We’d all do well to learn to forgive

MY REPLY to last week’s lead letter — from a woman (77) whose gender reassignment in 2005 cut her off from the wife and adult daughters — made reader E cry.

She comments: ‘I don’t always agree with your advice but I can see it comes from a place of love and I find it gives me another perspective on life.’

Thank you, E, for expressing what this column is about.

Sadly, such open-mindedness is not shared by a male reader, R, who writes: ‘If born as a female, you are a woman — and similarly a male remains a man. It’s as simple as that.’

Let me be clear. Like many, I do not agree with people being able to ‘identify’ as the opposite sex without all the former checks and balances — but my reader ‘Chris’ had lived as a woman for four years before having surgery. So R’s blinkered view denies a very complex truth — and I reject it.

I was called ‘ narrow, unempathetic and judgmental’. Why? Because instead of canvassing the insights of the person I know who is transitioning, I should have ‘sought out’ the opinions of Chris’s ex-wife and daughters. But how?

Chris revealed she had complied with her family’s 2005 instruction ‘never to contact them again’ — so how was I supposed to seek their views?

Chris was very sad to know there are grandchildren she will probably never see. You can judge all you like, but that individual pain is real and deserves compassion. Acknowledging that the news must have been ‘a tremendous shock’ to the family, I then praised ‘forgiveness and reconciliation’.

This is the noble message of the Christian religion I follow — and nothing will change my belief in its goodness.

Now I must alert you to a good, confidential group. Straight Partners Anonymous (SPA) is for heterosexual people who discover their partners are lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans and who need help in coping.

I hope straightpartners anonymous.com will be useful.