Have I ever mentioned before that I really like numbers? There are all sorts of fascinating things that happen with numbers that are often overlooked. For instance, I often go to various events where you buy raffle tickets, but them into various buckets, and then cross your fingers that your name will be called. These events are truly very random drawings and yet, often the draws do not seem very random. Some people tend to get their names drawn more than others. It just happens to be the nature of apparent randomness. Just like my phone, I will put the music on random play and frequently the same song comes up again and again. Random? Well yeah, but it sure doesn't seem to be a very good random!
Anywho..... some of the numbers I have been looking at lately are the true numbers of acceptance of spouses of transgender people. Within my research I have been looking at numbers of MtF transgender people who are not transitioning, that have told their spouse or girlfriend of their gender variance. The common theory states that it is very rare for a genetic woman to be accepting of a gender variant male to female significant other. My own theory is that is actually simply based upon fear and not a true reflection of reality.
Many gender variant people spend a large amount of their lives in hiding. They fear what might happen if they are honest with those around them. And why shouldn't they be fearful? They dominant narrative states that there exists an overwhelming threat to the transgender community from a large variety of sources. From being attacked on the street, to being harassed in the bathroom, to being fired from your job, to being shunned from any sort of companionship.
But, unfortunately from what I can tell, many gender variant people are not actually willing to risk attempting these actions to discover for themselves whether the narrative will pan out that way for them or not. Now don't get me wrong. I understand that bad things happen. Bad things happen all of the times. For no reason. To good people. And they shouldn't happen. But such is the nature of life. It is unpredictable.
Alas, I fear I have drifted off topic yet again! Low is me! Okay, focus here.
The focus of my personal study has been trying to decode true numbers of reactions of the reveal of being gender variant within relationships. My study group has been the users at crossdressers.com. My method has been to simply comb through the various threads and categorizing people and their partner's response to them being gender variant of some sort. It has not always been clear but I have tried my best to determine what happened within their relationship once they told their partner.
Some early results??
Of the 458 members I have included:
363 did not leave the relationship upon the reveal
280 are at least somewhat accepting
29 are in what is called a Don't Ask Don't Tell situation
45 didn't leave but are not accepting of the partner's gender variance
23 are accepting genetic women
74 are partners who left because of the gender variance
20 left but not because of the gender variance
Okay - a proviso with these numbers, some members reported their responses from several different partners over the years, thus the numbers may not total as one might expect. This explains why their are variations within the totals.
So some percentages huh?
84% of partners did not leave the relationship upon the reveal
74% percent of the partners are at least somewhat accepting of the gender variance, which could range from DADT to full inclusion and acceptance
68% would be considered to be openly accepting of their partner's gender variance
These results are what I have up to this point. I will continue to compile the numbers. There is about 10-15 years worth of data on that website and so far I have gone back about two months only! I don't really know how long I will continue to do this for. We shall see.
But so far, I would have to say that the common assertion that a partner will NOT accept a gender variant partner is completely wrong. Apparently far more partners DO accept their gender variant partner. Who knew? Well I personally had a suspicion.
Interesting.
Love you!
Love numbers!
BTW - This data was all taken from publicly accessible areas of the website. Anyone can find this information if they so choose.
Here is the raw data, if you are really interested:
