Welcome to the Quillett Podcast. I'm your host Jonathan Kay, a senior editor at

Quillett. Quillett is where free thought lives. We are an independent

grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

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articles and early access to Colette social events. This week's guest is

Shannon Thrace, author of the newly published book, 18 Months, a memoir of a marriage lost to gender identity.

In 18 months, which I recently reviewed at Quillette, Shannon describes the dissolution of her 16-year marriage to a man she describes under the pseudonym of Jamie.

As Shannon tells the story, the relationship began collapsing shortly after Jamie became interested in cross-dressing during sex.

At first, the author tells us, she was supportive of Jamie's new interests.

Shannon herself was no crude, having formerly worked at a drag bar, and having spent periods of her adulthood in a polyamorous lesbian relationship.

Shannon also initially remained supportive when Jamie began to self-described as transgender.

There was nothing wrong with gender transition Shannon reminded herself.

This would be the same Jamie she knew and loved just with a different kind of appearance and identity.

But as the months passed, Jamie began to change in other ways.

In particular, Jamie became deeply immersed in online transgender chat groups that presented the issue of gender identity in militant and highly ideological terms.

According to Jamie's new outlook, anyone who didn't now see him as fully female, and indeed fully feminine, was a hurtful bigot, a transphobe, or as they now say a so-called turf.

What's more, Shannon's friends and even therapists

insisted that it was Shannon who had to accommodate herself to this new reality

within the marriage and when Shannon expressed any sort of hesitation or concern,

Jamie would denounce her with the same rhetoric and slogans that now filled his online world,

language that Shannon found confusing and alienating.

...