Where are all the middle aged women who should be transitioning

[IcakethereforeIam]

I'm new here, I'm sorry if this has been covered or if I've got the wrong end of the stick.

I don't understand the apparent lack of curiosity in some quarters at the massive increase in girls wanting to transition. I went to school in the 80s, while my friends and I knew vaguely about sex change it was not something we thought about applying to ourselves. Perhaps we just kept it inside.

Advocates for allowing children to transition (affirmation only? ), think they don't grow out of the desire. Others say over 80% desist (watchful waiting?). I believe the first cohort believe the uptick is down to an increase in awareness of the possibility of treatment. Surely, if that is correct, there should be hundreds or thousands of closeted women around my age wanting to change their sex. Where are they? Has anyone looked for them?

If they aren't there, then why the disconnect.

I'm dubious that will happen.

Often seems to be useful to marry a woman, have children, climb ladder in finance, army, IT, film industry, media, legal field, journalism etc.

THEN feel it's time to be true to themselves.

Well I'm sure not all at all. But strangely, that's usually the situation with those who are in public eye, v vocal, and get airtime.

Almost as if there was something going on, somehow, to mean that group v much column inches etc, and seen as people to listen to.

No idea what it is about them in particular that means more attention.

I think it's great btw that people like those I just mentioned, are so accepted, that they are able to really live their lives openly.

Great high profile inspirational examples of transgender reality. Some have fluid genders. Visibility so important for others who are gender fluid.

Eg

Girl mode, boy mode.
So what? No big deal.
Important to be true to yourself. No set rules.
It's just a lucky coincidence that boy mode days are frequent when performing a male acting role, visiting a country where women are obscenely oppressed for charity.

Similarly, when big top exec in international financial company.
I don't know but I'd imagine that boy mode feeling when get up. By sheer luck, often occurs when meetings with clients/execs from countries with a more 'traditional' outlook.

Winning women in business awards presumably for successes while in girl mode. Humbling really.

Pips being a T-Girl must also be rewarding for them. Although Google seems not to be celebrating that any more. Shame.

The school uniform 'rules' have always varied between schools. If I thought the rules at my single-sex former grammar high school were ubiquitous everywhere I would be wrong (1980's + trousers part of uniform) or the previous one - huge co-ed in an unfashionable part of East Yorkshire. Actually an amazing school with extremely relaxed uniform code (and yes, trousers allowed for both sexes).
Saying otherwise just reflects a more narrow personal perspective, not a universal truth.

I'm not sure why it is even relevant....but single sex schools went out of fashion in the 80s. But still remain for many church and grammer schools and also private. But from my limited knowledge it would seen this happened largely because evidence points to single sex schools for boys in state sector giving worst outcomes and is linked to data stats (as it happens those stats can be misleading). Weve several state boys schools in the wider area and they've recently gone co-ed because of falling registrations... the girls schools haven't because they're still hugely popular with parents and get very good results. Culturally some parents want their girls to be in a girls school.
But I don't see what that has to do with that. I return to my personal microcosm of skewed data and I went to a traditional mixed school with rules on clothing. No trousers but that was the norm. Girls wore skirts to school in the 80s... but the uniforms were a lot more lack than now. In 70s strict uniform wasn't a thing at all. Everyone in my area had an assortment of items vaguely in the right.colour. secondary school a bit stricter. But not like now. We could wear doc martens and have put tie how we liked, skirt whatever length stand no blazer. My school was a bit sh*t though to be fair. Anyway what the hell as that got to do with trans or lgbt! Everywhere was homophobic. I didn't even know gay people existed until age 13ish and then only as a slur. Your average 6 year old knows that now. Although occasionally my younger DC who is a young teen (and lives in Brighton FFS!) get asked how can she have 2 mums?! But the parents of said child are usually proper bigots so that's why.

Marilyn bit George's head off the other day - not sure they're speaking

Women wearing trousers has never been controversial in my lifetime

No, this bit is ridiculous but i do agree with other posters that it wasn’t easy to come out as gay

I know one lad that did when we were in college and another that didn’t til he was in his late 20’s

Its still not easy for some now, a friend rang me in tears the other day because their child had come out as gay and there was a massive fallout in the family. The young adult knew the feelings of some in their family and i think it took a lot of bravery

Oops missed barleys school comment re trousers

Even that still happens in some schools….still wouldn’t say it makes women wearing trousers’ controversial, just some very stupid schools around

Women wearing trousers has not been controversial since the 30s and maybe earlier for women in some areas of life... but yes some offices etc had dress codes that forbid trousers even as recently as 1999 but certainly in the 80s it would be common to have a dress code that included skirt/tights/court shoes. Morrisons supermarket had this code in 1990. Trousers were not part of womens uniform and there was a weird hat too.
There were some high profile court cases which gradually rolled rules like this away. And I'm no legal expert but also our links to European employment law. Its a similar reason why smoking got banned.

This is why I really struggle with school uniforms really strict rules. But saying that my dc go to a school with strict rules and while they think tie length and blazers on in corridors is a bit daft..they quite like the uniform (I think why?!? Rules like that went out of workplaces at least 10 years ago!)
This is completely irrelevant to this debate. There is zero correlation to school uniform/co ed. There is a link to schools which have had a 'trans training programme' in, and how many trans kids there are. Trans orgs would say its because children then felt confident to 'come out'.

I don't think that.

@barleybadminton

In the 80s and 90s makeup and dressing up were for older people - not teenagers - and you only dressed up in “feminine” clothes occasionally - the rest of the time you wore jeans and grungy checked shirts or tops. There were many more single sex schools (most in the U.K. state sector went co-ed around 2010).

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.

The 80s and 90s were the age of Rambo, Madonna dancing round in a leotard, shoulder pads, big hair, conspicuous consumption and then lad's mags and girl power into the 90s. And casual sexual harassment, page 3 on workplace walls, queer bashing and section 28. Action films were full of butch men rescuing pretty helpless women and the city centres were full of lairy casual blokes and young women in stillettos and miniskirts dancing round handbags. Perhaps it wasn't like that in your social circle, but let's not rewrite history - being visibly gay or gender nonconforming was incredibly dangerous back then, far more than now and things are still a long long way from ideal. Even boys having long hair and girls wearing trousers was controversial in the 80s, its little wonder trans kids felt unable to come out. There were 1500 kids at my upper school and not one came out as LGBT because it wasn't safe to do so, homophobic bullying was rampant, and not just from the kids but teachers and other adults as well.

I don’t recognise that at all, going to an all-girls state school, and then uni in 80’s/90’s with a very much mixed bag of different presentation and sexuality (boys & girls) Very few girls, me included, ‘presented’ in a stereotypically ‘feminine’ way - I’m talking long glossy hair, bit of makeup, affected behaviour. That was the exception, and thought of as a bit odd. We were all comfortable with our short-mid length hair, bit of mousse, TCP the beauty-product to have, being fairly plain etc. Dressing up was for special occasions.

And the era of Stonewall’s heyday (now long past), and AIDS. TQ+ is trying to re-write and constrain history. Time to ditch it.

What’s the evidence for Trans-kids, barley?

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

@HeatonGrove

I am a middle aged woman with short hair, no make up and I wear trousers pretty much all the time. Gender ideology suggests I have transitioned. I just never noticed.

I actually feel desperately sorry for girls/younger women today who feel that if they do not conform to exaggerated norms of femininity (big hair on your head, no hair on body, big lips, painted nails, hour glass shape figure,skimpy clothes etc.) they can no longer consider themselves female so decide to transition.

I do think women have lots of expectations about how they should look, specifically young women. As you get older it changes, no one gives a damn that I no longer shave my legs, wear make up, have short hair, wear trousers don't think I've worn a dress for nearly 3 years and I remember that because it was a wedding I bought an outfit for. I don't think men have the same opportunity to "do their own thing" as suddenly wearing high heels and dresses is much more of an issue for them than me wearing trousers is for me.

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.

@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).

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.

“ 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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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

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?

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 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!

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.

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.

@Phobiaphobic

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.

This is interesting, isn’t it? What do you think is at play?

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