor a year after I had originally filed for divorce (I canceled that filing when he said he wanted to be the man God ordained him to be). He told our youngest children ages 5 and 6 that he was going through a metamorphosis like a butterfly. He claimed we would all be happier. He told the kids that I (their mom) would be happier because we would not be fighting anymore. He was dumping me and the kids like trash and leaving us homeless so we could be happy.
READ: Vancouver officials mocked for disavowing Harry Potter event because of JK Rowling’s ‘transphobia’
The emotional journey was excruciating. “It was very hard to accept that my husband was into such kink and fetish and to the extreme that it was,” Shannon told me. “He routinely blamed me for his cross-dressing and at other times gaslighted me by acting like I was crazy for suspecting he was cross-dressing. I felt like I was losing my mind. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I always believed him, even when he said it was my fault he cross-dressed. I had many periods of depression and anger due to cross-dressing in our marriage.”
“I had to put it behind me and forget about it to go forward for our family. When he left us to do this, I really couldn’t believe it was real,” she continued.
It seemed like an episode of Jerry Springer. This could not be my life. It broke my heart that he could walk away from our beautiful children. The impact this would have on the kids affected me the most. It was tough being left financially drained with three kids and no job. I hadn’t worked in a decade. I missed my children so much when I had to put them in public schools. They had been homeschooled.
I cried everyday on my way to work because I missed my kids so much. My ex had visitation every other weekend and on one weeknight. My time with my own children was cut in less than half between the time they went with him and their time in school. I fought the urge to die. I planned to kill myself at the age of 50 when the last child went off for college. That day came and went, and I had long abandoned it. The shock, anger, and grief were a lot but I turned the experience towards fighting the transgender movement after I saw it was targeting children and being rapidly normalized in all institutions in the USA.
Her children are now grown, and she says that, on the surface, you wouldn’t suspect that anything is wrong. “However, if you are in a close relationship with them, you would definitely realize this has affected them,” she said. “When they were in school, they were extremely embarrassed by their father. They were taken to counseling and told not to call their father ‘Dad’ anymore. They were heartbroken. It was especially hard for my sons who cried themselves to sleep for years.”
Shannon continued:
My daughter kept her grief quiet and pretended to be okay. Ambiguous grief is hard to process, especially for a young person. I don’t think any of my children have completely processed their experience. They may disagree but I remember thinking the same just a few years after my divorce because I was in a better place than where he left me. But the reality is we won’t know how much this affects our lives until we live our entire lives. There’s so much heartache the kids have experienced, mourning a father who is slowly erasing himself and becoming someone unrecognizable. Impending grief prolonged over the course of a lifetime is the best way to describe it. It’s like when you know someone is dying soon and you are already grieving and dreading the complete loss. There have been six suicide attempts between three children. One child had a lengthy mental hospital stay. One child has OCD and engaged in self harm. Their self-esteem was definitely impacted.
READ: Seattle high school handed out chest binders, transgender underwear to students
One of the most hurtful aspects of the experience, Shannon says, is the fact that the culture expected them to celebrate what had happened: “The destruction of a family, the erasure of a father, son, brother, etc. The trans movement is so corrosive to the family and to natural rights. It’s so hard to watch the world collectively celebrating the demise of family, free speech, women’s protections, truth, religious liberty, and freedom of association. It’s even harder when you’ve had a front row seat for the destruction this movement causes. It hurts. I often cry when I see stories on TV that push the trans agenda.”
“Don’t allow your kindness and empathy to be weaponized against you,” Shannon concluded. “Gender ideology cannot coexist with the rights of any other group. Children are a blessing, and their birthright is to have a mother and a father. Adult fulfillment shouldn’t come at the expense of children. Children aren’t as resilient as people claim they are. Do we raise them in the truth, or do we teach them that lying is okay and the ends justify the means? Coming into agreement with a lie (which the transgender movement is based on) is detrimental to the culture just as it is detrimental to the family.”
