I've now been told by Oberkommando der TERFmacht that we aren't
actually rounding up the trannies into camps, so I had some extra time after sewing
the Totenkopf onto my nice new cap.
To set the scene for Tony's divorce from his second wife, let me share some information on his first marriage from his Shroomery posts.
In a post "
cheating and infidelity sucks", Tony reveals (
again) how he read his first wife's private diary, in which she writes of sexual fantasies involving other people.
Tony eventually makes clear that his wife didn't actually ever sleep with anyone else while they were married.
Ever the superstar husband, Tony posted that "
this woman is bat shit insane" and that "she always blames me for driving her crazy", though Tony said that "honestly, I think I'm the only thing that ever kept her sane".
Later,
Tony can't actually find his wife in order to divorce her. It seems that she worked hard to really get clear of Tony, a feeling with which I'm sure aficionados of this thread can empathise.
Tony, the wronged husband, of course
would never do anything so heinous as to ch-
Hm. Well I'm sure he's racked with guilt.
Oh. So cheating is fine if Tony's the one doing it! Gotcha. Note the dates on these posts: Tony had sex with someone else's wife while he was still married to but separated from his first wife. We'll come back to this.
Let's get to his divorce from his second wife. Tony says that he and his wife "separated … after I found out she cheated on me" (
source,
archive). We actually know little about this act of infidelity.
It does come up in
the divorce documents, but only in that some of the formal questions asked of Kate (his second wife) were whether she had slept with anyone else during the marriage. Kate refuses to answer to avoid self-incrimination. So she cheated, right?
Well, not so fast. Tony has exaggerated what actually happened with his first wife (she wrote in her diary, got turned down) in posts on Reddit (
source,
archive).
Kate gave birth to a child in 2020, while they were still married. So case closed, right? Well, technically, yeah. But we know that they separated in summer 2018, so the child was conceived in spring 2019 at the earliest — well after they separated. Recall from Tony's Shroomery posts that he had sex with another man's wife while he was still married to his first wife. The 2020 baby mattered to Tony's divorce case (his lawyer tries to get the birth certificate; see the letter of December 11 2020 from Kate's lawyer), but it tells us nothing about what prompted Tony and Kate's separation in the first place. For that, all we have is Tony's word.
Edit: Also, see @AirdropShitposts's post below regarding the issue of adultery.
That out of the way, we can turn to the to-and-fro of the divorce documents. Kate files for divorce on August 19 2019, something that Tony didn't find out until just over a week later.
In Kate's Complaint for Absolute Divorce of that date, she requests "sole legal and sole physical custody" of their son (whose name I will omit), alleging that the current arrangement where Kiddo lives with Tony "is not in the child's best interest" - not least because Kate "has concerns regarding the current level of care that the child is receiving" in Tony's custody.
What was Tony doing by this point? In April 2019 he had come out as a totes valid transwoman – including around his son, who lived with him. Tony's Twitter was full of him bitching about his bigot parents, pictures of makeup, his estrogen injections, and a gazillion classic Wig Era selfies. Plus ebegging for electrolysis money (
source,
archive), complaining about people asking for his actual name (
source,
archive), and telling people how to get cross-sex hormones without any mental health checks (
source,
archive). Oh and a video of his son, where Tony's main concern was how feminine or not his voice sounded (
source,
archive).
Kate definitely knew about his @erininthemorn Twitter account by March 12 2020 (see her response to Tony's pre-trial statement), it's quite possible that she knew about it fairly early on in spring/summer 2019. Did Tony's antics factor in to what she said in the divorce complaint about being concerned about the level of care Tony was giving their son? Unfortunately we can't know from the documents we have.
The next part is probably familiar to everyone: Kiddo goes to his mother for a week or so in mid-August, and Kate keeps hold of him past the agreed date. At 2pm on August 27 Kate calls Tony to discuss some matters that had caused her concern, Tony refuses. Later that day they exchange the following text messages:
At 8:47pm Tony said:
Are you really not going to bring Kiddo back tonight? His birthday presents are waiting for him. His soccer practice is tomorrow.
At 9:51pm Kate said:
When I called earlier today, I asked to have a conversation with you regarding Kiddo's care and some questions I had about things he had said to me while here. In an effort to coparent, I wanted to discuss those things. You did not want to discuss them, and until those concerns are resolved and we have a conversation, the answer is no. In addition, you texted me at 8:47pm and it is his bedtime. I am not putting him in a car this late for soccer practice when I have these concerns to discuss.
It's not clear what those concerns were. We do know, from a quote in Tony's motion for a custody evaluation of October 29 2019, that at the emergency hearing for the return of the child, Kate was asked "Do you have any concerns about Mr Reed's decision to become transgender". She said "No, I don't" but that she also didn't want Kiddo calling Tony "mom".
Tony's motion for custody evaluation is informative, as it recounts some of Kate's allegations. Bear in mind this is from two months after Kate filed for divorce and the dispute over her keeping the son. In it, Kate is said to allege:
improper "general care and hygiene neglect", including Kiddo's diet, wearing dirty clothes, not cleaning Kiddo's ears and finger nails, dressing Kiddo in clothes and shoes that were too small, Kiddo having unkempt hair, allowing Kiddo to brush his own teeth, and not treating Kiddo earlier for a cough and running nose.
Tony's lawyer says that Kate "claims" that Tony has a "history of depression, anxiety and panic attacks" — things that Tony has admitted to elsewhere, before and since the divorce. As well, Kate worries that Tony's estrogen injections might cause "mood swings or personality changes". On the initial Domestic Case Information Report she filed for the divorce, Kate ticked the box for "mental health evaluation", presumably of Tony. It's not hard to see why, with Tony publicly recording the surge of endorphins he got from living out his fetish in public (
source,
archive; ad infinitum, ad nauseam). On top of that, Tony's house "is not clean" and has an "odor".
Most relevant to our interests, though: Tony "treats child as an accessory to their lifestyle as opposed to a living, breathing, developing human". We've seen that recently with his
pining after a childhood on puberty blockers (and therefore not having a child), but particularly relevant also is
the July 2019 incident where he planned to buy his son a dress and his drafting of a transgender reading list for his then four-year-old son (
source,
archive).
The kicker for me is this quoted paragraph:
Kate's lawyer said:
Plaintiff feels very strongly that her child will find stability in having a home, full time with his birth mother: where can learn and explore his own forming identity and personality freely. Stability and consistency is essential in child development, and Plaintiff strongly believes that she is the sole parent who can offer this.
The inference being that, with Tony, Kiddo will not be able to "explore his own forming identity and personality freely" — particularly not if he's some troon's lifestyle accessory!
By the dates on the documents, we're only into the early stages of the divorce, but I think probably that covers the important parts for understanding this part of Tony's life, at least as far as the documents can take us. There's little new of substance later on, just lots of legal wrangling.
One thing I did want to point out that I found particularly disgusting is Tony and his lawyer using both his wife's long working hours in theatre
and her later unemployment against her. From Tony's opposition to Kate's motion in limine, of April 17 2020:
Tony's lawyer said:
Prior to the parties' July 31, 2018 separation, Defendant Reed was Kiddo's primary caregiver. Plaintiff Brittingham worked long hours, sometimes 70 hours a week, as a property master in a local theater. Defendant Reed worked from home as a digital director of a media company; and [he] devoted much more time and effort in raising Kiddo than Plaintiff Brittingham due to her devotion to her work in theater and exhaustion when she was at home.
And in Kate's deposition of January 27 2020:
Q. Is having a stable, regular income a component of stability?
A. Not necessarily.
Q. So, unemployment is conducive to stability for Kiddo?
A. No, not necessarily.
One thing that appears in the transcript which I've not yet wrapped my head around is this, in the context of Kate being asked why she initially accepted, in summer 2019, proposed custody arrangements that were favourable to Tony:
Kate said:
I don't think I wanted to rock the boat because I was afraid of my spouse. So, I was trying to be as -- I was trying to play nice.
"I was afraid of my spouse"? "I was trying to play nice"? What is under this particular scab?
. It's kind of like a hilarious inversion of a few years ago when the terf gang would point out something ridiculous and the TRAs would shrug it off as "well they're not really trans", only it for it to now be commonplace. Opposing views are now common and yet it's always these people they focus in on.
