Where are all the middle aged women who should be transitioning

No it's not. What a silly thing to say.

Yes it is.What a homophobic thing to say!

So where are all the middle aged men who should be transitioning (according to the logic of this thread).

Trans people, for the most part, don’t seem to want to have sexual relationships with me

Dear me, tell us you know nothing about trans people without telling us you know nothing about trans people.

Some trans men identify as gay men..
That is very homophobic of them, gay men are same sex attracted and to conflate sex and gender is denying gay men's right to be homosexual.

Some trans men identify as gay men.. or have an interest in gay male identity. I'm not sure how successfully though.

@Livelifeinthebuslane

I'm sorry to hear you went through this. (Hopefully not too outing for me) but the older of my 2 friends, the one who transitioned 10 years ago sounds similar. Very recently I've reconnected and spent some time with her ex from that time (they were a long term couple) and I had to reassess my behaviour back then. Everyone pretty much 'sided' with the trans man and didn't support his female partner who felt forced to leave. It actually was pretty similar to the trans widow threads on here to be honest. She'd barely been able to talk to anyone about it as all her gay friends didn't seem supportive. None of us were even aware we were doing it. Not that we weren't surprised our other friend was transing... it came from pretty leftfield and there was literally no warning. My friend said she'd had zero indication her ex was wanting to be trans either and by that point they'd been together 10 years! So yes the conclusion from her was that it was partially mental health driven and partially social contagion. Also despite being a lesbian by that point for at least 20 years...he (she) was not overly comfortable with the identity for a number of reasons. Some of them body image ones but not 'wrong body' ones.
I guess it must feel pretty similar though to a man whose wife goes off with another woman (also not that unusual in mid life -I've known several). I expect that's a situation that's incredibly difficult to reconcile and one that is impossible to discuss in public without people either siding with your ex wife or making fun... I'm not a man though so only speculate.

@OnlyTheTitosaurusOfTheIceberg yes because it would seem to be a middle aged transman you need to first be a lesbian. I'm not convinced there are any transmen who aren't lesbians tbh even if just closeted ones. I'm not sure if all of the teen girls are.. but prob also a high percentage.
Interesting I also think a lot of lgbt in general are neurodiverse. But will be flamed for that!

Trans people, for the most part, don’t seem to want to have sexual relationships with men.

Thanks for sharing that article SapphosRock - it sounds a bit like my ex-girlfriend who transitioned, it was a sudden "recognition" after a specific event after being a lesbian until her 40s. Our friendship broke down, I reflect on this fairly often - the way in which James describes that relationships are "destabilised" and almost expresses surprise that romantic relationships may break down feels like a bit of a blind spot. My ex now probably thinks I'm transphobic - there's plenty of stuff on their social media about TERFs and transphobes (before I was unfriended) but it is not me that has changed, my views have been consistent for the past 30 years since I read Janice Raymond's book, and those were my ex's views too - it is my ex that changed. I don't think anyone can radically change and expect things to be the same. Yes it's tough on trans people, but I don't think it's fair of people like my ex to expect everyone else to jump into line and change our beliefs just because we are or were their friends, I did try to reevaluate, but I just can't believe that people can change sex.

I agree with Barley, male office workers, teachers, lecturers, bank managers, shop workers did not routinely have long hair. It might have been collar length and longer than is the norm , but the rosy- tinted glasses are on full strength to insist it was common place.

This may be a class thing, there were lots of my contemporaries that had long hair in the late 70s / early 80s, but they were mainly boys / men who went into manual trades. It was part of the hard rock / old style RnB / motorbike scene and we called them greasers or grebos.

I agree with @Epiphanies I am hopeful that out of this time will come a proper breaking down of gender stereotypes once some of the mania dies down a bit!

My oldest (13) identifies as NB now and it's interesting looking at their mindset. They have said they have never felt a gender, a while I am supporting how they ID I have explained my belief that no one feels a gender - in fact 'feeling something' about it is probably a sign something doesn't line up and not feeling it is normal. And I also emphasise that they don't have to decide anything now; they have wondered about their sexuality (only attracted to girls at the moment) and again I have said they are probably not really 'sexual' yet, so there's not necessarily a thing to be concerned about or label now. I don't think kids are 'confused' by current rhetoric, but they are rather overthinking it! Again have told oldest that they are of the first generation going through adolescence with everything being so examined through the lens of gender and identity, and a lot of what they are experiencing is normal adolescence, just being looked at in that way.

So obviously, older women are not experiencing that!

So many transidentifying girls are lesbians. So many transidentifying men are straight (but like to think of themselves as lesbians). These two observations alone should make people stop and think very hard.

I was a teenager in the 80s in a northern working class part of the country, and while it’s true that girls/women wearing jeans or trousers out of school or work was uncontroversial, otherwise my local town was fairly gender-conforming. My mum had to wear skirts for work (building society), my school uniform in middle and high school skirts only until Sixth Form, and while we might have loved the music of Culture Club and the New Romantics, any boy/man turning up in a dress or eyeliner IRL would have been a figure of fun at best, a victim of homophobic violence at worst. Queer-bashing was still very much a thing; older adults professed horror at Boy George and Marilyn on TV.

It was better/easier for girls to be gender non-conforming though, with much less prevalence of pink and sparkles in either toys or clothes. In the 70s and early 80s I played with Tiny Tears and Sindy and Girls World and also Lego and a toy garage and a train set. And we’ve gone markedly backwards in how many ‘acceptable’ ways large swathes of society considers there to be a girl, without much progress in widening the bandwidth of what it means to be a man/boy. And here we are staring down the barrel of regressive gender stereotypes and homophobia once more.

Notwithstanding all that though, the existence of some middle-aged lesbians becoming transmen in Brighton does not answer the question of where are all the heterosexual women transitioning in middle age and now identifying as gay men?

I have asked this question many times, never received an answer.

I do wonder if declining testosterone levels in middle aged men prompts them into thinking they are less manly than before and therefore women (aside from the paraphillia element which has to account for most of it).

In addition to reasons above, male privilege makes it easier for men to transition (I am doing this and screw you if you don’t like it), women have much less freedom.
Somewhat opposite is the fact that women (more so older) can dress and wear their hair as they wish, men cannot so take more extreme measures.

The vast majority of single sex schools have been grammars and church schools, though there have always been some comprehensives - that’s what you’re missing. Different areas of the country have very different state school systems to each other, even today.

This is a really interesting thread.

Article written by a late FTM transitioner which answers some questions:

www.trans.cafe/posts/2016/7/11/i-transitioned-at-54-here-are-the-lessons-i-learned

“ I would put money on there never having been single sex state schools in Aberdeen or Inverness, don't know about the other cities, beyond husband was at a co-ed state school in Glasgow.”

Sorry I don’t know how to quote so I don’t know who said this, but my mum attended Aberdeen High school for Girls, a state school.

Also to those who think 90s culture was filled with misogyny, i rewatched a lot of 90s films during lockdown and was surprised to see just how many strong female leads there were. I for one am VERY glad I grew up then (also appreciated my single sex school), and not now.

With reference to women and trousers. My mother came from a small town, during WWII a factory was built making war stuff, suddenly young women went from shop/domestic work to working in this factory and making great money and they wore trousers. Apparently this was because the stairs were open metal stairs so it was considered appropriate for them to wear trousers.

At the same time a middle aged man in the town took to wearing dresses. When he was challenged about it his reply was, "If women can wear trousers then I can wear a dress." Apparently that was accepted and he got little if any hassle about it.

I used to find it quite funny when my mother talked about how things changed in those years.

@DoubleTweenQueen yes now that would be a step in the right direction!
The bloody kilt my DD has is 3x the price of a pair of black Asda trousers for boys. The majority of girls wear the skirt because similar to the 80/90s, they still roll them up! (And kilts are in fashion at the moment in style of 90s Alicia Silverstone).

Probably doesn't explain it all but I think it does explain some of it.

Some bits of getting old aren't great but some of it is quite liberating.

@Epiphanies I think it would be awesome if schools introduced a kilt option for boys uniform.