In this podcast I speak with Indian filmmaker Vaishnavi Sundar, currently in Australia for screenings of her groundbreaking feature-length documentary, Behind the Looking Glass, which explores the lives of women whose male partners have “come out” as trans. (For details of screenings scroll to the end of this post.) These women are sometimes known as “trans widows.” Also joining us is Bronwyn Winter, a fellow Substacker, and scholar of politics. I’ll say more about our conversation and Sundar’s taboo-busting film in a moment. But first — the topic of heterosexual men identifying as women is freakishly timely thanks to an incendiary four minute monologue of a fleeting character in this week’s episode of The White Lotus. The monologue has set the anti-woke media ecosystem on fire. I reckon the scene has done more to undermine trans ideology than even Donald Trump’s edict declaring there are only two sexes. For while good progressive folk dismiss Trump’s executive order as cruel and indicative of today’s culture-war obsessed insurgent right, they can’t quite hurl the same accusation at the writers of the hugely popular streaming series, which, for the uninitiated, skewers the global elites through the travails of the guests and staff of a luxury resort chain in Maui, Sicily and in season three, Koh Samui. The monologue in question came from “Frank” (Sam Rockwell) an old friend of main character “Rick” (Walton Goggins). Frank has been living in Thailand for years and the two catch up in a Bangkok bar. Rick asks Frank what he’s been up to, and Frank, a born-again Buddhist, answers .. frankly. He tells of spiralling into alcoholism and of his promiscuity with Asian women and then, without warning, reveals how all this led to a sexual fixation with the idea of being an Asian woman himself. He would invite men to sodomise him and hire an Asian woman to watch. “I'd look in her eyes while some guy was f*****g me and think, I am her, and I'm f*****g me,” he said to Rick’s hilarious astonishment. Those of us who’ve had the misfortune of falling down the trans debate rabbit hole immediately named Frank’s inclination as autogynephilia — “love of oneself as a woman,” in the Greek — but more importantly, so did Dr Ray Blanchard, the American-Canadian sexologist who coined the term in the 1980s to describe non-homosexual males whose desire to transition stemmed partly from sexual arousal at the thought of themselves as female. Reposting The White Lotus scene on X, Blanchard remarked: “Since 2003, political trans activists and their “allies” have done everything they could to prevent the word and the concept of autogynephilia from entering public awareness. And yet, with excruciating slowness but apparent inevitability, it is doing just that.” It is not hard to see why trans activists do everything possible to suppress any mention of the word or concept of autogynephilia. There is a fear that acknowledging some men are motivated to transition for sexual reasons will lead to trans women being demonised as sexual deviants or perverts; indeed, too many feminists deploy vulgar tropes of this sort. But the main imperative, as I’ve written before, is ideological. The “gender identity” movement, to the extent that we can pin down something so fundamentally incoherent, seeks to negate or at least blur the biological reality of sex so as to enable the belief that a male can actually be a woman in some spiritual or pseudo-scientific sense. This belief system is compelled to suppress the stark truth that for many men their feelings of alienation from their sexed bodies are themselves a symptom of their very male predilection for fetish and sexual obsession. (Again, that’s simply an observation on my part and not an accusation or moral judgment.) After all, it would be hard to argue that males who get off on thinking of themselves as women should be entitled to access women’s spaces. So the “gender identity” narrative must remain intact if the recent dismantling of sex-based rights in Australia and across the West is to withstand scrutiny and legal challenge. I wrote about the airing of autogynephilia in recent court cases here. (Incidentally the Lesbian Action Group’s bid to exclude trans women — biological males — from their events failed in the tribunal on the grounds it constituted unlawful discrimination: the Group is raising funds for a Federal Court appeal.) Meanwhile the erasure of autogynephilia in popular culture has given birth to a new kind of hero; the uber-masculine man, who after decades in the public eye as a soldier/Olympian/footballer/politician (I’m sure your mind is coughing up names and images so I don’t have to) is reborn as the authentic woman he’s been all along. A woman more womanly than any other — and hence deserving of “Woman of the Year” gongs — because she’s had to contend with the greatest tragedy a woman could conceivably face; to have been mistaken as male at birth. The hero worship of trans women leaves no room to acknowledge that their “coming out” often inflicts a serious emotional cost on their female partners. The progressive media will air stories about loving wives supportive of their partner’s transition now happily identifying as one part of a “lesbian” relationship. I’m not delegitimising these stories, but what of the wives unwilling to participate in their husband’s simulation of womanhood? The culture brands her as cruel and bigoted; her trauma invalidated, even when her male partner inflicts what can only be seen as extreme narcissistic abuse. How else to describe the male who decides to come out just as his wife is at her most vulnerable, breastfeeding a newborn? Which is one of the disturbing stories we encounter in Sundar’s latest film. Behind the Looking Glass profiles trans widows from around the world, often with the help of striking animation. The women speak for themselves with courage and candour. This is not the first time Sundar has tackled gender identity ideology — to the usual pushback and cancellation. Through her company, Lime Soda Films, she explored the rise in women and girls seeking transition in her four-part documentary, Dysphoric. In this podcast we discuss the impact of gender identity ideology in India — yes it’s arrived there too, and as always it’s the poorest women and most marginalised communities who pay the highest cost. This should exercise the minds of Australians given that exporting the ideology to the developing world is an explicit goal of the Albanese Government’s foreign policy. In February 2023 Foreign Minister Penny Wong launched the first dedicated fund to promote international “LGBTQ rights” in the Asia-Pacific, pledging to “listen to the voices, views and priorities of LGBTQIA+ human rights defenders and civil society.” You’ll hear me talking about a screening of Behind the Looking Glass in Sydney: unfortunately that’s already happened. But it screens in Melbourne tomorrow, March 23: Contact: tlc.vicinc.events@gmail.com $10 TLC members / $15 non members. And you can follow the link to watch the film online here: https://x.com/vaishax/status/1837134170969317449?s=46 Szego Unplugged is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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