Challenging the Linguistic Capture of Synthetic Sex Ideology, One Memoir at a Time

From Ute Heggen, ex-wife of a man who . . .(yes, the whole nine yards) and author of  In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse.com/bookstore, amazon/kindle first chapter free)

This article is adapted from a blog post at uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com

When I found the Trans Journalists Association Style Guide webpage online last year, these three decades after the "discovery," I just about dropped my teeth and fell off my chair. Thirty years ago this month, I discovered my then-husband's three diaries of cross-dressing, large format sketchbooks filled with his quirky, studied, inimitable printing, which I look back and realize now was yet another inauthentic attempt at pseudo-femininity, in his obsession-riddled mind. The illogical attitude he took towards my shock, disappointment and worries about our then one and four year old never made sense to me. I grasped that his evenings awol, oddly long fingernails and sudden lack of stamina to play with our sons now had an explanation. What I didn't imagine was that there was a whole battalion of cross-dressing men, paying plenty of money to PhD "sexologists," who were encouraging them to go into the phase of what they called "true life test," a period of role playing and cross-dressing that took on, for Neddy anyway, the thrill of belonging to the French Resistance during World War II. What he didn't comprehend though, and what the "sexologists" refuse to recognize, is that sitting at a bar on Bleecker Street in The Village, waiting for some random (heterosexual?) guy to offer to get you a blanc de blanc is in no way "true life." You left your true life back home in Brooklyn, where your wife is getting the children to eat their vegetables, finish the bath and bedtime story routines. I still can't believe he voluntarily missed those golden hours with our beautiful babies, pretending to be working on research papers for his MBA at New York University. I loved that part of my life, though I was often tired and the apartment had a rodent and roach problem, as was typical on the middle of Ocean Parkway.

The following excerpt is from WoLF, Women's Liberation Front, which Kara Dansky headed before the WDI, Women's Declaration International, was formed. The WoLF guide was a response to the strange, sexist language of the "Trans Journalists Association Style Guide." We all have personal reasons for fighting the propaganda, double-speak and psycho-babble of the TJASG. It contains a paragraph I'll type bold for emphasis. It is the "official" stance of "official" trance that ex-wives and traumatized families must not be written about in the news. Our stories are yesterday's cold potatoes, in their glittered eyes.

The Trans Journalists Association appears to have a Facebook page and twitter account. They  must be having heart attacks about Ritchie Herron's lawsuit in Britain and his many interviews detailing how he was a vulnerable, unwell adult, had obsessive compulsive disorder and was rushed into drastic, failed surgeries by the Tavistock mental health staff in the UK's National Health Service. I thoroughly believe that Neddy's fingerprints are all over this "style guide."

From Women's Liberation Front

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) released a Media Style Guide on Tuesday for journalists reporting on issues related to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, and women's rights.

The style guide provides an alternative to popular guidance that pushes unethical or confusing language related to women's rights, such as that put forth by the Trans Journalists Association which was adopted by the Society for Professional Journalists.

The guide provides an alternative to popular guidance that pushes unethical language related to women's rights.

The WoLF Media Style Guide provides a more accurate and ethical way to report on issues that impact women and girls. The guidelines reflect a scientific understanding of concepts like sex and gender, are informed by a feminist perspective, and adhere to the strictest principles of journalism ethics including "truth and accuracy," "fairness and impartiality," and "humanity."

Author's note: If I was me, I'd take a strong stance against the use of the word "gender" for anything other than things like German grammar; the der, die or das status of nouns.

From the TJA Style Guide, (2020) in an oddly ungrammatical format with quirky punctuation:

avoid furthering the “losing a loved one” cliche
Often, the media will quote sources saying they feel as though they’ve lost their trans relative, lover, or friend. While loved ones of trans people often need to process that their loved one is trans, it is overdone and unoriginal to emphasize the grief of cis family and partners. These stories also center cis people in stories about trans people. Many people are happy and joyful that the trans people in their lives feel free to live as their authentic selves, yet those stories rarely get told. These stories are especially important and should be normalized.

The language there, "loved ones .  .  . need to process that their loved one is trans," is clearly minimizing the demoralization that comes with the discovery of your husband's secret cross-dressing or porn addiction or infidelities. There are only 3 published memoirs of the ex-wives of men who identify in synthetic sex identities, one of them being mine. The first of note was Christine Benvenuto's book, Sex Change, (St. Martin's Press) published a decade ago. Her husband announced, immediately after the last time they had sex, "too bad this is the last time I'll have sex with you as a man." Joy Ladin, as he is now called, harassed his wife and tried to ruin her writing career, while neglecting their three children in their college town in Massachusetts--his "transition" was too important and consuming. In one subsequent article about him, he mentioned that he could perhaps have handled it all better, in terms of the family. I hope these guys recognize their responsibility in the greatest medical scandal of this century, the social contagion of teen girls having double mastectomies and damaging their internal organs with Finasteride and testosterone.

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