Season 2 Episode 8

Stassja: Warning: this episode contains sexually explicit descriptions. It is not suitable for young children. Listener discretion is advised.

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So far in season 2, we’ve looked at the systemic problems that arise when men are treated as women under the law. But what happens on a more personal level? For example, what happens when the man you love announces that actually, he’s a woman? 

Maggie: You do feel anger and it is like losing somebody you love, it is like them dying because you do go through all the stages of grieving, the only difference is, when somebody dies in real life people around you accept that you need to grieve, and a lot of those people will grieve with you. You’re allowed to have funeral which is ceremony and if you have ceremony you start to heal. You get none of those things if you’re a trans widow, it’s just you know, ‘oh yeah so what, move on’ and it doesn’t work that way. It’s very, very difficult.

Stassja: Trans widows know better than any of us that transwomen are men. They fell in love with men who they thought were typical blokes. Often they married these men and had children with them only to find out years later that their husband had been lying to them – sometimes for decades. Trans widows have seen up close and very personal, just how destructive transvestic fetishism or autogynephilia can be.

Maggie – not her real name – is one of those women.

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Welcome back to Desexing Society. I’m your host, Stassja Frei. Episode 8: Trans Widows

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Maggie: I think I was around about 38 when I met Fred. I was out after work having drinks with a girlfriend and she was much younger than me and a very buxom but thin lady so you know she stood out amongst the crowd, very blonde with big blue eyes and I saw Fred and I was really attracted to him but it was very obvious that he was looking at her. Anyway after a few drinks I walked past where he was sitting and spoke to him. We struck up a conversation and that’s where it all started. A little bit embarrassing but I will say that it started out as a one night stand cos that was all I wanted. I had come out of a long-term relationship and moved states after that and I didn’t want any involvement with anybody it was just to have a little bit of fun. So we got pretty drunk I would have to say, basically thrown out of the establishment when it closed, we went back to my place, drank far too much Cointreau and I just thought well that’s it, never expected to see him again, but I would say what was interesting when we walked through the door at my house, the first thing he said when I closed the door was ‘there’s two things you need to know about me. I’ve been married twice before and sex is really important to me.’ I thought hm, interesting. Anyway so the next day he asked for my phone number and I thought ‘hm, well we’ll wait and see.’ I actually had to come home from work because I was so unwell from drinking too much alcohol and I believe he didn’t go to work himself. He rang me later that evening and that was the beginning of the end. We had a long term relationship, on and off for probably 7 years before we were married. He asked me to marry him within 2 months of meeting him which scared the bejesus out of me and I said nothing and the next time he asked me I said no because he wanted to have children and I thought well that was probably not on the cards for me. To cut a long story very short, sometime later he asked me to marry him again saying that he wanted to marry me because he loved me, he didn’t care about having children he just wanted to be with me, so I said yes. We had what was, I would suggest a really lovely marriage, I couldn’t complain. He was a guy that I was very much in love with. As I say, to the outside world we had this wonderful relationship that lots of people would’ve aspired to have been as happy. I always did things that he wanted to do, like going camping, which I hate camping. When we got married my brother made a speech and said, ‘you must be some bloke. She must really, really love you cos my sister’s a five star chick and she goes camping with you?’ So you know, I was spellbound by this guy and from day one he had clearly lied to me.

Stassja: Things seemed to be going great for Maggie and Fred. They lived together in a trendy inner city suburb, became fur parents to two big dogs and had a busy social life with lots of friends. But then, Maggie was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. This is a serious condition where a blood vessel in the brain has a weakened section that balloons or bulges out. If it bursts, there’ll be bleeding on the brain. In Maggie’s case, she was told that if that happened, she would likely lose her vision and become a paraplegic – that is, if it didn’t kill her. This was life threatening. Doctor’s orders were to eliminate as much stress from her life as possible. She had no choice but to leave her job.

Within the space of 6 months, Maggie underwent two surgeries where tiny coils were inserted into the aneurysm to block off blood flow. But unfortunately, both surgeries were unsuccessful. Less than a year later the doctors wanted to try a third time.

By this point, Fred was also out of work, having been made redundant. Money was becoming tight.

Maggie: He wasn’t working so there was no income in the house and I was thinking of ways that we could reduce our expenses and suggested that maybe instead of having a storage shed that he paid for every month, for storage of, as he said, things for the four wheel drive. Now I couldn’t work out why he couldn’t put things for the four wheel drive, ie spare tyres or whatever in one of the two garden sheds we had but you know I just played along with that. So I said to him well you know, ‘as a mathematician surely you could work out that it would be cheaper to pay $2000 to have a little attic put in the roof space rather than constantly paying for this storage shed that you’ve had for- ever since we’ve been married.’ And I suppose, might’ve been the next night or the night after I reiterated this and you know, ‘have you given it any thought? Why are we wasting all this money when we could have all that stuff here?’ Anyway he stormed off into his office and he came out later and I was in the lounge room and he stood at the doorway with hand on hip and one hand against the door frame and said, ‘if you really, really want to know what I’ve got in the storage shed I’ll tell you.’ So then he blurted out what he had in the storage shed. And in the storage shed were all the clothes, make up and accessories that any cross dresser would dream for. And I laughed. I just didn’t, couldn’t comprehend it and I didn’t believe him. And so just being smart I said, ‘oh well you know bring it home tomorrow and let’s sort it out.’ Sure enough, the only time in his life that he didn’t procrastinate was then and he went to the storage shed and he came home with so many, full size, you know those great big black garbage bags that you use for gardening, you know the big big ones, filled with women’s clothes and lingerie, and lingerie, and lingerie, and shoes and wigs and prosthetics. And I was just totally gobsmacked. But as the dutiful wife, I pulled them all out and ugh ugh ugh I just felt repulsed and I said, ‘well you don’t need this and you don’t need that.’ Some of them were so hideous and I threw some in the bin and then I washed everything. I went out and I bought all these boxes, storage boxes and I put them in my wardrobe and all the clothes, and all the lingerie, everything, was in my wardrobe. Mainly because, we sometimes had people come and stay and I would’ve been mortified if somebody else had seen any of these things. So that was my mistake. Instead of just saying, you know, you are an absolute sick arsehole, I tried, I don’t know whether it was to help, or to understand, but what I did was just say, ‘hey’ – in his mind – ‘you’ve got the green light, you can go ahead, you can do whatever you like now’ and that’s exactly what he did, whatever he liked. And suddenly I just really didn’t exist. And the man I had married didn’t exist either. And this person came in that I didn’t recognise, with or without the make up on, it was the same. It was just like there was a different person there. It was absolutely horrendous.

Stassja: After 15 years together – 8 of them married – Maggie’s whole world was turned upside down. She found herself living with a stranger. 

Maggie: I knew that I had to leave pretty much straight away but the true awakening was one night when he had waited until I had gone to bed – and this was not the first time, this had happened numerous times before. He had got all dressed up into Freda, in the lingerie with the wig, with all the make up including the red, you know, the mandatory red lipstick and the stilettos and would have sex with himself on our couch, which was just quite repulsive, you know have his sex toys and all the rest of it there and this particular night I’d woken up in the middle of the night and to walk to the bathroom I had to walk past the family area of the house which is open plan and there he was passed out on the couch with legs apart, with no underwear on, no underpants on but you know all the frillies and the bra with the prosthetics in it, the wig was skewwhiff and his head was hanging over the arm of the couch. There was alcohol there, there were all the sex toys and all the lubricants everywhere and he was passed out and I just looked at it and I went in there and I stood over it, and I can only say ‘it’ because it wasn’t even human it was just so repulsive. I went back to bed and he came into the bedroom with the you know, wig half on and off and the red lipstick smudged all over the place and got into the bed and started cuddling up to me and I thought, ‘I am going to be ill! I’m just going to be ill.’ So I just pretended to be asleep and he passed out within about a minute or so and I got up and went to the other room and slept in there. But the thought of, the thought of it is just absolutely repulsive. To think that another human being could think it’s ok to do that to the person they supposedly love, says to me that person has to be insane anyway.

Stassja: It can be difficult for some people to understand the level of betrayal felt by trans widows. It’s much like the man you loved has left you for another woman – a woman who he’s been cheating with the whole time you’ve been together. But the other woman is himself, wearing lipstick and prosthetic breasts. He’s lied to you since the day you met. So when Fred crawled into bed next to Maggie, still dressed up as Freda, it was as if he’d brought his mistress into their marital bed. Is it any wonder then, that she decided to leave him? Unfortunately, she had to bide her time. Fred’s big revelation took place in February and Maggie’s third surgery wasn’t until August. And, because she’d been off work, she didn’t have the money to enable her to leave.

Maggie: I got the third surgery and because I hadn’t been working, I had to wait to be financial enough, and as he likes to say I stole his money. What I did was, he was working as a consultant and he told this person that they should put the money into my bank account and so gave them my details, right? And clearly that was because he didn’t want to pay tax on it, right? So I knew that there was going to be quite a sizeable amount of money come in, in December and I made my plans to leave then and that’s what I did. But of course he says I stole that, but I don’t call it stealing when it was put into your account in the first place. But it was my only way of doing it.

Stassja: Perhaps you’re thinking that this was a bit drastic. Why couldn’t Maggie just sit down with him and explain that it was over? Well, she had good reason to leave in stealth.

Maggie: I had told him that I was seeing a psychologist and he laughed and he said, ‘why? Why would you need a psychologist?’ And I said ‘well because I’m, you know, very upset and I’m very depressed about what’s happening in our relationship and who you’ve become.’ And he said, ‘you wouldn’t know the meaning of the word depression, you couldn’t even begin to understand.’ And I said ‘well you know I’m getting to the stage where I just want to leave.’ And his exact words were, in the horrid voice that he could put on when he wanted to be really nasty, ‘if you ever leave me, you will live in a hole in the ground, and you will never have our boys’ meaning our dogs.

Stassja: A hole in the ground generally means a grave. And that’s how Maggie interpreted it – as a threat to her life. She was scared. And she knew that leaving a relationship is the most dangerous time for a woman. That’s when men kill women.

Maggie: So anyway I told him I was going to lunch and I was taking the boys with me and then I said ‘and then we’re going to do this and do that and there’ll be some other girlfriends come over in the evening, so I won’t be home until very late,’ knowing full well that within 5 minutes of me leaving, Fred would’ve become Freda and would’ve got so drunk that they would’ve passed out you know probably at 8pm so clearly I was right. So when I left for lunch at around about, I think it was 11.30, I was driven by a friend to the airport, and I had snuck out some clothes bit by bit you know within the few weeks previously, so I had two bags of clothes and my two dogs, and that was, well I was going to say that was it but I had snuck out other things that I just refused to let him have, you know things that, for me, that I really really liked that I knew he wouldn’t miss, like cutlery and china and things like that. And bit by bit friends brought it across to me when they came to visit. So, told him I was going to lunch and I never came back. And the next day I got phone calls from people, both from that city and the city I had moved to and he had been ringing frantically trying to find me and of course he didn’t notice I was missing until the next day, because he would’ve got so drunk and passed out and would’ve probably woken up on the couch at 6am or 7am. And was ringing people saying ‘oh I’m really, really worried about her, you know, I think she’s mentally unstable since she’s had these surgeries,’ and whatever else. It was all my fault and I’m the one who’s crackers and, it was just such a joke. I rang him and said this is where I am and I’m never coming back and, you know, it started crying and crying and there’s nothing worse than listening to a man pretending to be a woman crying. It’s so unbelievable and that’s what it would do, and cry and cry and tell everybody you know how much he missed me and how much he loved me and he would do anything to have me back. Every time he opened up his mouth, it was a lie. 

Stassja: So he’s trying to turn people against you?

Maggie: Oh most definitely cos I was the wicked person. And ‘how could you do this to me at Christmas time – at Christmas time!’ ‘Well, pretty easily. You screwed me over for the last 15 years. You know, you knew what you were going to do.’ He knew. He always knew. And if he says he didn’t, he’s a liar. How could you know you were transgender since you were 6 and not know that this is what you were going to do? I mean give me a break.

Stassja: Maggie and the boys made it safely interstate. But she was still married to Fred and he stated up front, in writing, that he would do everything in his power to drag out the divorce settlement for as long as possible. While the actual divorce was granted within a matter of months, the settlement took more than 2 years to finalise. But eventually Maggie was free.

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Maggie: I always think, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me the question – ‘you must’ve known! How could you not know!?’ It’s difficult because clearly there weren’t any signs. He didn’t just fool me. He fooled everybody he knew, including his pseudo brother, you know a guy he called his brother and shared a house with- when I met him they were sharing together. Now they had known each other for 20 years and in some ways, I think the brother was even more blown away than me because he didn’t see any signs. None of his mates saw any signs. Everybody thought I was lying when I told them why I had left him. And before I left I did tell some mutual friends of ours and they just went ‘oh don’t be ridiculous, couldn’t be, couldn’t be.’ There isn’t a person that knows this man as the man who can ever think of a reason why they would’ve thought of him as a female. They’ve all said you know, what was it that was supposed to say he’s a female? Was it the 10,000 War Hero comics? Was it the few thousand war history books and aeroplane books? Was it the fact that he always dressed like a bloke? Was it the fact that he was always dominating like a bloke? Was it the fact he liked to go camping? There was absolutely nothing about this person that said there was this feminine side.

Stassja: Autogynephilic men are men. Aside from wearing women’s clothing and make up, they tend to have very little else in common with women. As Maggie observed, they tend to have stereotypically masculine hobbies and often pursue careers in male dominated fields. For example, the military and the tech industry seem to attract a lot of autogynephiles. All this contradicts the popular narrative that transwomen are women trapped in men’s bodies. Such men will often say that they pursued a military career because they were in denial about their true feminine self. They were trying to hide and suppress their inner woman behind the most macho career they could think of. But in his book Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies, Dr Anne Lawrence, who himself is an autogynephile, disagrees with this analysis. He writes that a more plausible explanation is that, quote: “nonhomosexual male to female transsexuals choose male-typical occupations primarily because they genuinely prefer them. For example, I have heard too many male to female transsexuals describe with relish their enjoyment of firing automatic weapons, blowing things up during demolition training, practicing hand-to-hand combat skills, and flying jet fighters in real or simulated combat to believe that they chose military service primarily to suppress their intrinsic femininity.” End quote.

When Maggie first learned about autogynephilia, it put a lot into perspective for her.

Maggie: Everything is just, ding ding ding, him him him, everything. Because the moment that it would put on any part of the Freda outfit, this complete euphoria would come over him and you could tell he just loved himself so much.

Stassja: One of the surprising things I learned whilst making season 1 of Desexing Society is that autogynephilic men are not only sexually aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women, but they actually fall in love with that femininised version of themselves. This means their outward sexual attraction to women is in competition with their inward facing autogynephilia. Sexologist Dr Ray Blanchard, who coined the term autogynephilia, described this as dynamic competition. Take for example the following account, again from the book Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies. Quote: “Whenever I had a girlfriend or was in love, my autogynephilia would recede so deeply that I would actually forget that I ever had it. I cannot overstate this. Even when I would think of my autogynephilia during these periods, it would seem like it was nothing. But it would keep coming back. And each time it came back it would be a little bit stronger. I am now age 53, and my autogynephilia is the only sex drive I have.” End quote.

I’m reminded of something that Maggie said earlier:

Maggie: He asked me to marry him within 2 months of meeting him.

Stassja: It’s possible that at this very early stage of the relationship, Fred’s autogynephilia had been completely overtaken by his heterosexual attraction to Maggie. Perhaps he was thinking that he’d finally overcome his desire to cross dress and that Maggie had cured him. But that isn’t how autogynephilia operates. Once the excitement and novelty of a new relationship starts to dwindle, the erotic fantasy of being a woman returns. But now, he’s in a relationship and has to hide his solo sexual activities. For some trans widows, the lies and the secretiveness are so obvious, it actually leads them to suspect that their partner is cheating on them. And sometimes it’s this suspicion that forces the truth to come out. But for Maggie, the secret was so well hidden it never even crossed her mind that Fred might’ve been unfaithful.

Maggie: We were together 99% of the time. I could count on one hand maybe, over the time we were married, the times he went out without me. So it’s not as if he was one of these absent partners that disappeared all the time. And then I thought to myself, well you know, when did he go to the storage shed? And the only thing I could think of was when he said he was going to Bunnings on the weekends, cos he used to go to Bunnings quite a bit. For people who don’t know what Bunnings is, it’s the big hardware store in Australia where, you know, men just love to go and spend hours and he had a purpose built wooden garden shed and in the garden shed was every conceivable tool you could ever think of and every tool, most tools were in cases and they all had a specific spot and if you didn’t put them back in the right order, he would be really really upset about that. They were his pride and joy. But the funny thing is, he never used them. I’m the one that did all the handy work in the house you know and outside you know I’m the one who used the jigsaw and the sander and whatever else. But he would come home from Bunnings with another new tool, every time. So I think that he used to say I’m going to Bunnings, and go to the storage shed which was on root to Bunnings, spend as much time as he wanted to in his storage shed, go to Bunnings and grab the first special that was at the door and come back and say, I’ve been to Bunnings. Cos that’s the only time I can think of that he had time to go to the storage shed.

Stassja: Some autogynephiles report going through cycles where they’ll try to suppress their desire to cross dress. Take for example this account, again from the book Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies. Quote “In 30 years of my marriage, I have been through the cycles of the desire to be female and cross-dress, followed by shame, guilt, purging and the return of my desire to be female. Although I say that my desire returned after purging, I don’t think it ever really went away.” End quote.

In this context, purging means throwing away all the clothing, make up and other paraphernalia that autogynephiles use to simulate being a woman. But in Fred’s case, considering he had a storage shed filled with these items, it seems unlikely that he went through the purging phase.

One cycle that he did go through was that of making promises and then breaking them. Many trans widows report this. The website transwidowsvoices.org features the stories of anonymous women whose husbands or partners transitioned. In Tinsel’s Story, she writes, quote: “I should have left five years earlier when he dropped his trousers in our living room to show me an insect bite, and had forgotten he was wearing pink lacy women’s knickers under his work clothes. This was one of the many times that I accidentally found out he had broken his word to stop cross dressing. I was determined to do everything I could to save the marriage. A cycle had developed of lies being discovered, promises being made, promises being broken, compromises being formed, boundaries being put in place, boundaries being pushed, and further lies being discovered.” End quote.

Whilst Maggie waited for her next surgery, Fred’s cross dressing began to escalate despite his promises that it wouldn’t.

Maggie: Freda just came out more and more and more, you know initially, in the morning for example he would get up and you know, in the man’s robe and be slovenly and sitting on his computer and I might say well I’m going to the shop or I’m doing this or I’m doing that, I could turn round and come home in 10 minutes, and I did that one day cos I’d forgotten something and it was already getting dressed up into Freda. It was saying to me, ‘oh I won’t do it, you know, du du du du, I’ll only do it occasionally,’ and it was just so obvious that this was going to be something that was a permanent fixture. And when I asked him directly, ‘are you going to go the whole way? Are you going to transition?’ ‘Don’t be so stupid. I’m just a bloke who likes to dress up occasionally.’ 

Stassja: Along with broken promises, and minimising or hiding the true extent of their autogynephilic activities, there’s another alarming commonality that shows up in the stories of trans widows. And that’s the timing of their partner’s revelations.

Maggie: I had gone to the specialist for my 6 month check up after my second amount of coilings into my brain aneurysm, and he was with me and the specialist said you need to have it redone again. And I said ‘oh look I’ve got all these things organised, I’m doing voluntary work, I’m doing this, I’m doing that, can it wait until August?’ And one said no, and the other said, ‘oh look yeah nah it’ll be alright so long as you have no form of stress in your life and you keep going like you’re going.’ And it was within days of that meeting that he told me. And I just couldn’t believe that a person could’ve heard that and knowing that my condition at the time was you know, pretty serious, would put that on me, because the stress was unbelievable. So he knew, but he didn’t care. In fact, if I was to be an unkind person, it almost felt to me like he was thinking ‘oh goodie, I can get the life insurance.’ So I think the reason he came out then was because the limelight wasn’t on him.

Stassja: Other trans widows report that it was while they were pregnant or not long after they’d given birth that their partner either revealed that he’s a cross dresser or announced his plan to transition. There’s a lot of speculation on why this happens. Is it narcissism? Are these men jealous, as Maggie suggested, because the limelight isn’t on them? For men whose autogynephilia is physiologic, meaning, they’re aroused by the thought of having female bodily functions, is it jealousy that they can’t get pregnant or breastfeed that drives them to ruin this special rite of passage for their wives?

Unfortunately much of this is anecdotal because there’s been hardly any research into how medical transition affects partners. 

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Lauren – again, not her real name – is another Australian woman who was in a long term relationship with an autogynephile. We’ll call him Don.

Lauren: I met my ex when I was 19 and I was still living at home. And we dated for about 9 months before we moved in together. And in that 9 months it was a normal relationship. In fact it was fairly normal for most of my relationship except once we moved in there were unusual requests that he would make of me. Over time those got a lot more extreme. And over time the control started where initially I had my own key to things, to each house that we moved into and then two houses later I didn’t have my own front door key and then when I got a mobile phone the rules started coming in about calling him before I came home. And then knocking on the door to be let into the house. When he was angry he used to stalk up and down and if he had a broom stick in his hand he’d be doing various, I don’t know, he did, said he was a third or fourth dan in kung fu. I don’t know if that was true. But he used to fling a broom around a lot near my face when he was agitated. Or knives, cos he used to like playing with knives. When we had an argument once in the car, when he got really angry with me, he kicked the windscreen of the car and cracked it while he was sitting in the car. So it was a lot of intimidation. A lot of physical intimidation. He never actually hit me but there was the isolation. So he did stuff with my friends that resulted in them not being my friends anymore where he would cut them off. They would say I was the problem or that we were the problem and I believed my ex when he said oh you know they were stealing from us or they ate this or they did that and so eventually after about 5 years of being in that relationship I lost contact with most of my friends from when I was- before I met him. So then I was isolated. And the only contact I had with the outside world was with my job.And I was only allowed to, like I wasn’t allowed to go out unless it was prearranged with- like if he knew in advance. Then I still had to be home by a certain time, still had to ring him to let him know I was coming home. And then I was just working for him really and bringing in the money because he didn’t work very often. And he was a programmer. He was also in the military I know that was true because I saw some of his military records and he had an injury from that so I think he was medically shuffled out.

Stassja: Lauren is describing an abusive relationship. The physical intimidation, isolation from friends and excessively monitoring her whereabouts – these are all signs of domestic abuse. Don had also gained control of her money after she leant him her bank card to do grocery shopping and he refused to give it back. This is known as financial abuse.

But Lauren didn’t recognise that she was in an abusive relationship until years after she’d left. It was her first serious relationship and she didn’t understand that what was happening wasn’t normal. She’d also suffered emotional abuse in her childhood which primed her to accept abuse as an adult.

Lauren: I mean I left him because it was only after a certain amount of time I discovered pornography on his- on our computer server. It was tranny porn. I realised that the stuff that he was making me do wasn’t normal. Especially when I saw the tranny porn, that was really quite hideous and I started to try withdrawing from him emotionally and physically because I needed to try and leave him but it took- I tried breaking up with him at least 3 or 4 times over a period of 4 years before I finally managed to make that final break and that’s only because I finally managed to get a job to get out of the house. And in that time I ate my feelings. So I stacked on a huge amount of weight because I didn’t want him to touch me anymore.

Stassja: At some point during those four years before she broke free, Don revealed that he was trans.

Lauren: One day I’d said ‘oh that’s it I’ve had enough’ and that’s when he told me that he was trans and then it all fell together. Once he told me that he was trans, all the make up that I’d found or that had gone missing from our bathroom. The random women’s clothing that I’d found that he’d said was actually his brother’s girlfriend’s cos his brother used to live with us. The lingerie that he bought me that I never wore because it would mysteriously disappear. All of that so that he could sit in the bathroom for 2 hours and get dressed up as a female and do whatever he wanted. Which is what he did. He would hide in the bathroom. Do his make up and get dressed in lingerie.

Stassja: Finding the transgender porn on their computer server also put into perspective what Lauren described earlier as ‘unusual requests’. One of those unusual requests involved a make shift dildo.

Lauren: Coke bottles don’t start out as coke bottles. They start out as plastic tubes and then they get heated up and blown into shape into a coke bottle or a soft drink bottle of some description. He had one of those pre blown up tubes at home that he used to cover with a condom and then ask me to put it up his bum. So then essentially he was masturbating or I was participating in his idea of having sex I guess. And I did it because I didn’t want him to be upset and I didn’t want him to be disappointed in me because I, you know, I was his girlfriend and I loved him. He was smart and intelligent, listened to me, made me feel like I was the only person in the world. So I would do anything for him. So I did that. Even though it made me uncomfortable and I didn’t like it. There was another time where he made me get dressed up in lingerie and he was also dressed in lingerie. And then he made me have sex with him. He was on the bottom and I was on the top. That really wasn’t great for me. Again, these requests weren’t normal. But I didn’t understand that I had, that I could say no. Because I thought if I said no that he would yell at me and be angry. And I’ve talked about him using, you know swinging broom sticks and throwing knives around. He would routinely do that when he was agitated.

Stassja: Both of these sex acts have the hallmarks of autogynephilia or AGP for short. During sex, AGPs are imagining that they’re female. They want to be penetrated and they want to be on the bottom because they consider those roles to be feminine. You might recall the following quote I used in season 1 of Desexing Society. Dr Anne Lawrence wrote in Men Trapped in Men’s Bodies that, quote: “It is difficult to think of a female-typical behaviour that is more basic, culturally universal, or archetypal than being the recipient of vaginal penetration by a man.” End quote. Andrea Long Chu, who is also a trans identified male, described in his book titled Female, how AGPs use anal penetration to simulate having a vagina. He crudely wrote the following regarding a popular genre of transgender pornography. Quote: “At the center of sissy porn lies the asshole, a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed.” End quote.

Of course, a vagina and rectum are two very different things. Pretending they’re the same because both can accommodate a penis, is a very male idea.

But I digress. When it comes to sex, the AGP’s female partner becomes merely a prop in achieving his fantasy of being a woman. Trans widows can end up quite traumatised by being pressured into sex acts that they’re not comfortable with. 

Often, part of the AGP fantasy is the idea that rather than being a heterosexual man, he’s actually a lesbian woman.

Lauren: My ex wanted me to become either lesbian or bisexual. I remember that conversation that we had, we were talking about it and he said to me ‘oh do you think that you might be bisexual?’ And I said ‘why would you say that?’ and he said ‘oh because you have a lot of lesbian friends’ and I did and I still do. And I said ‘no, I don’t think I am.’ But he said ‘oh I want you to explore it.’ I’m like ‘what do you mean?’ and he goes ‘well you know, when we have sex, I think I’m a lesbian.’ And I was like, ‘right. Well I’m not though.’ And he goes ‘yes but you might be’ ugh. So I had a bit of a think about it. I’m really not. I really wasn’t. But that’s what he tried to do. And he tried really hard for me to approach my friends who were gay to see if, he wanted me to approach them to see if they’d be interested in having a relationship with me. Like that was very humiliating experience and conversation to have with him. And I still, to this day, blush if I think about it. Like I’m embarrassed that we even had that conversation. 

Stassja: But this was all for him so that he could pretend that he’s a lesbian, yeah?

Lauren: Yes it wasn’t about me. It was about him. He wanted me to be bi or gay to validate his fantasy that he was a woman.

Stassja: There are women who agree to go along with the fantasy. Their partner will announce that he’s a woman, and she will announce that she’s now a lesbian. I always wonder what’s really going on for these women behind the scenes. Are they truly ok with what’s happened in the relationship? Are they even attracted to him now that he’s wearing make up and women’s clothing?

Lauren: I think there are always going to be a small percentage of women who think it’s absolutely ok to be in a relationship with a trans woman and they may be lucky that the relationship isn’t an abusive one. But it is unlikely. It’s more likely that these relationships are abusive and there is coercion involved because I didn’t realise that I was in a coercive abusive relationship until you know 6 years ago. I did not understand that what happened to me was domestic violence. Because he never hit me. Right? I still had the emotional abuse. I still had the financial abuse. So I think women stay- the women who stay are in an abusive relationship whether or not they understand it. Some women may never understand that what’s happened to them is abuse because it’s so normalised.

Stassja: Women’s reasons for staying can be complicated. 

Lauren: You know I left my ex 20 years ago and I joined a message board which is for partners of trans identified people. Right? And there was only 2 people in that entire message board that left their partners and that was me and the lady who started it. All the other women stayed. And they stayed because they felt they should be supportive. And they stayed because it was easier than leaving. Because if you leave you run the risk of losing your children, your home, your family, your social connections and, that was 20 years ago, now there’s a social benefit to being queer and being in a relationship with a trans person because you’re part of a rarefied community: ‘don’t you know how oppressed trans people are? Look at me advocating for my husband’, or you know ‘my spouse’ and so all of a sudden they become popular, they have more friends, they go to larger social events. But at the end of the day the women that do stay, it’s because they’re going to lose their provider, the pers- you know they’ve usually got kids, they’re going to lose the person that’s providing the income, they’re going to lose the house and they’re frightened so that’s why they do it.

Stassja: It’s a tale as old as civilisation. Women becoming locked into abusive marriages for the sake of their children. The woman is financially dependent on her abuser and can see no way out. When children are involved, things become even more complicated.

Lauren: So if you just park the trans label just for a sec and just look at the men’s behaviour. It’s abusive. It’s controlling and it’s very detrimental for kids to be in an environment where they can see the mother’s conceding ground a lot of the time before she finally says she’s had enough. Then when you add in the trans factor ‘I’m going to be dressing up as a woman. Call me mum. Call me this,’ I can tell you right now that in the conversations that we’ve had over time with women who have had to sit there with their kids saying ‘why does dad want me to call him mum?’ it makes for- it’s a visceral anger. Because it’s something else that they’re trying to take. They’ve destroyed the relationship. They’ve worked extremely hard to turn the children, ah, and turn the children into trans advocates: ‘look at my dad, look at how amazing he is, but actually no dad’s my mum. Here is- I have two mums.’ It’s taking something away and denigrating a relationship that a woman has with her child. And it turns it into a play. It’s a performative action. And that’s how the women feel.

Stassja: It can be hard for those who haven’t experienced it, to really understand that visceral anger that Lauren is describing. So I’m going to flesh this out a bit more by reading an excerpt from transwidowsvoices.org. This is from Melissa’s Story: The Other Woman. She writes, quote: “He said he didn’t want our infant daughter to know him, or remember him as “Dad.” He wanted to be her Mom. That terrified me more than anything. It was that moment when the fear, the pain, and the loss hit me like a train. Not only was I losing this man that I thought I loved, but I also had to accept the fact that my little girl would no longer see me as her mom…she would see us both as her moms. A big part of my identity was taken away from me that day, and everything changed. I never thought that I would ever need to share that identity with anyone else – it felt like I was losing something sacred and special…something that was mine. But he was gaining something that supported this new identity.” End quote.

And it’s not just her identity as a mother that’s being usurped. It’s her identity as a woman. Autogynephiles imitate the kind of woman that they’re sexually attracted to. Often, that means they’ll emulate what they’ve see in porn. They’ll go for a very hypersexualised appearance of stilettos, fishnet stockings and cleavage. But sometimes, it results in them looking very much like their wives or ex wives. I can only imagine how violated those women must feel. Because it is a form of identity theft. 

Lauren: They model off you. Their femininity is modelled off you. Their affectations are modelled from yours. The way they behave. They copy you. They clone you. And you lose yourself. You know I had long hair. My ex needed to have long hair.

Stassja: In Tsevea’s Story, also featured on transwidowsvoices.org, she writes, quote: “He didn’t want to buy his own stuff. He wanted mine. He liked my things. He wanted to look like me. Wear my clothes. Wear my shoes. Have me put my makeup on him. It made my stomach churn.” End quote. 

This is what trans widows are dealing with. And sadly, there’s a real lack of empathy and understanding of what they’ve been through. The cultural narrative has been entirely focused on how stunning and brave transwomen are for becoming their true self. Their wives are just supporting characters in their husband’s transformative gender journey. And if they leave, then they’re bad women. They’re transphobes who rejected their partner’s vulnerable, authentic self.

Autogynephiles have loads of support. But trans widows not so much. And finding a therapist who hasn’t bought into the narrative that trans women are women, can be quite difficult. 

Lauren: I even went to a psychologist at uni and had started to unpick some of the issues, or tried to, and he was telling me well, obviously you know you had a bad time but your ex was also going through a terrible time as well. And I was sat there going yes, but you know he did this stuff to me. Then he would say ‘well how does that make you feel’ and I was like ‘I feel like xyz’ and he’d go ‘ok well let’s-‘ and he would say ‘ok well how can we help you change how you feel?’ and I was like, thinking I don’t understand that. So I stopped going and seeing him. And anyway after I found this trauma psychologist I googled the other guy and then I found out he’s one of the leading gender affirmation therapists in the city I live in. And at no point had he said anything to me about being an actual gender affirmation psychologist. I felt violated.

Stassja: When it comes to finding a therapist, Lauren has the following advice for trans widows:

Lauren: So, top tip: do not go into couples therapy with an abuser. Ever. Ever. Because they’ll just use that to gaslight you. For a trans widow, anyone that’s leaving a relationship, don’t go to couples therapy. Don’t go to a relationship counsellor. You don’t need help with the relationship. You need someone that’s going to listen to what’s happened to you. And I think out of all of the different therapists out there – psychologists out there – trauma psychologists are the ones that have probably heard it all and will be the least judgemental.

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Stassja: Two years after Maggie left her husband, he announced that he’d decided to pursue medical transition. Nine years after she left him, 61 year old Fred underwent sex reassignment surgery. 

Our second trans widow, Lauren is now happily married with a young daughter. At the end of her relationship with Don, he had begun the process to access cross sex hormones. She doesn’t know how far he went with transition.

Thanks to the internet and social media, things are getting better for trans widows. In 2019 a friend of Lauren’s recommended she look up Trans Widows Voices on X. 

Lauren: Oh my gosh, the fact that there were women who left their exes. Because in 2004, there was only two. I only found one other person. Only one. And then all of a sudden I come across a tribe of them. And I was like, ‘you’re my people.’ And then the stories.

Stassja: Sharing their stories and experiences, trans widows are realising that they’re not alone. And they’re not transphobic bigots either.

Lauren: It is not transphobic to say no to a trans identified man in a relationship with you. It needs to be understood that these relationships are usually toxic and extremely unhealthy and women deserve better. We lived the abuse and yet we are continually ignored. We need to start listening to women like us.

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Stassja: If you’d like to learn more about trans widows, please go to transwidowsvoices.org 

There’s also a free online documentary called Behind the Looking Glass available on YouTube. Written and produced by filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar, it’s the first ever documentary examining the experiences of trans widows.

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Coming up in the next episode of Desexing Society, we’ll continue looking at the personal impact of transition – this time, the impact on children

Emma: My father had implied that there was something wrong with the way that he was born, yeah he said that he had a female brain in a male body. And I had been a child when he told me that and I just accepted that.

Emma: When I read about autogynephilia I got it, because I’ve seen my father kind of, blowing kisses to himself in the mirror, putting on make up and lipstick and you know like and I get that actually he’s fallen in love with the person in the mirror and there’s no room for anyone else in that love affair.

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Stassja: Thanks for listening to Desexing Society. Written and produced by me, Stassja Frei. Thank you to my script editor, Ms Edie Wyatt, my sound technician Matthew Friend, and to Maggie and Lauren for appearing in this episode. For more information, or to donate towards this project – which I paid for myself – please visit desexingsociety.com