Month: October 2014

The Public Bombshell

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

It’s the stuff of nightmares:  the news flashes a headline, “Local Public Leader Resigns after Criminal Charges . . .” Prominent local figure caught in flagrante delecto in a public park, engaging in homosexual acts.  Local story gets picked up by all the state news agencies (after all, this man has held a very prominent position in his community) complete with all the lacivious details of how police officer observed . . .

But that’s not the worst of it.

The man is married.

Tacky as local news write-ups can be, as sensational and even salacious (after all, the point of journalism is to be read), my compassion is rather thin for the man.  He made some damned bad choices.  He violated public trust of his position in the community.  He engaged in irresponsible as well as immoral behavior in a public place frequented by children. If the law enforcement officer’s account is even remotely accurate, he has been quite practiced in his shenanigans. Let him cope with the loss of his profession and the public humiliation and derision he considered worth less than a half hour’s thrill and excitement with — the other man says he’d never met him before (I don’t quite believe that).  He’ll go to court, the matter will be put off a few times, and ultimately he’ll get a slap on the wrist and a fine of some description.  His punishment will in no way compensate for his betrayal of the public trust.

But there will be no real penalty for the betrayal of honor, dignity, and respect due his wife. She has the public humiliation and the loss of the privacy in which she should have been able to learn and to deal with this crisis.  The common greeting “how are you doing?” will never again be that innocuous thing we carelessly exchange with one another; from now on, those words will be laden with meaning, a reminder, “I know, we all know . . . ”

But do “we all” know?  No.

No one knows what it is like to face the revelation that the husband to whom one has been bound for many years has held one in so little regard; that one’s comfort, security, and peace have been held so cheap.

No one knows the dynamics that have played out in the years preceding this bombshell.  No matter what warm and congenial public face has been put on it, you can be sure that in the private life, the relationship between the two, apart from any sort of audience, has been empty and hollow and miserable.

Her emotions will probably run a huge gamut in the months ahead.  Has he admitted to her that this has been an ongoing, long-term pattern of behavior? Or has he said, “oh, I’ve never done this before, I don’t know why . .. ” —

And if the latter, she will be sorely tempted in the shock of these early days to simply accept without challenge anything he has to say to her.  She may not be able to cognitively weigh out what has happened, she may not be able to consider that a straight man does not engage in homosexual acts, and that her husband was far more familiar with location and behavior than can excuse the one-time plea.

And if she is able to realize that this issue is serious, she will have to make some very hard decisions.  Some women choose to remain with a husband caught in the act; the adjustment to a celibate marriage is easier and less frightening than separation and divorce.  But most women can’t accept that option, and I suspect, once a man has been outed, he would find it very unappealing to go back into the old closet.

No, she’ll have a lot to process and a lot of decisions to make, and even as she makes them she will still find herself feeling as if she’s standing, as one friend puts it, on the epicenter of an earthquake. The decisions, the choices, won’t bring a resolution or peace;  the ground will continue to rock for years.

So my heart is strongly bent toward a woman I didn’t even know existed until about 24 hours ago.  She’s facing a devil of a time.  My own crisis seems rather easy by comparison.

LGBT vitriol

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

I questioned why the professional community taxed with screening gender reassignment candidates has not been more capable of recognizing the severe dysfunctions operating in the LGBT community, particularly in those lesbian households that are putting little boys on the transgender trainwreck. But perhaps the answer to that lies here:

“. . . the aggression shown by the LGBT community toward people who question whether children should prepare to have their genitals surgically altered and be injected with massive doses of hormones is such that clinicians are terrified to continue searching for the truth.”

The original article is available from the Wall Street Journal, but they demanded I subscribe before I could access the article.  I’m not in the market for a paid subscription of a work I only use a few times a year, rather than daily, cover to cover.

The LGBT community certainly is aggressive, even hostile, in the face of opposition.  Last week I posted a story by Janna Darnelle about her experiences divorcing, or being divorced by, a man who’d decided to come out of the closet.  Later in the week, this article appeared with an update, revealing that, in the aftermath of Janna’s article’s publication, and widespread sharing on the internet, the Gay Mafia has gone berserk with trying to punish her.

I highly recommend Rivka’s update, full of great information and insights such as this one:

“You want to marry a man and you are a man? Society does not owe you women’s children, women’s eggs, or women’s bodies.”

I would add, ” . . . or our hearts and souls.”

Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution

~ Laura Lowder ~ Leave a comment

There are serious problems with the whole issue of transgenderism (sex change). Two women of my acquaintance, one in NC, the other in the southwest, are living with men who’ve decided to become women.  The former is rather advanced in his search for an identity — he’s been on hormones for a while, has legally changed his name, but I don’t know whether he’s undergone any surgery yet.  The other has announced his intention and has begun taking hormones, and that’s as far as it goes.

Here’s what I’m seeing as a laywoman:

Both of these men demonstrate other mental health issues which have not been in the first instance addressed by the very professionals who are supposed to be taxed with screening the individuals for mental health soundness and for the appropriateness of any sort of procedure.  Depression, possible bipolar disorder in at least one of them, gender identity confusion (a strong absence of identification as male), general emotional immaturity, an inability to see how such a drastic step would affect them or others, a total single-minded determination to do what they want and the hell with the consequences.

And the consequences are pretty severe.  Once you’ve cut it off you can’t put it back on. The incidence of severe depression in transgendered persons is reported much higher than the general population, and nearly 1/2 will attempt suicide at some point in their lives. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg, the mental instability fostering an insistence on gender re-assignment or the re-assignment itself, is still being hotly debated.

These are NOT good odds for something that is really only a cosmetic bit of pretense, while not altering the genetic makeup of the individual at all.  Genetically, these two men will still carry a Y chromosome, which means they will still be male.

And now we have a terrifyingly large number of parents foisting gender re-assignment off on their children.  Frankly, for a child to be put in this position is nothing less than abuse worthy of having a child permanently removed from the home and placed in a stable environment.  I’ve noticed with great dismay that many of these children are boys being raised by lesbian couples; why THAT little detail hasn’t rung any alarm bells in the psychiatric community is worthy of more consideration.

Isolation

~ Laura Lowder ~ 5 Comments

For such a small, neglected, and insignificant little blog, I hear from a surprising number of women fairly regularly.  This always surprises me.  Someone takes time to post a comment, or to send me an email . . .

The recurring theme of the messages I receive from other women is that of feeling isolated.  “No one knows . . .” they say.

They’re right.  No one who hasn’t been through a marriage and divorce with a gay man has any idea what we go through. It’s a subtle and insidious form of abuse, what we live with in the marriage

And, as one woman recently pointed out, when we divorce a gay man, the social reaction is different.  A woman divorces a man who’s been committing adultery, everyone sympathises with her, supports her, sympathises with her in the sense of the betrayal she’s experienced, the humiliation . . .

But when a woman divorces a man for being gay, or he leaves her for another man, the ex-wife is completely overlooked in the general rush to applaud the man for being gay.

That’s all that matters in this society — he’s gay, he’s got to be the hero. Isn’t it wonderful! isn’t it good! He has finally been able to come out and to live honestly.  Now he can be happy – – –

So it’s terribly lonely, even more so than a regular divorce.  And, as this same (very astute) woman pointed out to me, “I know a lot of women who’ve gone through divorces, but none of them have a gay (or transgender) husband.”  So our situation is odd and we go through it very much alone.