Where are the older trans people?

I think many older people that would have been trans were so repressed that they settled into a life that while not their preference was the most comfortable and now the 60 year old trans man with 2 grandchildren isnt gong to rock the boat.

Also sadly many of them are no longer with us, the national average suicide rate for trans people is around 40%, I dont know about other countries. This statistic is the same, regardless of transition or acceptance status and I think that so many people arent able to reconcile the physical gender with the chemical neurological gender. Part of the blessing of being a homosexual is that we only fight societal pressure where on the other hand trans people struggle with chemical imbalance fighting for control with physical gender, as well as societal pressure.

trans people also weren't even accepted by the gay community even 10 years ago and still arent fully. Many gays and lesbians considered them to be mentally ill, which is appalling. For such a long time it was only gays and lesbian and trans people were totally excluded. I knew a trans man that initial identified as gay, but later came out as trans and was actually shunned by his gay friends. Sadly Tanya is no longer with us.

Hopefully with this new generation we will see being trans as another type of normal.

 

This. Even when i was growing up, going to middle and high school in the early 2000's gays/lesbians were starting to be accepted but i had not even heard of transgender people. All i knew about it was what society at large knew, which was all dumb ignorant shit. My highschool literally had a rule forbidding crossdressing, and i rememeber reading it and thinking why would you want to crossdress. I just didn't understand it and i don't think a lot of people back then did. And go figure now i think i may be somewhere on the transgender spectrum. There just wasn't enough info about it even 10 or 15 years ago for them to really consider it, i think. They probably, as this poster said, reasoned it all away like i did and they settled into acceptable, normal lives. They probably were never feeling 100%, not being totally happy with themselves/their life, not feeling like themselves, or whatever.

I think like this poster said its probably easier for a young teen or twenty something to transition than it is for someone who is older, who already has an established job. a wife/husband and kids, and a life. Plus its costly, and younger people might have less to worry about and save for than a middle aged or old person might - they might need to put their savings into a retirement fund or rainy day fund for if they lose their job instead of costly surgeries. That's not even getting into the reprecussions of coming out with that generation.

 

I've found stories of transgender people of the past generations; most of them went stealth asap. Unhappily the site is in italian language and I didn't save it, but you could try to google something :/

 

In addition to what these people have said, I think it's important to remember that a lot of older trans people may be perfectly happy being trans and not as vocal about it, or they're just as technologically behind as a lot of older people. Younger people are simply more likely to share our stories, especially online where we're more accustomed to sharing potentially personal things. Especially to a relative who may not know anything about trans people besides what's in the news, it may seem like they're very rare when in reality they're just more private or buried under a zillion younger people talking about things all the time.

 

I think @canadawet makes a good point, old people are still old people, trans or not, they are usually boggled by newfangled technology.

 

I know several trans men. One of them never appears with something LGBT-related in public and strictly prohibts anyone to out him outside of the trans community.

He is a highly professional and successful man. If he handled it otherwise, he'd probably not be in his position.

If you think about it historically: In the 80s there was consensus in the trans community, that all of us would be stealth and they helped each other finding excuses for their surgery scars and messy backgrounds.

So that 40+ dude with the "burn" on his thigh might just be a trans man.

 

You may be interested in the project To Survive on This Shore; it features photos and interviews with older trans and gnc folks. There's also some webpages compiled by the University of Michigan-- photos and short descriptions of post-transition men and women.

The latter pages really helped me when I first started to transition, because they show folks of different ages, ethnicities, and professions-- helped me to realize there's not just one type of person who is trans, and being trans doesn't limit what you can do with your life! Some of them started transition when they were younger and have lived their adult lives "post-transition".

And of course there are several stories on youtube. Try searching "older ftm" or "older mtf" and you will find a couple channels right off the bat. Men-- [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Women-- [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] And a collab channel for older LGBT folks in general-- [1]

I can't vouch for how helpful or appropriate the above channels will be, I just pulled them from a couple quick searches. But worth looking into further since there's more out there. Some of them seem to have videos talking about why they waited to transition or felt they couldn't when they were younger.

And for nonbinary folks: I did a search but frankly I think the terms and such just weren't around or weren't as prevalent until recently. I only saw a few related videos/channels, and mostly from "younger" adults-- [1] [2] [3] [4]

 

Also, to address whether folks transitioned even further in the past:

One of my favorite historical figures is Harry Allen. He transitioned on the frontier in the late 1800's/early 1900's. We know about him because of a number of newspaper articles covering his various crimes and scandals! Alan Hart was an accomplished doctor from the same time period, who did a lot of work with tuberculosis-- also one of the first men to have a hysterectomy for the purpose of transitioning. Wikipedia indicates Michael Dillon was the first trans man to have a phalloplasty; he took hormones and had various surgeries in the 1940's. However I did read a book once which indicated the first phalloplasty was done in the 20's. Sadly don't have it with me so I can't verify that.

In the 20s and 30s there was a research institute in Germany which, among other things, studied trans folks-- sadly it was destroyed by the Nazis during WWII. Christine Jorgensen is known for transitioning in the 50's after serving in WWII. She took hormones and, yes, had a sex change-- and she wasn't the first, such surgeries for trans women had been around for a while at that point as evidenced by Lili Elbe (who, like Harry Allen and Alan Hart, was born in the late 1800's). So you can see trans folks have been around and transitioning for decades!

 

well, im 50, i've known for decades and only now im getting the nerve to transition,and thats a big part of the problem for the older generation, we didnt know, for the most part or we knew we didnt or couldnt come out or be ourselves. i so admire your generation, you're able to be yourselves at a much younger age.

 

It's only thanks to the people of previous generations who fought before us and were pioneers, as for any other right.

 

I know of many. There's a trans support group in my city that consists largely of middle aged+ trans women. I'm in a Facebook group with 2k transguys and there must be at least 200 odd that are older than their 20s. When I was 12 one of my art teachers came out as a trans woman, she was in her late 50s! It's seen as a millennial thing because it's our generation that's begun to accept and 'normalise' it (not that being trans is anywhere near as integrated into everyday society as it needs to be). For people decades older than us it would have been increasingly more difficult to live a safe and happy life coming out as trans, so they probably shoved all those feelings to the back of their head and attempted to get on with life.

I know that a lot of people who come out when they're older feel as though it's too late for them, I've heard people in their damn 20s say that! It's never too late to live as your most authentic self. Even one or two years of being true to yourself and living to your full capacity, not holding anything back is better than living an entire life built on lies with no one knowing the real you. I know that people have to be careful and think about their safety but if you're in a reasonably protected environment then coming out is definitely worth it, no matter the age.

 

Took me awhile to find this again. British woman in her 80's transition in the 1960's. This is a documentary about her and her life. Hope this is what you were looking for.



I'm sure surgeries are better now, but people have been transiting for a really long while.

 

I think that there are a couple of things that lead to the older transgender community less visible. The first is that being transgender was very taboo when they were growing up. Because of this, they either went into hiding and never embraced who they are, they accepted it and made the decision to not transition, or they did transition and went stealth because they were fearful of others noticing. There is also the fact that senior care is much harder for transgender people to find

 

All true and its important to understand that most of us never had anything that could be called a "community." We were all in stealth mode unless you lived in a big city where you could find a safe space and find community.

Rather instead we were bunch of isolated islands on our own since the taboo was so strong that you could not risk telling anyone much less live the way you wanted to. The only exception was for those who could pass easily and they would move to a new town and live out their life (without surgery but maybe with black market hormones) in their preferred gender expression. They also usually lost every friend and family connection along the way.

Back then gay people were still very taboo and anyone on the trans spectrum was like a scary alien from outer space! I cannot imagine explaining nonbinary to someone even 20 years ago, let alone 30.

Things are so different now which is good, but we still have a long way to go! Most people my age still are not out to all but a few people and those parents of yours who tell you its just a phase for young people would be shocked to know how many of their best friends are trans in some way.

 

And let me not forget to say how much I admire the courage all the young trans people have today!

 

Older "Trans" people have long ago gone through transition and are living as their actual gender now and see their sex and sexuality in that spectrum.
Older people who experience dysphoria late in life often have some other issues related to the onset and normally choose not to transition usually with the help of drug therapy and counseling.
Those who do transition late in life were generally so repressed during their lives that it is only in later life they've become comfortable enough with themselves to complete transition.

 

This is a multifaceted question that can very a lot from whom you ask. I can only say from what I've learned and what my life has been.

I was born in 1978 and there were a TON of reasons why 'older' (I'm only just barely 39!) Trans like me are much more difficult to find. For most of the last year I've been wrestling with the question "How did I not know?" It wasn't something I could honestly ask myself until I had come out to my family as Trans as well as gay. At that point I had been married to my high school sweetheart for 17 years (18 now) and our conversation about me being Trans had been developing for at least three years. But I hit a point where I was trying to convince myself to keep it a secret at least until my mother passed away. She had her 70th birthday today and is in great health. Her father lived to be 92. Younger (teens to 20's) Trans have so much less to lose. They have not spent 20+ years building their life around their supposed gender. As much as we hate it, our society is still heavily gender biased. Coming out as Trans later in life means you could lose your job, your marriage, your family, your friends, and even be thrown out of your home, and that is only to begin with. I count myself unbelievably lucky that my husband never loved me for my gender (and has since come out to me as Demisexual), there was some really rocky months with my close family (triggering a near suicide attempt after my mother said some unbelievable things to me) but things have been smoothed out quite a bit since then. The friends I have are online since due to health reasons I am essentially a recluse. I've known them through a doll collector's forum almost 6 years ago and many of them still don't know I'm Trans. I'm just really afraid of how it will affect the overall view of me even though it is a really friendly place. It bothers me that they still don't know. Many are younger than me, but some are older. After the reaction from my very conservative family I'm not sure if I'm ready to go through that again.

Socially transitioning later in life is hard. After using female pronouns for 38 years it still is very difficult to switch, and I still do a mental double take when my husband uses my name despite the fact he's been doing it for three months now. I have a sea of memories of 'trying to be a girl' and coaching myself everyday in high school on how to present female as possible because I was taught it was the only way to 'get a man.' I already had the odds stacked against me being over 225 pounds at least by that point. I can clearly recall being about 5 years old and feeling that my gender was 'tomboy.' Everyone called me one, and I sure as heck didn't see myself as a girl, despite the dresses and horde of stuffed animals. I saw myself like the boys 'but better.' That was the only way I knew how to identify with my masculine girly gender. It work well until I hit my midlife crisis at age of 10 when puberty hit. Never before had I been trapped by my gender, and now it was taking me into a horrifically wrong direction. But I couldn't tell anyone. I would be told I was wrong, stupid, and tons of other unkind personal judgments. There was nothing that I knew at that point that even gave an inkling that Transgender was even anything that existed. I just knew I was one thing that was different from anyone else I knew, and I was expected to present as something completely different. Like telling E.T. when he was in a dress that he was a human female. People could say it all they wanted, punish him because of it until he learned to repeat them like a parrot, but in no way did that mean he became one. When the odds are so overwhelmingly against you and you have no one saying "I feel like that too!" you tend to internalize it and see it as character flaws. You grow up seeing yourself as broken and mentally unstable. You hide inside yourself simply out of safety and to avoid ridicule.

As I got older I eventually learned words like transvestite and transsexual, but every time you hears someone saying it, it was if the words were sickeningly spat out. "Trannies" were just freaks of nature in dresses (Trans men were NEVER mentioned, it didn't 'exist') And transsexuals? Were complete sexual freaks that had to mutilate their bodies to get sexual pleasure. Who in their right mind would want to be associated with that kind of stereotype? Crossdressing was used as a joke. I grew up in a small town and clearly knew that it could be 'justified' to beat gay men to death because it was 'God's will.' I don't ever remember hearing of it happening in our town, but there was certainly the conversations triggered by the news that the people deserved it. I can still painfully recall so many 'good Christians' freaking cheering and rejoicing over the death toll at the height of the AIDS crisis. That was decades before I could identify as gay (about 4 years ago), and realizing I was gay happened before I could admit I was a Trans man. Watching as these people who had taught love and tolerance hating on people who were sick and dying made me completely heart sick. I couldn't understand how anyone could be treated that way, and I was only 12. Even after there were reports of children getting HIV that the same people were quick to point fingers and blame the children! Within about a year at that point it was finally discovered that many people had gotten it from blood transfusions. Only then did those hateful people at least quieted down about it being some godly judgement.

So I can very much say that the older Trans can be harder to find in larger amounts because we grew up in a very different and much less accepting world. We were taught to fear standing out and being different. It could be deadly. Things like that were just not accepted. And even when we do find the courage to finally speak our truth, it is no guarantee that family, especially older family, will ever be accepting.

I am so thrilled that there is so many younger Trans able to be themselves early in life, and have families, friends and a world that is slowly shifting to see that it doesn't make them freaks of nature, or something to be smudged out. Many of the older Trans stories I've found have been through books, because it was a time before the internet or even personal computers. The one I'm reading right now is Becoming A Visible Man by Jamison Green (who was born in 1948, book published in 2004) and really does a good job of talking about his transition and why Trans men were still stealth even in the 90's. The short answer is that they didn't want to be seen as Trans (or how they identified), but as the men they were.

In the late 60's there was the Compton's Cafeteria Riots (crackdown specifically on Transgender patrons) that came before the Stonewall Riots. Trans were a major part of the Stonewall riots but even at that point Transgender was not a word that was used. It was illegal to not dress 'gender appropriately' and could be arrested if you were not wearing 3 (4?) pieces of 'gender appropriate clothing.' It was illegal to serve gays alcohol in public. The first Pride parade was held on the one year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. This is some major stuff in LGBTQ+ history that happened 12 years or less before I was born, and yet I had no idea about any of it until about two years ago. The pink triangle on Holocaust prisoner's clothing was simply to denote homosexuals and the Nazi's slaughtered them along with the Jews and (I believe) Gypsies/Romany people. There has been such a pervasive long and fearful history for the LGBTQ+ community that the older people had to learn to hide, stay silent, to be invisible, simply to survive.

Our society is slowly adjusting to the change in gender norms, and shifting away from erroneous stereotypes that were hurtful to many cisgender people as well. But it seems too easy for younger Trans or their older families to forget or simply know how to see what life was like even 20 years ago. It was a huge national shock when Ellen came out publicly. I was taught that god hated gay people, but even so at the time I was happy that she could be true to who she was, and I had no idea what life had in store for my 'straight female' self. And even though I'm still currently pre-transition but post realization, as a white Trans man I will never forget that the fight for Trans women, and especially Trans women of color still have a long fight left before they are given the same equality that I have had in my white female life. They should not have to fight it alone and I for one will never stop fighting for them when I have the chance. I've had to live through the hell that can come with being seen as female, seen as less than in so many ways, all of which are wrong.

There is quite a lot of info out there if you just do research. I'll admit that I've found it harder to find Trans guy stories and accounts compared to Trans women, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. I've run across multiple mentions of individuals from the wild west era all the way through the 30's at least, being outed as Trans (long before the term was used) after their death when a coroner revealed their 'true' gender. The whole stigma of gender variance being a mental issue doesn't make any of the understanding of older Trans any easier. I still wonder how many Trans hid themselves simply to avoid being put in a mental institution or insane asylum? I can guarantee you that it isn't just a younger generation thing. Just because it took a very long time to be seen by society, in no way is an indicator that it is a 'new' thing. Being Trans, or even just a crossdresser in fact has been illegal in most countries for generations upon generations. Does that sound like it didn't exist before? It just sounds like a fear of 'deviance' by claiming that something is unnatural, despite the fact that there are multiple animals in nature that switch gender within an individual's lifetime. You know Finding Nemo? Male clownfish (and other fish species) switch gender if the dominant females dies (Nemo's mom) so Nemo's Dad would literally turn into a reproducing female. Nemo's dad would become his mom. (Not surprised Disney failed at this simple biology lesson.) Being Trans is not unnatural, just more difficult for humans.

People seem to struggle with Trans being valid because our society is overwhelmed with gender bias. Why is Superman big, buff, with an uber strong jaw, while the 'weak' Joker is often skinny and lacking in muscle tone? Can you list for me what is 'women's work'? Traditionally those are menial jobs not requiring a lot of mental aptitude. Or "Real men like sports?" Well, what about all the geeky men out there who either hate them or can't make sense of them, but can code very complex programs from scratch? What about football players who like to knit? Or Women who are mechanics and straight? What about women who have to have their uterus removed due to cancer? Or breasts? Or a man his testicles? does that make any of them less cis? So why is it that when Trans need to do the same or similar procedures it is suddenly taboo? Or why a female is applauded for getting her breasts enlarged, and shunned for getting them removed? And why does cis society think that you are only Trans if you've "had the surgery?" Science only has options if the Trans person themselves sees it as necessary. Altering your body does not make you Trans, it just helps to lessen or remove the dysphoria. Being Trans is about how you view your life, your world, yourself and how all those parts relate to the outside world. It literally is a state of mind. It is a chemical makeup of the brain. Just because someone identifies as Trans, in no way means that they have to do anything about it. For some, simply knowing is enough. At times I wish it was that way for me, so I could have stayed hidden. I didn't want to disrupt my family and make things difficult. I know I still have to go through my body changing if I even have the option of testosterone (I may not because of medical issues) but that does not in any way mean I'm not Trans.

These are a lot of really hard questions that have to be asked, thought about and considered. But the best thing you can do is research. That's what I started to do when I began to wonder where all the Trans people in history were. Our history has tried to be erased as much as we as individuals have. But that doesn't mean we were never here before. I'd highly suggest going to a library and do physical research, not just YouTube. Sure videos can be helpful, but reading possesses so much more information. Write down names and events in LGBTQ+ history when you hear mention of them on YouTube, Wikipedia, Google... and research them further. Find out who the major people were at the beginning of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the 1960's and before. There is still pictures of Victorian Trans men and women you can find on the web. Read accounts of both Trans men and women because even if we are so very different in how we view our birth genders, we are also very much the same. Search Amazon for Trans memoirs and histories. I find this hugely helpful because the reviews often give you the heads up on the quality and accuracy of the books. Then see if you can request them through your local library if you aren't able to buy it directly.

The other books I currently own are as follows:

From The Inside Out edited by Morty Diamond (a collection of FTM experiences)

Transmen & FTMs by Jason Cromwell (personal story that also identifies the distinction between FTM & MTF, written by a Trans man)

Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg (Transgender history, but I do take some of it with a grain of salt simply because I don't like to label individuals as Trans when they did not call themselves Trans. So it could be that Joan of Arc was a Trans man, or just really hated the gender equality. I don't think there is a way for modern society to truly know. Still, a really great read that covers a LOT of the history we were never taught in school.)

I hope me being so freakishly long-winded answered your question somewhat. Hopefully you made it this far.

~Kyoya

 

So beautifully and wonderfully stated! You really covered it all!

XX,

Zoe

(Age 53)