Where are all the middle aged women who should be transitioning

As a fifty plus women who has become invisible over the last few years (except when it comes to caring for elderly relatives) I’m very tempted to transition. Will I be noticed more, will my menopause go, will I get promoted and equal pay? Sounds promising.

Men with long hair in offices or customer facing roles didn't exist outside of nightclubs and record shops.

Also just…not true in the slightest!

That’s a very bizarre fallacy. All the girls at our local secondary school nearby wear trousers to school. Does this mean that the girls are living in a brave new non sexist world? If anything the culture they live in is more sexist in many ways than in the 80s and 90s. Did you grow up putting fake eyelashes on and waxing your pubic hair off? Or wearing bodycon outfits to copy the Kardashians? Or being shown hardcore porn with tiny young girls being choked by “built” men with shaved heads and tattoos as if this is what is expected from sex?

' It suggests theres a lot of trans kids out there still closeted, no doubt frightened and not getting any support.'

DD girls school. Her group of about 7 girls. ALL have trans IDs (and some have sexuality descriptions outside the 'old' LGB terms).

Most have adopted male or unisex names and pronouns other than she/her within their group. One has changed name at school to one that's more usual girls in full but with shortening considered male.

And so what? Hostility? Scared? Come off it.

What WAS scary was when DD showed me a watsapp from a friend forwarded saying on this date transphobes are going to take to the street and murder trans kids.

WTF? Obv had chat with DD about well obviously ridiculous. Her friend had said it was terrifying.

So who is causing fear for children with trans IDs? Their MUMS???? Or could it be those who constantly push the idea they are hated, in danger, pretty much certain to be suicidal, that their parents will do so sorts of awful things if they tell them?

Fucking hell.

Do you think you're being clever? Does it make you feel good? To call that PRIVILEGE?

Yes, it is (straight) privilege not to have to worry about being beaten up because someone thinks you're gay or you showed affection for your partner in public. That has no bearing on the horrific violence that women, including trans women, also face from men. Are you denying straight people possess privilege compared to LGB people?

@foxgoosefinch

Haven't looked at this in details but it seems to show almost 90% of comprehensive schools were co-ed by 1977: sesc.hist.cam.ac.uk/2018/05/29/counting-co-education/

Historically there were more trans women who presented for treatment than trans men. Why that is is really unknown,

It’s not “unknown” as such. Since early sexologists like Krafft-Ebing and Havock Ellis invented “inversion theory”, there have been many theories around gender “inversion” - which was until relatively late in the century about homosexuality rather than the current construction of “transgender”, which is very historically recent, and has only taken on its current shape within the last 25 years. Before then, most psychologists postulated that “transsexualism” (as it was constructed between the decline of inversion theory and the invention of “Transgenderism”) was a form of fetish paraphilia - and more common in men because men’s psychosexual development was theorised to be more prone to developing fetish or paraphiliac tendencies.

Come on, you’re talking rubbish here. Of course it’s true. I went to school in a region of the north west where nearly every school in the entire county - including all the private schools and the vast majority of state schools - was single sex.

It's too late to look up stats and I'm sure the majority of private schools back then might have been single sex but comps weren't, I don't know anyone who went to a single sex comprehensive school, certainly no-one in my family or any of my friends.

As for boys with long hair and girls wearing trousers being dangerous in the 80s - are you kidding me?!

Yes, trousers were banned for girls in my schools and boys were only allowed long hair if it was in a ponytail. It was certainly an impact on whether a boy would be able to get a job or not. Men with long hair in offices or customer facing roles didn't exist outside of nightclubs and record shops. And the boys at my school with long hair regulaly got beaten up and the various subcultures - goths, punks, heavy metal people, were pretty much confined to two bars and one club on the edge of the city centre and would get beaten up if they walked through town alone on a Saturday night - as would visibly gay men or lesbians. Rose tinted specs are great but it's not how things were.

Sorry still catching up.

Barley

This is an utterly crass, and presumably deliberate thing to say to a bunch of women.

You KNOW the constant threat of violence women and girls are pushed to internalise day in day out. You KNOW the levels of street harrassment, intimidation, coercion, grooming, sexual assault, sexual harrassment, aggression, violence and rape that women experience, and often starting as soon as breasts start growing.

You know the recent press about sexual harrassment, sexualised insults, sexual assault and rape in schools. Vastly boys doing to girls. And that there's STILL a brush under carpet attitude. You KNOW the recent news had a period of murder after murder in the most appalling circs.

Do you think you're being clever? Does it make you feel good? To call that PRIVILEGE?

Or do all those things just not matter at all to you. And telling women (and girls) that they have NO clue what it feels like to be targeted and hurt just because of who they are. Is just a throw away, zero thought given, obvious fact to you?

Nice one. Definitely a comment to show that you care about oppression, discrimination and prejudice for sure.

'Of course I suspect you've never had to worry about someone kicking your head in becase they decided you were a 'fag' and don't know many LGBT people so perhaps it's something you are unaware of. That's called privilege.'

No, I said that there were at least comparable rates of those who transitioned earlier with the number of kids referred for treatment by GIDS today, and that even back then those assigned female at birth tended to transition earlier, as they do now though the gap is shrinking fast. And there are, as a poster above points out, many middle aged trans men who are transitioning later in life

At least comparable rates? So you’re saying that if these teenage girls weren’t presenting as children to paediatric gender clinics, then they would just be presenting to adult clinics like they always have?. So you’re saying they’re just being seen 10 years sooner? Why don’t the paediatric gender clinics say that then?

The poster hasn’t said there are “many” the post who lives in Brighton knows 8. Is the rate of presentation of older females transitioning climbing at the same rate as teenage girls? Of course not. Is the rate in adult clinics of presenting females dropping?

I doubt we ever will but what we do know is that the numbers of trans men and trans women are equalising as is the age they present for treatment so the Jane Fae and Caitlynn Jenners (who first began physically transitioning in the 80s incidentally then detransitioned) will soon be as rare as trans men transitioning in middle age.

Suuuure it will…

. I don’t actually see myself as a man though, of course, I know I’m not physically a woman."

At least knew that he was still male.

"At the age of ninety, it has finally been explained to me that I am not really homosexual, I’m transgender. I now accept that. All my life, I have wanted to be part of society without having to alter my daydream, my own reality. When it comes to sex, these days I’m asexual. Nevertheless, I’m now convinced that it has been my view of myself and not my view of men that has been my trouble."

"I no longer see myself as homosexual, though it is a word I have used to describe myself and which others have understandably used to describe me. I don’t actually see myself as a man though, of course, I know I’m not physically a woman."

"I don’t think I ever consciously questioned my sexuality, my identity, my gender, or my daydream. It folded around me rather like the dream of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the last line of which is, “Life that can be cruel, can also be kind.” The dream that meant so much to her finally closed about her. The dream that I am really a woman closed about me entirely. I went through life as though I was a boy in the outer world, but in my head I went on as though I were a woman. This explains why my life has been so strange."

Published in the dreaded Pink News I'm afraid: www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/11/21/quentin-crisp-reflects-on-trans-identity-in-exclusive-final-autobiography/

*replicated not relocated! Typos galore today, sorry!

This just isn't true, there were hardly any single sex state schools in the 80s and 90s, I grew up in a large city and there was just one very small girl's comprehensive school and no boy's school except the local private school.

Come on, you’re talking rubbish here. Of course it’s true. I went to school in a region of the north west where nearly every school in the entire county - including all the private schools and the vast majority of state schools - was single sex. I went to a single sex comp and most of the comprehensives were single sex apart from a handful of co-ed ones, usually the most poorly performing ones. Then I worked partly in university admissions and public policy in HE for a long time in the 2000s, doing school visits and policy work; and this was relocated across large areas of the country. Most started to go co-ed throughout the 2000s as fashions in education policy began to tend that way - often alongside the shift to Academy status. There are in fact some single sex (both state and private) schools still about - more than you’d think - but much less than before. Of the cohort I’ve just seen in the late 2021 university admissions cycle, maybe 10% of applicants were from a single sex school (though these are often grammars). Before around 2010 it was a lot higher, and in fact in the 90s the majority of other girls I was at college with came from single sex girls’ schools.

As for boys with long hair and girls wearing trousers being dangerous in the 80s - are you kidding me?! Most girls in the 70s and 80s and 90s rarely didn’t wear trousers! Everyone under 40 in the entire north west basically wore only dungarees or shell suits for an entire decade. Boys’ hair was long and floppy to varying degrees throughout the 70s-90s - just watch some television from any point in those decades! It was only in the 2000s that buzz cuts on boys and the whole hyper-done up femininity for girls started to make an appearance. I honestly cannot believe you know anything about the twentieth century given you say that. It’s just a bit insane, and completely mad to any of us who lived through those decades, where we barely put a scrap of makeup on for years and lived in jeans and trainers for any occasion.

Crisp wrote several books of essentially memoirs, the most well known being The Naked Civil Servant and How To Become A Virgin. I love them, they're absolutely hilarious and profoundly moving at the same time. None of them deal with transgender issues in any way, as Crisp only realised/announced his transgender status a few months before he died in 1999 at the age of 90.

Google fascinating!

In crisps 90s, he wrote 'i have finally had it explained to me... That I am transgender'.

Thank you barley for that info!

The naked civil servant though I would say is firmly about homosexuality. And it was an incredible film, widely recognised as brilliant, bafta winning etc.

Good question. My 16 year old currently has 4 friends who have changed their names and are identifying as male now. Yet neither dh nor I have any friends in this position that we know of.

Barley, the killer line at the end of the film when he's getting older.

'You cannot touch me now. I am one of the "stately homos of England'

Do you see this film as more to do with gay rights or trans rights?

I admit I haven't read the book. Is it more to do with the QC trans identity?

If you have a group of 1000 lesbians and in 2005 one of them transitioned, and in 2021 10 of them did. That's a big rise. Multiple that by the lesbian population of a 'gay city'. It will appear many. There's at least 10,000 lesbians in Brighton and there's definitely more than 100 trans men.
I can confirm I've never met a transman who wasn't first a lesbian.. unless they're under 30.

I know it’s an unfashionable thing to say, but the three lesbians I knew when I was in my teens / early twenties are all now married to men and have children with their husbands… They would have seized the opportunity to transition as teens if they’d been given the option. And those children would never have existed. I think my (middle aged) generation had a lucky escape from all this.

Just catching up.

Quentin crisp was transgender?

I did not know that.

Btw anyone who hasn't seen the naked civil servant it's an absolutely brilliant film. Just one of those films that stays with you. Hurt amazing. And crisp's comments hold on I'll find one.

Historically there were more trans women who presented for treatment than trans men. Why that is is really unknown, it may be that trans men were able to find solace in the butch community - there was no real equivalent in Europe at least for trans women or feminine men. Or it maybe that those assigned male at birth felt more confident coming out in middle age. Or it could be something else, who knows, I doubt we ever will but what we do know is that the numbers of trans men and trans women are equalising as is the age they present for treatment so the Jane Fae and Caitlynn Jenners (who first began physically transitioning in the 80s incidentally then detransitioned) will soon be as rare as trans men transitioning in middle age.

If kids couldn't come out as either gay or (more pertinently) trans in the 80s and 90s, Barley, how did the transmen manage to skip straight to full-on transition in the hordes you previously suggested?

I grew up in the 1980's too. Gender non-conformity amongst the teens I knew was high. I didn't know very many out gay people. Turned out a very large proportion of my friends were gay, but didn't say so! They're much more open now, but it was a real stigma at the time. But it wasn't a very inclusive world around sexual orientation then. I was at a single sex school for several years and one girl asked out another girl, she was horrified (and really horrible about it) another straight friend was teased throughout high school for being a lesbian - she wasn't.
Society was still quite conservative, as described above. But I don't recognise the comment about non conforming though. Maybe it was different depending on where you lived. Women wearing trousers has never been controversial in my lifetime.