I’m not sure what I’d do - my initial reaction is to say I’d stay with my SO, who happens to be male. I identify as bi and have had serious relationships with women in the past, so sex wouldn’t be a problem if he went through SRS.
However, he would not be the same person I’ve known for the past two years. Hormones can have a much bigger impact on an individual’s personality than one might expect; being on the pill for a year and a half seriously changed my personality and how I reacted to situations (and not for the better). Getting off the pill saw a welcome return to my “old self” and literally saved my sanity. Yes, I realise not everyone will have such negative changes as a result of hormonal treatments, and no, I don’t know how the hormonal changes would affect my SO, but the probable personality changes would definitely be a major concern.
A secondary concern would be the effect it would have on my psyche - having my very masculine man become a femme woman would take a lot of adjusting to. I imagine the experience would be a lot like culture shock where everything is sort of the same, but different enough to throw one’s equillibrium off. There’d absolutely need to be a lot of sensitivity & support on both sides of the relationship if we were going to work things out. A situation like the one portrayed on Dateline would never fly for me.
FTR, I just asked my SO & he stated unequivocably that if I were to undergo SRS, we would be friends and nothing more. He’s very straight & never has been interested in men, so I’m neither surprised nor offended.
Too bad SRS couldn’t remove David’s self-absorption, which hung on Victoria like a phantom penis.
I was also put off by the fact that she subjected her six year old grandson to her change. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to put your hair in a ponytail, bind your boobs, and wear gender neutral clothes around the kid until he’s better equipped to understand the change.
Not to be all narrow-minded or anything, but my response if the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan wanted to discuss gender reassignment would be a non-negotiable “No”.
I can see suffering some injury or disease that put an end to our sexual relationship, but that is involuntary. SRS is voluntary. And a penis is a deal-breaker.
This is roughly the equivalent of my bringing home a third party, and expecting my wife to join us in a threesome, if it she doesn’t want to. Not to my taste, and that is not going to change.
Cripes, the things you forget to put into the pre-nup…
I strongly disagree with this. The kid needs to know who his grandpa is and grandpa doesn’t need to perpetuate the lie any longer than he/she already has. The kid will grow up with a trannsexual grandparent and it won’t be a giant adjustment the way it would be if they wait.
That said, I would be heartbroken and I’d miss my husband, but I’d have to leave. I’d remain friends, and I think I’d probably stick around until well after the surgery (during the burn-in period in the new life). I don’t understand why everyone thinks Victoria is self-absorbed. Can someone clarify that for me?
I interpreted this as Victoria’s expectation that this major surgery would somehow magically reverse her wife’s sexual orientation for Victoria’s benefit. By my interpretation, that’s asking far too much. Of course, Victoria is well within her rights to leave if she doesn’t get what she wants; and the wife is free to leave if Victoria continues to insist upon getting what the wife can’t give. But that comment… I can’t think of a way to make that sound good.
See, I didn’t take Victoria’s “something will have to change” comment as an assertion as much as a mournful observation. Victoria is still a living person with all of the needs for intimacy and sexual fulfillment that she had as David, perhaps even moreso because now that she feels that she’s in the right body, there must be even more need and desire for her to engage in physical expressions because the feeling for her would finally be right after years of being wrong.
Yes, Victoria made the change and yes, that turned Joyce’s world upside-down in the bargain. It seems to me that if their marriage was as loving and trustworthy as both Joyce and Victoria said that it was over the 33 years before Victoria pursued SRS, Victoria would never have made the decision to go forward with the change unless she honestly felt that she couldn’t bear to live without it and that Joyce was not going to be devastated by it.
But that aside, I fail to see how it’s selfish of Victoria to be honest, that she loved Joyce and wanted to be with Joyce sexually, and if Joyce couldn’t reciprocate her feelings, then living together and being with one another everyday platonically couldn’t continue.
It would be asking a great deal of anybody to stay in a relationship that was lopsided to that extent, even if they were the root cause for the lopsidedness. Who could live with the person who once was their friend and lover, maintain affection and sexual desire for that person and yet be continually denied the contact with the person that was craved? It wouldn’t be healthy for anyone; the continued rejection would take a toll that no one would need to bear.
It seems like assigning selfishness to Victoria is saying that she should be consigned to live in that marriage, without affection from Joyce and without any other options as some sort of punishment or payback, or as if living with a constant denial of sexual fulfillment is some sort of penance Victoria needs to do because having SRS while being married to someone is wrong.
I agree with TeaElle’s interpretation of the statement. I think Victoria truly loves Joyce, but the writing is on the wall. Their relationship cannot be what it once was. If anything Victoria was kidding herself to think that it could remain the same. Victoria is a lesbian and Joyce isn’t. I can’t think of too many wives who would go through the motions of lesbianism for the sake of their marriage. It’s all so sad…
You know, honesty and selfishness aren’t exactly mutually exclusive. If a guy was to say, “I want blowjobs three times a day, and quickies twice daily, and a gang-bang every weekend, but I don’t wanna waste my time on foreplay or kissing or any of that stupid stuff” he might be honest, but I think we could probably agree that he’s also selfish. Turing my husband down for two weeks because I’m not in the mood and then waking him from a sound sleep at 3 in the morning and expecting him to get with the program right now because I’m horny might be honest, but it would also be very selfish. Yes, Victoria is being honest about what she wants, but what she wants is for Joyce to forgo her emotional and physical needs while fulfilling every one of Victoria’s wants and needs. Wanting everything your own way at the expense of someone else, that’s selfish.
Yes, it would be horrible to have to live with someone you wanted and be rejected constantly. And that’s exactly what Victoria expected Joyce to do for a year and a half. Expecting someone to live under conditions you won’t put up with yourself is NOT the act of a loving, caring spouse. Loving someone is about wanting what’s best for them, even when it’s not what makes you happy. Joyce has done a whole lot of stuff under that heading for Victoria, but I don’t see any willingness on Victoria’s part to do anything of the sort for Joyce. I forsee that being the death of the marriage, not the sex issue.
Only 3% of marriages survive the change of sex of one partner, where the marriage preceded transition. (A significantly greater percentage survive where the marriage was contracted after transition but before surgery; that situation is more “eyes-open”.) That statistic was given to me by my first psychiatrist, and I trust his expertise even if I can’t cite it.
A substantial fraction of transsexuals are also abandoned by the bulk of their friends and their birth families. It’s not an easy life; small wonder 25% commit suicide.
I did not see the show, either, but I did hear some of the secondary discussion about it in the various transgender groups I frequent. The response was universally unpleasant, generally characterizing the program as “barely better than Springer”. I must admit that I have little faith in the mainstream media’s ability to portray transsexuals in anything other than as a “freak show”.
Nah, it didn’t make Victoria look like a freak show, just a self-centered jackass. It wasn’t Springer-esque at all, IMHO. As David transitioned into Victoria, the changes themselves were treated pretty clinically, really. And to be honest, the changes themselves were a pretty minor part of the show. After all, it wasn’t “Victoria: Portrait of a Transsexual”, it was “Scenes from a Marriage.” The piece centered around emotional reactions to the changes, and how Joyce and Victoria’s relationship was changing. The emotions and relationship changes weren’t always positive, but that’s the case with just about any major life change.
I can understand and sympathize with that, KellyM. The perspective of the observers are never as intimate or accurate as the views of the people who have gone through the process, whose lives are at stake; sometimes any attention at all may feel like gross injustice to the ones in the spotlight. I have seen this with many groups of people with a special and rare interest, an unusual passion or fetish, or a peculiar obsession. Was the program’s perspective actually unjust lies or was it simply an unpleasant truth? I don’t know; I didn’t see it. I hope it was as balanced as CrazyCatLady seems to believe.
Still, though I wouldn’t blame either one of them a bit if they divorced over this and only remained friends. They have different needs and they seem willing to acknowledge it. The wife seems willing to work on their relationship as much as she can, which I applaud.
I still can’t get over the idea that Victoria would wait a while to see if her wife’s sexual orientation “comes around.” I would have thought that Victoria would herself know better than that; that’s why I think it—that one comment, not her life changes or divorce—is a selfish comment to make. I wish she’d simply said something like “we talked about it, and she doesn’t want to, and I’ll have to take no for answer.”
It could be that Victoria was holding out that hope because she and Joyce did “fool around” (not intercourse, by their description, but cuddling, kissing and touching) for some portion of Victoria’s transition and because Joyce equivocated about what the future would hold, sexually, in all of the interviews right up to the last one. When Joyce finally, forcefully, said something that indicated that she was not going to ever go any further with Victoria than she had, Victoria responded with an equal assertion of her position.
