Where are all the middle aged women who should be transitioning

What do you mean, @Needmoresleep? You see a link between menopause and gender?

Its called the menopause?

Are they writing or youtubing about their experiences, @aramox1? I'd be interested to hear their voices, and they are one of the groups who are unusually hard to find.

Middle aged and old women are not allowed to 'identify' as anything other than middle aged/old women. Their husbands would kick them out and their teens would say they were 'taking the piss' (but if anyone their own age identifies as anything else that is immediately embraced and applauded, no questions asked).

I know quite a lot of transmen over 40. Maybe you aren't moving in the right circles.

I've got a friend who transitioned in her 40s, she'd seemed quite happy with being a butch lesbian, though she had a history of sexual assault and poor mental health.

I would have thought one of the the main reasons though is the lower rate of paraphilias in women.

I think because it’s acceptable in society for women to present as masculine and wear male clothing, take up male hobbies, etc. But it’s not acceptable for men to present as feminine and wear female clothing and take up female hobbies, unless they transition. Just consider how people would treat a woman in trousers vs how they’d treat a man in a dress.

In the same Kathleen Stock piece I linked to above, she says she would definitely have been attracted to defining herself as non-binary when she was younger had that phrase been available to her. She says, and I completely agree, that many women (and men) are/were uncomfortable with the stereotypes of femininity (and masculinity respectively).

In terms of middle aged women not bothering transitioning, even though they might like to, is there something around the fact that they can become quite invisible/dress very 'masculine' and so just kind of fade into the back ground a bit without making a song and dance about it.

A lot of youngsters seem to adopt these identities for attention, dare I say?

A good friend of mine , early 50's, says she would have transitioned had she been younger and it had been more socially acceptable. She's quite jealous of younger people who are transitioning but would never do it now; she has developed autoimmune health conditions that make it inadvisable and she has stopped seeing herself as a sexual person (this was always an area of difficulty for her because of her body.)

She's struggled with relationships her whole life as she doesn't feel right in her body - doesn't want to have the anatomy that she does, doesn't want other people to relate sexually to the anatomy she has. She feels this would have been different had some of the possibilities now been options for her 30 years ago.

But now she frankly feels like that ship has sailed. She also can't be arsed with the hassle of social transtion - she has Dr. as a prefix and a unisex first name so that is enough for her.

I think the question is more why the explosion in number of girls and young women rather than why the absence of middle aged women.

And this is very much being talked about. Kathleen Stock mentions it in the talk here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4456128-k-stock-on-bbc-world-service

Also, good info here

www.statsforgender.org/females/

I think it's a very interesting question OP. Particularly when you consider the effects of the menopause. Surely if there were a host of middle aged women who came of age in the 80s and have always been trans but not (for many reasons) come out as such, then surely now would be the time that they would all become visible. There's more discussion about all things trans than ever before and as they go through the menopause these women will be experiencing a natural reduction in the female hormones and finding it harder to keep up an appearance that society tells us is 'feminine'.

Because by the time you hit middle age you've been hit by every stupid label in the book and you've realised how pointless /damaging most of them are.

Maybe they are but transitioning but just 'get on with it' without needing to broadcast it on social media? Or maybe it's that women have caring responsibilities and/or careers and just don't have the time.

He'll - I haven't had the time to brush my hair today, let alone sit and navel gaze over whether my inner gender matches the sex that I was born as or whatever it is . Someone's got to get the hoovering done, the online shop ordered, the professional job prepped for and the children's dentist appointments sorted.

I worry a lot about this need to have a label and to put it all over social media.

Perhaps we should be talking less about 'trans' in general, and more about the manifest differences between the groups of people who are claiming transgender status.

Agree, @DonkeySkin.

The motivations and behaviour and consequences of their individual choice on other members of society's rights are very different between the two groups.

My partner is transitioning, he is 31 and was a 'boyish' lesbian as a teen. He hates standing out and would never make a big fuss, he is just quietly getting on with living as the guy he always felt he is.

I also have a teen daughter, it seems amongst her friendship group there are very few "cis-het" teens, it's almost abnormal to not have some kind of minority label. They all use They Them pronouns and it seems just the latest cool thing to be or do. They are 14 years old and declaring themselves Trans, Non-Binary, Asexual, Aromantic, Polyamorous ..... the list goes on - half the stuff I never even heard of, it's just this generations way of rebelling it seems.

This is a highly pertinent question, OP, because it goes to the heart of what 'trans' is, and points to the reality that 'trans' is a political label rather than a coherent psychological phenomenon that manifests in the same ways across age and sex categories.

In other words, the label 'trans' is being used as a catch-all for what are in fact very different etiologies among distinct populations that have little in common beyond the political goal of wishing to see 'gender identity' triumph over sex.

It is glaringly obvious that all those middle-aged heterosexual men who come out as trans after years of marriage and fathering children have few counterparts among women. Meanwhile, the exploding 'trans man' population is mostly under 25, with teens massively overrepresented in this already youthful cohort.

And yet, this goes unnoticed and unremarked by almost everybody. GC feminists themselves almost never bring it up during media appearances or articles. It is a phenomenon that is truly hiding in plain sight.

Perhaps we should be talking less about 'trans' in general, and more about the manifest differences between the groups of people who are claiming transgender status.

In the lesbian circles I know of, there have been a sizeable number or transitioners, of varying degrees - butch women adopting they/them pronouns, butch women having breasts removed, butch women taking testosterone microdoses, butch women declaring themselves to be trans men. All still same-sex attracted. I know of no straight middle aged feminine presenting straight women who have come out as trans gay men. Almost like it’s a completely different phenomenon to that happening in older men. Much more aligned to what is happening for young women - avoidance of critical male gaze, internalised homophobia, issues with body image.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a3188264-Am-I-alone-in-wondering-where-the-WOMEN-wanting-to-trans-are?msgid=76252354#76252354

From 2018!

Excellent question OP.

We're friends with a couple of middle aged lesbians and went to their wedding, got to know their friends a little bit, seemed like a real community. But nowhere near close enough to ask them their opinion on personal questions like this.

There was a thread about this a few years ago - I've had a quick search but haven't found it yet

IIRC we discussed about caring responsibilities of middle aged women to both children and elderly parents which meant there was less self obsession and that in middle aged men certain fetishes come to the fore (can't name or I'll be deleted) after they have used their male privilege to progress in careers. I seem to remember Stephen Whittle had something to say about it, too.

Added to that was the increase in porn accessibility causing girls to be objectified as their bodies start to mature now, much worse than when I was a teenager last century, leading to girls wanting to remove themselves from that culture.

But yes, given the huge rise in girls wanting to opt out of womanhood now, you'd think - seeing as we're always told how trans people have always been in our communities in large numbers and that trans visibility and acceptance is growing - that those women who were trans as girls but didn't act on it would do so now.

What I have noticed, though, is an increase in the number of middle aged friends leaving their heterosexual relationships and having same sex relationships. Perhaps that has something to do with the disparity - the young girls who would have grown up to be lesbian or bisexual are transing that away instead of embracing it as adults?

@Lubeyboobyalt you have the floor. Explain to the OP why it’s the case - I mean surely you would relish the opportunity to put all us terrible women in our “manufactured echo chamber” in our place right?