Feminist Mormon Housewives: A gender identity story

Last updated on: July 3, 2014 at 11:28 am by Sierra Phoenix

Feminist Mormon Housewives: A gender identity story 2014-07-03T11:28:08-04:00 Sierra Phoenix

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Those who read Melissa’s story at Permission to Live will probably be interested in this story, too:

Feminist Mormon Housewives: A Look Inside Your Neighbor’s Window: Surprises in Marriage

This Mormon couple, like Melissa and her partner, married young after being steeped in a strict Christian purity culture during their childhoods and adolescence. Some time after marriage, they came out to one another as a lesbian and a transgender woman. An excerpt:

My husband and I always tell each other everything, so I didn’t wait long to tell him about it—a day at most. I was nervous, of course. Who wouldn’t be? But he’d known for a long while that I thought I might be bisexual, and he hadn’t minded that, so I knew the conversation wouldn’t be dramatic.
He said it didn’t surprise him. I asked if he minded, if he was horrified or anything. He said no. I asked what he thought about the whole thing. He said he thought it was fine, but he wondered what would happen to us as a couple now that I’d discovered this. I told him I didn’t know, but that I wanted to be with him and that I didn’t know what that meant for us or for me or what, but that I loved him. And then he said something that surprised me.
“You know,” he said, nervously, “I’ve always kind of felt like I was supposed to be a woman.” He had only recently begun realizing that consciously for himself, but he, too, could trace his conflicted gender-identity back to early childhood.
I firmly believe that the reason I’ve felt so attracted to my husband in the first place is because when it comes down to it, he is a woman. He’s transgendered, and when I stopped to think about it, when I stripped my conceptions of him away from the idea that he was a man, I realized that of the two of us, he’s the more traditionally feminine member of our marriage. I’ve been with a woman all along—I just didn’t know it.

Update: The above entry is apparently part of a series FMH is running on Mixed-Orientation Marriages. I recommend checking out the other stories, too!

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