Where are all the middle aged women who should be transitioning

That wasn't short sorry!

In short.

We've got to grips with getting through life as a woman in a male dominated society.

We've grown up. We are expected to 'get on with it' no matter what.

We've experienced sexism, gynae issues, pregnancy, childbirth, discrimination, Street harrassment, coercion from partners, sexual assault, got out of Dodge when dodgy man radar gone off.
All sorts of things, not all, not as bad, whatever. Things because we're girls/women.

Been there done that come out the other side.

Get on with life. Responsibilities. Priorities. Pragmatism. Hardened maybe, inside. To the shit life throws at us. Not all because female. But plenty because.

Opt out now?

Why would i want to be a man, after all that I have learned? When I'm finally mainly invisible to them and it's lovely?

Middle aged + women are fucking AWESOME.

(That's part of the reason so many men feel threatened by us 🙂)

I'd go with simply.

Did all our who am I where do I fit stuff when puberty > teenager> late teens early 20s as is usual.
Often by way of. Being part of a tribe indicated by in my era clothing.
Listening to angsty music. No one understands me!
The usual stuff. Then out the other side behold through that v intense part of life.

Learned about male gaze from when boobs started growing. Got through the horrible bit when you change from child in public view. To sexual object for too many men. The detached assessment of body, the leers, the stares. Horrible and a big unwanted change.
Yep that's s thing. Learned to ignore it.
And then boys coercion, getting more aware of double standard for things seen as sex related. That we're at risk just sort of by being alive and female. Etc.

Yep lot of shit.

Then we just sort of get on with it.

Middle aged? Seen all the stuff. Most women have babies raise kids all that goes with it. Have handled enormous amounts bad behaviour men.

We just get on with it.

Unless dysphoric, thinking about it. I can't relate to wanting to live and be seen as a man.

Why?

Well. Because I can do the things they can do. I can dress as I like. I don't get hassled judged like did when younger. I have no desire to hang out with men, I was often accepted as 'honorary bloke' and I have heard plenty.

I don't want to learn a new walk, get to grips with toilet etiquette. Act as uncomfy man would when nasty shit about women girls etc chat.

No thanks.

It’s interesting that parallels are always drawn by gender ideologists between gay and being trans - yet despite the fact that being gay is much less stigmatised today than twenty, thirty or fifty years ago, there haven’t actually been massive increases in the estimated proportion of the population who are gay. Yet it’s a routine claim that the massive increases in FTM in particular are because of decreased stigma. This doesn’t make much sense - if it’s just down to less stigma then yes, where are all the middle aged transmen? (And a few anecdotal ones ad demonstrated on this thread isn’t evidence of massive numbers, either.)

One thing I never get is why young gender nonconforming girls feel that they (a) have anything in common with the middle aged MTF transitioners, especially the vocal ones who are public representatives of the trans issue, and (b) are happy to think of themselves as similar to these middle aged male transitioners and happy to see their identities represented by them. When I was a fourteen year old lesbian/bisexual girl there was no-one I felt more alienated from or angered by than middle aged white men. I would have baulked at any of them claiming to represent me in any way, even the gay ones.

So why do teenage girls seem to fall in line behind them as a common cause when it’s clear they are groups right very little in common? I think as well as all the obvious social contagion stuff, porn culture etc., there’s something very odd there going on around the collapse of youth feminism, and a desire for some kind of male approval in very strange forms that we possibly haven’t yet got to the bottom of.

I hear my students talking about the “job” of feminism being to “bring men to the table of social justice” and so on; and I cannot help but think of how fucking incredulous and angry my teenage self (who had grown up watching her working class grandmother serve all the men and boys first at dinner in order of seniority before any woman or girl got a meal) would have been at the thought that any woman’s job is to “bring men to the table”.

Why aren’t these girls more angry at middle aged men? Why as soon as middle aged men put on a dress are they revered as gender social warriors by teenage girls? There’s something there about wanting to forgive the oppressor in some way that’s deeply unsettling.

Some of them may be employed in the various organizations pushing the narrative because they may appear less threatening to the general public/ children. I bet they are in fact.

Does the increase in teenage FtM run in parallel with a decrease in anorexia and bulimia?

Previously this was high in girls, but I don’t hear about this anymore.

You’d think the unprecedented rise in girls wanting to transition or present as male - without a corresponding explosion in middle aged female transitioners - would result in calls for some kind of pause.

Why are so many girls wanting to take exogenous androgens and have their breasts/uteruses/ovaries removed? What the actual fuck is going on? How much of it is social contagion versus internalised misogyny, neurodivergence or homophobia for girls who are lesbian?

It hurts my heart that no one seems to give a shit, or that at most it engenders a shrug. And comes back to how girls don’t seem to matter that much, certainly not enough to try to work out what’s afflicting them

Stella O'Mally raises this at the NZ conversion therapy consultation. Very interesting. About 9 minutes in.

I think it would interesting to look at the different experiences of heterosexual women who are FTM compared with lesbians just as I think it’s interesting to compare the experiences of straight MTF compared with gay & to understand more about the factors driving transition in the different cohorts

I'd really like to know more about this. I remember Katie Herzog who presents 'blocked and reported' saying she first became aware of the trans issue when a shocking number of lesbians in her social circle began to transition a few years ago. It does seem to be happening, just not hitting the radar in the same way as all the men doing it.

I don't think it quite gets to the spirit of the OP though, which I think refers to the sudden huge upswing in teenage girls transitioning, and the accompanying narrative that they're doing it because for the first time they can, and would have all along if things had been different; which like many here I find an indefensibly unsatisfying explanation.

I am aware of several women, in their 30's and 40's whom I have taken as lesbians adopting different names, either masculine or androgynous and looking slightly different than they used to. They might pass as male but are slighter than men would be.
I think there are a fair number of not young lesbians taking testosterone and transitioning to some degree. I also suspect that they are just quietly getting on with their lives.
In my own circle of friends and acquaintances, I'm not aware of any heterosexual women doing this.

@KohlaParasaurus
Thank you for answering. I am sorry if my questions seemed overly nosey, but I am genuinely interested in your relative’s approach which is the first I’ve heard of its kind apart from the Romanian women I mentioned. In their case though it is easy to see it would be a way out of a form of slavery, where it seems less so in our society. Your relative’s husband sounds very nice.

Sorry - that wasn't clear. She identified as a woman, then NB for about a year, then male.

I've know one - a woman in her thirties married to a man. She started as NB and last I heard had started identifying as man. She'd always been gender non-conforming and not very robust, physically or mentally.

@ScrollingLeaves she has a low, modulated voice with a strong regional accent (like Val McDermid has) and I don't think anyone would say she sounded female unless they were looking for evidence that she was female.

I suspect her decision to transition arose from presenting as male when gaming and as a writer for some years before. I've never asked her about the difference in how she's treated in real life because she doesn't like talking about having been a girl and woman, as if she is in denial that she was ever that person. She is otherwise perfectly sane and no-nonsense.

@aramox1 and @BlueberryCheezecake
Can you say a bit more about these transmen that you know?

Many (most?) of the older male transitioners are heterosexual and married (to women) and many of them also have children (sometimes quite young children). Do the older (40+ when they transitioned) female transitioners that you know also follow this pattern or were they previously lesbians? Do they insist that their husbands accept that they are now gay?

It's interesting that you both talk about the 'circles' that people move in. Many people here personally know children or young women who identify as trans as well as males of all ages. There's no need to move in particular 'circles' to come across a child who identifies as trans or non binary, who might be your own child or a friend of your child. No need to move in particular circles to come across a young woman who identifies as trans or nb. No need to move in particular circles to go into work one Monday morning to find that your colleague Dave has decided he's Davina and wants to use the ladies loo from now on. It's just the older women who are missing.

I know at least three trans men who transitioned in their 30s/40s and follow a number of others on twitter. I'm not sure exactly how/where would you expect them to be visible if you're not personally moving in circles where there are lots of trans people. But just because you personally don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist, and I'm not sure why you'd assume that's the case.

“KohlaParasaurus

I have an extended family member who announced that she was transitioning FtM in her late forties. Social transition only, no hormones or surgery (because she is intelligent enough not to play fast and loose with her health), just a masculinised version of her name and a tidy masculine haircut and clothing. She does an ordinary public facing job, doesn't make an issue of being transgender, and passes quite well. She was (is!) a straight woman and remains married to her husband. There are no children or other care responsibilities.

She has rewritten history with regard to her childhood. Her own generation (mine) and the generation after, with no personal investment in her identity, have all said, "You are who you are and we accept your narrative." Her octogenarian parents can't get their heads round being accused of failing to notice in the 1970s that their cheerful little girl was actually a miserable, suicidal little boy. They will probably die with that injustice hanging over them.“

That is interesting KholaParasaurus. If she remained married to her husband, does not take hormones and did not have surgery is the main difference to her simply being treated as a man by wider society?

What about her voice? Has she learnt to lower it?

Does she ever talk about how different that treatment of her, as a man by society around her, is to how it was when she lived as a woman?

That seems quite a simple approach that many woman might sympathise with in a general way.

Many years ago I read an article about some unmarried women in Romania (I think) who dressed and looked like men so they would be left alone and allowed to get on with life as farmers. It seemed to a good way out of what would not have been a good deal in life for them as women.

It goes back to the male gaze.
Every single fucking time.

I wear trousers, barely bother with lipstick and I am due to get my hair cropped short this week. I could say I am presenting as non-binary or a gay transman under Stonewall's definitions. Yet, no one will bat an eyelid because to be masculine is not an insult. To do the same as a man (long hair, skirt, makeup etc.) will immediately be noticed and clocked as "different".

With a female it's about fuckability. Over 40, you are either a harpy, a MILF or invisible (support human). With men, it's the defence of masculinity (or not). Over 40 for a man and you are either an alpha, boss or support human.

I am being crude here, but it's roughly in line with the hyper-sexualised porn culture we have going on. Most transmen are unlikely to be seen as a) it's not stunning and brave and b) they are female and sick to the back teeth of labels.

“Needmoresleep

Its called the menopause?”

“vivariumvivariumsvivaria

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

Could @Needmoresleep mean the menopause making women feel relatively neutral and genderless?

Maybe for some menu their drop in testosterone in middle age makes them confused about their gender. Maybe they ‘feel’ what they assume is femininity compared to what they were used to. (Less driven, assertive, dominant, less muscular, weaker physically.)

I have an extended family member who announced that she was transitioning FtM in her late forties. Social transition only, no hormones or surgery (because she is intelligent enough not to play fast and loose with her health), just a masculinised version of her name and a tidy masculine haircut and clothing. She does an ordinary public facing job, doesn't make an issue of being transgender, and passes quite well. She was (is!) a straight woman and remains married to her husband. There are no children or other care responsibilities.

She has rewritten history with regard to her childhood. Her own generation (mine) and the generation after, with no personal investment in her identity, have all said, "You are who you are and we accept your narrative." Her octogenarian parents can't get their heads round being accused of failing to notice in the 1970s that their cheerful little girl was actually a miserable, suicidal little boy. They will probably die with that injustice hanging over them.

No. Nothibg about gender. The menopause is as a result of significant hormonal changes, including a loss of oestrogen. Presumably part of the treatment if one wanted to transition. Transmen effectively go through early menopause (with added T). Just throwing it out there as a possible reason middle aged women feel less interest in transitioning. (And perhaps why teenagers going through puberty feel more.)

Pre-pandemic, I chatted with a psychiatrist who did screening referrals for an adult gender clinic. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of middle-aged/late transitioning men are heterosexual, I asked them how many heterosexual middle-aged women they had seen over the years.

One.

And even that one felt they might be bi.

While the psychiatrist didn't know why this disparity between the sexes existed, he did wonder how many heterosexual men would be happy to describe themselves as now being in a gay male relationship with a transitioned partner - and he felt that transition was likely to be a feature only of male rather than female heterosexuality...