I knew this couple some years ago. They were high-school sweethearts who got engaged and were planning their wedding. He was in IT, with a brilliant future. Everything was going great.
Then he decided he was a woman. He is a 6 foot 4 burly fellow of the kind that has to shave twice a day. A very deep voice, strong masculine features. After a bunch of very expensive treatments, he still looked nothing like a woman. He became majorly depressed and started to resent his fiancee because she was a tiny, very feminine woman and effortlessly had the look he wanted to achieve. She tried to be understanding, calling herself a lesbian and masculinizing her appearance with a short haircut and baggy clothing but it didn’t work.
He lost his job, became a hermit, and finally he started being physically abusive to the fiancee, so she left. It was devastating to her because he was the love of her life but it became dangerous to stay. Watching this unraveling of what was going to be a really great life was painful.
The guy was a high-achiever alpha type, so he went after this goal of becoming a woman like he’d always gone after every other goal in his life. Full speed ahead, extraordinary effort. But the goal was unachievable to begin with.
All this could have been avoided. This completely unnecessary suffering didn’t have to happen. That’s what hurts the most, how utterly unnecessary this all was.
Clarissa's Blog 
I dunno. Sounds like he was attracted to her in the first place because he wanted to be her– so before any of that other stuff, not the basis for any kind of a healthy relationship. She’s fortunate to have got out before they got married or had any kids.
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No matter what the trans extremist movement says, gender dysphoria is mental illness and should be treated as such.
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It’s clear that in this case nothing but negative consequences could come from any attempt at “transition”.
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May be it’s my own interpretation of this post and comments, but on Internet there is often an undercurrect of putting significant amount of responsibility for such cases on trans propaganda. I do not believe any propaganda destroyed this man. There are severely mentally ill people, who seem to be normal to outside observers till a certain point in time. Then the disease becomes glaring.
“She tried to be understanding, calling herself a lesbian and masculinizing her appearance”
I would’ve dumped him then and there. Not only is his behavior a sign of illness, how can a heterosexual woman sexually live with a woman?
“All this could have been avoided. This completely unnecessary suffering didn’t have to happen.”
As often happens with mental illness.
I remember studying feminist readings of “The Bell Jar” at university and being shocked to discover its author Sylvia Plath committed suicide similar to the novel’s main character.
When I told about “The Bell Jar” and its suicidal heroine to my mother, she immediately identified the main character in the novel as mentally ill and said it has no connection to feminism.
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Yeah, his mental illness probably not avoidable, but her trying to accommodate it: 100% unnecessary and avoidable. That should be right up there with a romantic partner being physically violent, emotionally manipulative, showing signs of bipolar or any kind of personality disorder (see the reams of literature by/for people who’ve escaped relationships with borderlines, narcissists, etc)… pretty well established those are big red flags, and they mean you should get out, and get out now, and anybody who cares about you should be telling you so. But this one mental illness, we’ve decided is some kind of sacred holy cray-cray, and if you leave one of these people you’re the bad guy because intolerance or something. That is nuts.
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\ if you leave one of these people you’re the bad guy because intolerance or something.
Nobody can say that. If a former wife is heterosexual and he is now a woman too, how can she remain in a sexual relationship with the former husband?
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People who engage in such massive refashioning of the self – accompanied by medication, surgery, etc – can’t perform sexually at all, so this issue is moot. Transgenderism is very often accompanied by asexuality. The libido dies because of hormonal treatments. And in case of genital surgery, there’s no possibility of having anything like a regular sex act, anyway.
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Prediction: By the time my kids are adults, we’ll have re-invented the “eunuch” designation.
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” I do not believe any propaganda destroyed this man”
I do. Men like him at one point were known as heterosexual transvestites. Many were happily married and satisfied their kink by occasional weekend meet-ups with like-minded heterosexual transvestites where they had a grand old time putting on dresses and calling each other girls’ names and then went back to their families.
This with the knowledge and tolerance (maybe strained a bit at times) of their wives.
It’s trans propaganda that labels such men as ‘trans women’ and convinces them they have to transition full time and possible undergo medical interventions.
That may not have been ideal but it was sustainable unlike the current trans agenda.
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That’s exactly it. A person can have a fetish. It’s fine. The problem begins when what could be a harmless fetish explored privately turns into an unfeasible plan of refashioning your whole physique. Everything becomes an identity instead of being part of a multi-faceted human personality. It’s the concept of identity as opposed to that of personality that’s at fault here.
I don’t think this guy is crazy. I think that our very narrow understanding of human personality didn’t suggest to him any positive ways of integrating his paraphilia into his life.
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The “social contagion” narrative only applies to kids or teenagers. This was an adult, so nobody would argue social contagion.
As for the mental illness explanation, I don’t think it’s useful. It’s mostly a way to dismiss the problem. We now use this expression to refer to everything and nothing.
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