Yesterday was tough. It has finally been decided that I shall stay in a hotel from tonight until Friday, just to allow some decompression. If it comes to it, I would going to be the one that moves out; it makes sense since everything would need to be done in my name as he has no independent means of support; he has also said that he would “feel safer” in familiar surroundings. I understand she am glad that he felt able to say.
My body and brain seems to have two ways of coping with stress: complete inability to shut down and therefore very poor sleep (throw hot flushes into the mix and you’ve got the whole picture), or sleeping over eight hours and still needing more. Its more extreme now, but that’s always been the way I have reacted to stress.
We both cry a lot. He is crying now, which is unusual: he has never been able to cry. I ache. I am worrying about how he will be when I’m not about – I fear a major breakdown and no way for me to help him. I curse myself and my crazy brain and my inability to commit and say “of course we will remain monogamous and in no way will I regret not exploring who I am further”. He wouldn’t – couldn’t – believe me if I did say that.
I have, however, agreed to start that exploration with another therapist. I’ll try to sort that out this week.
Dad
Today, I called my dad. I didn’t pick up the phone yesterday when he called because my husband and I were talking. I usually speak to my dad on a Sunday morning before he goes to his club for his liquid lunch.
I told my dad a bit of what has been happening at home. Initially he jumped straight to my husband’s mental health; I immediately set him straight: this time it is all down to me. My mental health and crazy behaviour and its upsetting and greatly disturbing affects on my husband. I even hinted at other things, but no more than a hint of medical procedures.
Maybe someday I will tell him more … maybe I’ll end up having to if I do what I’m thinking of doing below …
The current government continues to pick on a minority who are an easy group to target: trans people.
I could just keep my head down, because, unless I tell them, nobody knows what’s in (or not in) my underwear and there are no great questions over which bathroom I should use.
However, I believe that an attack on one part of the LGBTQ+ community is an attack on all. Trans rights are human rights. Trans rights are my rights.
Not everyone who is castrated identifies as a eunuch. Not every eunuch identifies as a trans person. I identify as a eunuch and in my identity that makes me a trans person: eunuch is a gender identity for me.
Even if that were not so, trans is an identity/gender/sex/take-your-pick under the one Rainbow Flag: an attack on one should be seen as an attack on all. Were I not a merry eunuch and still identifying as a common-or-garden gay-boy, I would still stand with my trans brothers and sisters for that very reason.
I am seriously considering blowing my cover and outing myself on my personal social media – to stand up and be counted for what I am and for whom I support.
The brutal truth is that trans-people (especially trans-women) are much more likely, staggeringly more likely to be the victim of violent crime, than a cis-woman.
Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime
The problem is the woman-axe-murder problem: its rare, therefore its news-worthy … and we hear about it. What we don’t hear about (I suspect it is because its an inconvenient truth) is that trans-women are exceedingly more likely to be victims of assault than cis-women. That’s not news-worthy because it flows against the prevailing narrative.
Over the past few years this idea has become so pervasive it is now inescapable in the media, culture, higher education, politics and sports; Ipso research shows that reporting of trans issues increased by 400% between 2009 and 2019. It is worth noting that trans people make up roughly 0.5% of the UK population; instances of men infiltrating women-only spaces are few and far between (in Ireland, where self-identification has been legal since 2015, there has been no discernible adverse impact). Yet it is precisely because these cases are so unusual that they become newsworthy: journalism’s “man bites dog” principle means that an event’s rarity determines its priority in the news agenda. If every single reported sexual assault got this kind of coverage – 199,021 sexual offences and 70,633 rapes last year – it would simply never end. Transgender people are far more likely to be survivors of sexual assault than perpetrators. The US Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime reports that 50% of transgender individuals are sexually abused or assaulted at one point in their lives, with some reports estimating the figure at 66% and even higher for groups such as transgender people of colour or with disabilities.
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