"People would not expect you to stay (and you probably wouldn't) if he said he realized he was gay, or he wanted to enter into a polygamous relationship."
OK, so there are people who think women should remain married to gay men, that women should enter marriages with out but pious gay men, but overall, yes, point taken. But these are all different issues. "Gay," especially if this is a new piece of information, means he has in effect left her. The wife may still be interested, but it's over, and he ended it. "Polygamous" means dude thinks he can have a bunch of wives, but is not extending the same openness offer to his original wife. He may still be attracted to his wife, and she to him, but the terms have changed. What he's asking for constitutes infidelity under the original arrangement, and will be interpreted as, I'm looking for greener pastures, but by all means keep cleaning the house/raising the kids. Polygamy is also, you know, illegal.
The seemingly obvious difference with the letter-writer's concern is that if she is a heterosexual woman, she isn't sexually or romantically attracted to women. That she respects but isn't sexually into her husband-now-wife ought to be the confirmation she desires that she isn't transphobic. She now views her spouse (was this ever a good time for "spouse"!) as a woman, which is how her spouse identifies, and the proof that she does is that this very same person, now a different gender, isn't doing it for her.
This letter, as well as Prudie's response, really do show the problem with our society's discussions of female desire. It's presented as if it's all about emotion, nothing about the fact that a straight woman desires men. We somehow have to talk around this, like it would be too crude, or too demanding, to broach the subject. To act as though any woman could like any person with a good personality. If a straight man's wife made the equivalent announcement, it would be simple: he's into women, not men, and unless he discovers a bi side, or is content with a companionate/appearances-sake marriage, game over. Women, though, we assume, never desired their partners, or anyone for that matter, in the first place, so no big deal - oh, other than the deception - if a husband becomes a wife.
UPDATE
In the comments, Jacob expresses a certain degree of Prudie-phobia. In deference to that stance, a similarly-themed debate in the Guardian. "Is there a gay gene?" A lesbian argues that there is not, a gay man that there is. This from the yes-there-is:
Maybe it's different for women. I've met lesbians who say that their sexuality is a choice – a political rejection of heterosexual norms. I've yet to meet a gay man who put his politics before his penis. For them, gay desire came first. Gay politics came later – if at all.To which I must respond articulately: meh. Some of dude's "earliest memories are of crushes on other boys"? Well, remove that "other" and heterosexual women can, I suspect, say the same. (Just because gay kids may pretend to have crushes on opposite-sex classmates, doesn't mean all crushes are feigned for social approval. Just ask anyone straight who had crushes on opposite-sex but for whatever reason - geeky, etc. - socially-unacceptable classmates.) While there are no doubt more girls/women than boys/men declaring homosexuality or bisexuality for political reasons (although contrary to dude, I have heard claims of bisexuality from what I believe may have been straight men trying to seem interesting/progressive), do these women, you know, live their lives, or any significant portion of their lives, as lesbians?
On the one hand, it's nice for women that there's less pressure to be 100% straight. On the other, we seem convinced as a society that female heterosexuality - something experienced, I also suspect, very much like male homosexuality - doesn't exist. Women want boyfriends, husbands, children, but not, shudder, men. When it's like, no, straight women are socialized to present their interest in men in this framework.
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