Transgender Lesbian Legal Logic:

A Conditional Syllogism in Action

I have read countless challenges by emotionally upset wives regarding their social status if and when their trans spouse transitions. To be fair, the stress transitioning places on the cis spouse can be massive and brutally painful. They derive no benefit from their spouse’s transition, and they may be subjected to the same shame, guilt, ridicule and rejection as the transitioning spouse.

It is misery by association with the person you love. Regularly, the following question comes up:

“Am I a lesbian if I stay with you after you transition?”

Never one to waste an expensive legal education, I have come up with a syllogism*possibly useful for late-in-life married transitioners:

-A lesbian is a homosexual woman.

-A homosexual is someone who is sexually attracted to people of one’s own sex.

-Sexual attraction typically describes a person’s desire to have sex or form a sexual relationship with other people.

-Sexual relations refer to physical sexual activity. It involves touching another person in his/her/their private parts.

-If the couple don’t engage in any sexual activity and stay together, the cisgender spouse is not a lesbian.

In fact, arguably they are sisters-in-law since they are legally married.

*A syllogism is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted. A conditional syllogism follows if A is true then B is true, etc.

Emma Holiday

Final writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.

Thank you for reading my work.

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