My Q&A at Broadview with Lisa Selin Davis - Part 1 of 2

Thanks to the author of the wonderful book "Tomboy"

After chatting with Lisa Selin Davis about her “Trans Widows” series over at Broadview, the two of us decided, rather spontaneously, to host a Q&A chat. Due to technical difficulties, the chat turned into a comments thread for her subscribers. Both she and her readers asked a number of great questions about my experience with my transgender ex-husband, which I attempted to answer in the time provided. Here, I’ve copied some of those questions and answers, and where I did not have enough time to respond, have provided some elaboration. I’ve reorganized the questions for clarity, edited them a bit, and anonymized user names in case participants are concerned about privacy.

In part two of this series (here), I address a few questions I didn’t get to.

We hope to do this again someday, perhaps with the chat function, so if you missed this one—stay tuned!

Thanks again to Lisa, and if you haven’t already, be sure to check out her fantastic book, Tomboy, on the history of gender non-conforming girls.

Lisa Selin Davis: I wanted to start by asking if you could outline some of your story—how long were you married, when did things start to change.

Me: I was with my ex-husband Jamie for 15 years total, married for 8. It was the last 18 months of our marriage that things began to change (thus the name of my book).

We had a great marriage those first 14 years or so, very compatible, great communication, great sex, and for what it's worth, Jamie never indicated any issues with gender and was rather masculine.

So it started with casual crossdressing, beginning in that 14th year.

Lisa Selin Davis: When did it go from "I'm cool with a little experimenting on my husband's part" to "Something is wrong"? What were the signs?

Me: At first, the crossdressing was fine. He said it was a means to express himself, and I had no issue with it. But after eight months or so it started to consume him, and he became depressed, and he changed rather drastically.

Lisa Selin Davis: Do you think it was a kind of mid-life crisis? Or do you think he always had these proclivities and they just finally blossomed—seems like the wrong word but, you know what I meant.

Me: Yeah, great question. I do not think the proclivities were always there. I think midlife crisis was part of it. And perhaps some mental distress that this thing sort of latched on to.

Lisa Selin Davis: So do you think he "developed" autogynephilia?

Me: I don't actually like to use the word autogynephilia, because I'm not a psychotherapist. I think my strength in this conversation is just describing what I saw. That said, I was confused about Jamie's behavior until a read a couple of Anne Lawrence papers on the topic. One was called "Becoming What We Love." It's on autogynephilia and it described Jamie perfectly.

And yes, whatever was happening, it developed suddenly.

Lisa Selin Davis: How did you get to Lawrence? Did you google something that led to her work? (or his work?)

Me: I am honestly not sure. I must have been googling.

Lawrence talked about the single-mindedness, the fact that it behaved like an orientation, pushing out interest in other people, the way it evolves from sexual to nonsexual. It explained a lot.

Lisa Selin Davis: When did you first hear the term autogynephilia?

Me: Earlier in the crossdressing phase, Jamie used the word, briefly explaining that a theory existed that all crossdressers were either early-presenting gay men or late-presenting straight men with a sexual interest. I shrugged it off, because he didn’t really flesh it out at that point, and I basically had no opinion on what kinds of crossdressers existed.

Later when I read Anne Lawrence's “Becoming What We Love,” after Jamie was deep in depression and cross sex identification, a light bulb came on. Because Lawrence talked about it being like an orientation, competing with the primary love interest, and that's what I was seeing.

And it explained why someone would dress sexually for himself instead of for the partner he wanted to attract.

Lisa Selin Davis: Wow, so interesting that he came to the word himself. I don't think of it as a diagnosis—as Blanchard said, it was supposed to be a neutral clinical descriptor. But it became laden with negativity, mostly by how likely AGPs reacted to it—because it was so important for them to make it not about sex. Which sounds like what happened with Jamie.

Me: It's known in the trans community that "autogynephiles" were once denied HRT and surgery based on a perception that transitioning for sexual reasons wouldn't make them happy.

Contrary to a popular misconception, many of them very much want to transition. So they've learned to say it's not sexual, to look like someone who's not an “autogynephile,” in order to access HRT and surgery. I think that's where the stigma begins.

Lisa Selin Davis: Really good point. I knew that there was a lot of coaching each other on what to say to get meds. And that there had [once] been tons of restrictions, like you had to become "heterosexual" after transition, so no trans lesbians. So basically, those restrictions impeded us from really understanding the phenomenon and properly researching it.

UT: Did Jamie have manic episodes or get violent, even just by throwing stuff around?

Me: Jamie wasn't really violent. Just emotionally manipulative. His way of controlling things was more to melt down and cry anytime I tried to have a conversation about something difficult, and then turn the conversation around to be about him.

MD: That sounds like a nightmare.

Me: Short answer: It was a nightmare.

Lisa Selin Davis: Did estrogens induce violent changes?

Me: Jamie didn't go on estrogen until after we parted ways, at least to my knowledge.

MD: What was the reaction of your friends and community while this was going on? Were they supportive and/or cheering him on? What was your sense of their level of knowledge or understanding of the whole phenomenon?

Me: Our friends were mostly mutual friends that were friends with him first. They were supportive of him. They did not know his interest in crossdressing was sexual, and I didn't air our dirty laundry. After our separation, he told lies about me, and they believed him, and they dropped me.

CB: Shannon, you did not have children with Jamie, but I'm wondering how the children of hard-core [autogynephile] (or other) later-life male "transitioners" are received by their kids. I suspect most kids try to be supportive, or actually are?

Me: I know a couple of trans widows who tell me their kids are supportive. I think they have a similar problem I had with my friends -- they don't want to air the sexual dirty laundry with the kids, so the kids remain blissfully unaware of it, and to them (especially if they're teen or older) it's a civil rights thing they can get behind.

UT: Do you know if Jamie had a bad relationship with his father?

Me: They seemed to have a pretty good relationship, to be honest. His whole family was great.

CB: How did his family respond to his changes?

Me: They didn't make any big deal of it at all. They accepted, they allowed him to dress in front of his nieces, and after I was out of the picture, they let him bring a FTM date to family gatherings.

Off the record, they were kind of like our heterodox community, because they were sane. They'd say he wasn't literally a woman or that his social media posts were sometimes a little off the chain. They didn't really like calling him "she" except the hipster youngest sister.

They did however get tired of his tireless transgender awareness campaign.

After our divorce, at a holiday gathering, he showed his young nieces photos from a political rally, and was sort of telling them the trans political agenda. That's when their mother decided to stop hosting family gatherings. She said, essentially, “I support everyone, but it’s my job to lead those conversations.”

UT: These men are so narcissistic and encouraged to be so by the diagnosing therapists, who like Jamie's therapist, are "excited" about having a "trans" client.

CB: I wonder if UT isn't on to something that (typically?) something deeper precedes the gender narcissism, such as, well ... narcissism.

Lisa Selin Davis: I've definitely heard about an overlap between AGP and narcissism. I can't remember if it's in the literature or not, but the way so many trans widows describe their husbands, and some [autogynephiles] when they come out of the "pink haze"—that certainly seems like it can occur. My suspicion—with no clinical training—is that affirmation can really loosen people's grips on reality and allow personality disorders and other issues to grow as if in a greenhouse.

Me: I think that's a great theory. We don't affirm anyone else's break with reality to this extent, as a society, nor in a therapeutic setting.

CB: Can you expand on "pink haze"? I haven't seen that term, or if i have, I've forgotten.

Lisa Selin Davis: Debbie Hayton talks about it—basically, gender euphoria right after transition, which can last a year or two, or even longer (I think regret is averaging 5-8 years? But so little data...). And then the pink haze clears and you're back to reality.

Me: Unfortunately, Jamie had no moment of euphoria :/

CB: The part of me that advocates for a kinder, more compassionate understanding of male sexuality... I think we understand very little of it... feels bad for men whose sexual appetite simply change with age.

Me: I think that's a great point, and I went to pains to support Jamie's emerging sexual interests (though I knew he was a bit bi from day one). Problem is, he started to say they weren't sexual interests at all.

Lisa Selin Davis: That's interesting—that he made them about gender instead of sex...and is that when more problems began? Maybe that's when it jumped the shark, when it stopped being rooted in reality?

Me: For me it certainly was a turning point. I was willing to indulge proclivities, but not to lie or lose touch with reality.

Lisa Selin Davis: Why would he cling so tightly to something that was making him so utterly miserable? I guess that's a bigger human question. But if it didn't give him pleasure, and it was rooted in a pursuit of pleasure...

Me: That is the most baffling question of all.

In the last month or two, he said he never even wanted to be a woman (which did contradict earlier claims, but). After a while he seemed to believe he literally was one and had no choice.

Break with reality supported by society and therapists, perhaps.

DC: Do you think Jamie had a weak sense if self and his place in the world before transitioning?

It seems like transing can give a person community, a sense if purpose ( sometimes a sense of righteous victimhood)

Me: This is a great question. Before our split, I would have said no.

In retrospect, and after writing my memoir, I do think so. Jamie was a theater minor and actor. He went through phases of trying on different personalities and clothing styles.

His tight-knit friend group, who'd said they'd stay together forever, had moved to different parts of the country. His mom had died not long before. I think he was starting to feel lost. There's no doubt his initial announcements gained him a sense of community and dozens if not hundreds of real-life and online trans friends.

And I should add he definitely latched onto the victimhood idea, even though he experienced nearly zero pushback.

Lisa Selin Davis: I think the victimhood and instacommunity are really attractive for people, especially those feeling lost.

CB: Can you discuss how victimhood and community and "identity" may have been exacerbated by online activity?

Me: There's a culture in the trans community (in support groups as well as online) of constantly airing perceived slights: being looked at funny, being turned down for jobs or dates, being misgendered, etc.

In the book I talk about how Jamie took an innocent incident with tripping the security alarm while in the airport scanner, and turned it into the TSA harassing him. I was there and this did not happen. Later I realize Jamie has lifted the story from a news article.

CB: To me, the real problem with the more demanding trans activists is that they don't want to simply be "who they are" -- they want everyone else to see them as they see themselves.

But where else in life do we have that "right"?

Me: Definitely. I tried to illustrate that in my book, when he was fishing for compliments on an outfit, and I found that both lying and telling the truth got me in trouble. I concluded that he didn't want truth or lie, he wanted my perceptions to change. This isn't a reasonable expectation.

CB: Do you have any sense of how/what he is doing now?

Me: For my sanity, I don't look up his social media, and he doesn't speak to me. But people do sometimes tell me what he's up to.

As far as I can tell, he's still the same. Perpetually online, perpetually announcing transgender interests.

Lisa Selin Davis: For women going through this, what do you think they should know, in terms of healing and grief—you lost your marriage and the man whom you'd known and loved for so long, in the strangest of ways, and in an environment where it's hard to talk about it openly because there's so little sympathy for trans widows. What do you wish someone had told you?

Me: I guess these are a couple of things I wish someone would have said:

- This is hard for you, too. I recognize that. (Instead, it was all about his struggles or his "beautiful journey")

- You're right, he's obviously not a "literal" woman and it is not hateful to acknowledge that, whatever modern conventions we may have adopted to signal our support.

- If he's acting like a raging narcissist, that's not ok. "Gender struggles" do not override the need for basic human decency.

Lisa Selin Davis: So how did you heal yourself, in the face of all the loss you endured? Was memoir-writing a big part of that process?

Me: At first the memoir was definitely a way to rant and cleanse myself of the ordeal. Parts of it were difficult to write though, and it took a long time because I was an inexperienced author, so after a while that just became a creative project I wanted to finish.

The main way I healed myself was just to throw a bunch of ideas at the wall to see what would stick. I signed up for grad school. That was an amazing experience; I got a master's and made friends. I went dancing with my classmates. I joined some groups and clubs. I went to a Unitarian church a few times (didn't stick with that). I went to a goddess group and did stick with that.

Eventually, time had passed and I was too busy to be depressed, and I had started to make good things happen for myself, so they brought their own joy.

Lisa Selin Davis: That's such a good prescription for healing!