From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joy-ladin/gender-transition_b_2442460.html
Joy Ladin
01/09/2013
Let me introduce myself: I was a loving husband and father over a quarter-century of marriage to a woman I met in my first semester in college. I remained loving and faithful through an excruciating divorce, impoverishing myself to maintain my ex’s and our children’s standard of living, and commuting to a job 150 miles away so that I could live near my children and be involved in their lives. Now, five years after I moved out, I continue to support my ex and children, whom I see several times a week despite working out-of-state.
Like many divorced couples, my ex and I tell very different stories of our break-up. Unlike many divorced former couples, both of us have published accounts of our divorce. (Huffington Post published my version last year.) Neither of our versions accuses the other of lying, but as you can see from the comments after my account, many people insist that I lied throughout my relationship — because I’m transgender. Some say that I lied by living as a man, then broke my marital vows which, according to them, included the promise that I would live as a man for the rest of my life. Others say I lie by living as a woman when I was born and lived for 45 years as a man, and by portraying myself as loving and faithful to my family despite what they suffered as a result of my gender transition.
My ex and children did suffer as a result of my gender transition. My ex lost the man she had loved since college. My children suffered much more from the divorce than from my transition, but though I remain their loving parent, they mourned the loss of the father they had known. My ex has eloquently described her experience of my transition, which to her felt like watching her husband die.
Of course, as my children know, I didn’t die, but my ex’s account is true to her feelings. As she had warned me since I first came out to her as trans in college, she couldn’t love me once I stopped looking like a man, so for her my transition was pure loss. But my ex’s sense that she was watching me die is also true in another way: as I told her at the time, living as a man was literally killing me. My body and the male persona that I had created to go with it — the male persona she loved, and which I had endured for decades — had become living hells. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t feel anything but pain. My male persona was dying, and I, the invisible person who had always hid within that persona, was dying inside it, before her eyes.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joy-ladin/gender-transition_b_2442460.html
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
