This post is a discussion of Shou Arai’s manga, “At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender.” However, feel free to just answer the question in the title if you’re not interested. I’m wondering if anyone here transitioned in their 30’s or 40 plus.
Shou Arai is an intersex person from Japan who is somewhat well-known in the local queer scene. Arai lived the first 30 years of his life as a woman before transitioning into a man. I’ll be using he/him pronouns to describe Arai, as those are the ones he uses in the manga. The LGBT movement in Japan is obviously different than it is in the West, so some terminology doesn’t fit exactly. Arai is physically intersex, having physical characteristics of both sexes. He is also described as trans, non-binary, or agender at times; however, in this case agender is translated from something that more closely resembles “between genders.” Having read the manga, I personally feel that the term agender doesn’t really fit in the Western sense, and I believe the title is more in reference to “I am without gender because society doesn’t have a name for people with genders like me” rather than a true absence of gender.
Like Poppy Pesuyama, Arai considers himself a manga essayist. This means that the manga is primarily expository rather than narratively driven. Unlike Pesuyama, who wove their exposition into an overarching narrative, Arai foregoes narrative all together. Instead, each chapter of the manga is based on a topic or anecdote. Some chapters are even just Q&A sessions with other queer people. Often times, Arai is just giving practical advice about being queer. Despite the title of the manga, Arai actually wrote it when he was nearing 50 years of age, so he 30 years of female experience and about 20 of male experience by that time. Quite a veteran queer!
Here’s a list of the topics he covers:
As you can see, the majority of the manga is devoted to aging while queer, which is why I was drawn to it. Frankly, I think some of the advice that Arai gives might be a bit antiquated, but he is real af. I think that some of the chapters were hard to read for me not because the subject matter or presentation is heavy but because he clearly voices a lot of the small things we worry about when aging and queer. In particular, the chapters “If I had aged a woman” or “Is it impossible to be a young girl” are a little rough if, like me, you’re transitioning late in life. Other chapters just discuss aging in general like body measurements, choosing glasses, facial sagging, or having a big head lol. In general, he’ll discuss an issue and then provide a way to try to mitigate it or think about it differently, and he’s always real about what’s actually achievable.
The manga is a real grab bag of tough thoughts, which I’m gonna list here:
mild dysphoria
Having smile lines, growing unwanted facial hair, trying to manage your aging so people don’t just identify you as male, wishing you had transitioned sooner so you would’ve had better skincare, being jealous of people who started hormones early, having no memories of being young in the gender you want, being easier to present masculine when you’re older, having a weird mismatched body, using clothing to present femme but feeling dysphoria when you take them off and see your masculine body, changing your clothing style just so people identify you correctly, having a non-binary heart while still presenting in a binary manner, confusing looking femme with looking young, getting too old for sex, and many, many more!
Overall, I think that the manga is rather formalistically boring. There’re really no characters, and the art is fairly basic, so there’s nothing really to latch onto. Unlike other queer manga I’ve read, this one didn’t really move me; however, I think it’s bursting with important and helpful content, so it’s worth a read if any of this interests you.
personal dysphoria
To be honest, despite the fact that it’s really light, I found myself quite bothered by a lot of it. For me, a lot of my dysphoria comes more from my age than my gender. I’m closer to 40 than 30 these days (much older than Arai when he transitioned), and sometimes I can’t help but think I’m a man playing dress up or that I missed my window to transition or that I’m going through some midlife crisis to make me look younger. I also acknowledge that there’s more to being trans and queer than being pretty, and a lot of transfemmes are really obsessed with youth and beauty, and then I just feel guilty for boiling down gender to being pretty. Anyway, I know all of these things aren’t true, and it’s just societal ideas that I’ve internalized that are causing me dysphoria. I can’t help thinking it would be easier to just age male, though. I wish I had the awareness that kids nowadays get, but back in my day (at least where I lived), trans literally wasn’t a thing. We had no language or conception of it. In fact, I’m remembering now that when I came out to my wife while bawling, I kept repeating, “I just didn’t know we could do this [transition]” >.>
Anyway, I wanna hear from the younglings too, but this post is for the geezers like me. Have any kind words?
I started transition right before my 30th birthday. I would say the hardest parts for me have been the
-“am I just a man wearing a dress” thoughts -dealing with coming out at an older age. People expect me to have this all well and figured out by now. -dealing with my entire life changing when I was just getting “started” e.g. my engagement ended as a result. -honestly maybe the worst is feeling like I missed my 20s on some level. Or even more than that, feeling like I missed out on being the girl I always wanted to be. And now I just feel like some in between thing that can’t help but be perceived as a man.
I think a lot of us older trans folks though don’t identify with the strong “I was a girl in a boy body” trope. For me it was always just that I wanted to be a girl, but didn’t realize that that was an option so I just ignored it and was actually quite good at being a guy.
Actually the fact that I was good at being a guy sorta kept my egg from cracking for a while too. It really felt I had so much to lose.
For me it was always just that I wanted to be a girl, but didn’t realize that that was an option so I just ignored it and was actually quite good at being a guy.
Actually the fact that I was good at being a guy sorta kept my egg from cracking for a while too. It really felt I had so much to lose.
Oh, hi, it’s me again. Well… I took longer than you.
Sorry about your engagement. That must have been really hard. That was literally my biggest fear.
It’s ok. It is what it is, and honestly we’ve been more so becoming friends again which is so nice. She is straight though lol.
Yeah, there are a few different ages that I think people tend to come out at and we fall into different categories because we all have similar reasons why we “lasted” so long.
For me, I’m bi and I’ve known I was queer for a while. But overall I was quite straight presenting. Nobody would even guess that I was anything besides cishet - literally I haven’t gotten one person who’s like “Oh wow… This makes sense” to me.
But yeah, being straight presenting stops many of us from coming to terms with queerness I think especially trans ness. Being straight presenting is like, such a privilege. People just understand your deal, and nobody bars an eye. So much easier. It’s hard to give it up.
And then of course, with our age group, being trans wasn’t really… A thing that I knew about until I was older. Like, I hadn’t even met a trans person until late into college and I didn’t understand at the time. Absolutely no visibility. Hell, for us, most of our lives gay marriage was illegal in the first place! Really crazy.
So yeah don’t beat yourslrf up (idk if you are, but if you are, don’t). We have so much stacked against us and you’re here now :)
But yeah, being straight presenting stops many of us from coming to terms with queerness I think especially trans ness. Being straight presenting is like, such a privilege. People just understand your deal, and nobody bars an eye. So much easier. It’s hard to give it up.
Not exactly straight presenting (a lot of people thought I was gay, at least one person thought I was ace, etc), but the assumption of alloheterosexuality definitely was a roadblock in terms of realization. I preferred people assuming I wasn’t straight, but I just confused gender feelings for females with sexual attraction, so thought I was unfortunately straight and cis until I was like 28.
At least I don’t have to deal with the concern about romantic or sexual partners in terms of transitioning. Wish others didn’t have experiences like yours. :(
I would say the hardest parts for me have been the-“am I just a man wearing a dress” thoughts
Okay so how DO you deal with those thoughts? Because I get these all the time.
Oh God this is kinda shit advice but I just try to ignore them. Also the more time I spend with my friends who are affirming and in affirming spaces that feeling gets less loud over time.
I will say though I’ve been mostly out socially for like 9 months now. The feeling definitely gets quieter the longer you’re our and also the better your style gets.
Youngling here just to say: I love and support our older trans comrades
I transitioned mid 30s and am now in my 40s. I’m also non binary I also am intersex, had boobs and hips during puberty and have always been more androgynous. Low T included. But took until my 30s to transition. Because of my height 5ft 3 and how I looked I was bullied a lot, this including a bad upbringing along with autism made it take me a lot longer even though I knew I was different from 8 years old.
As far as aging, I’m blessed with smooth skin. Fallout reference if you will. I still get carded in my 40s and have made a game out of seeing if anyone can guess my age. Because it can range anywhere from 20s to 30s. So I’m not your typical authentic 80s goth I guess but I have some odd genetics going on along with plenty of autism (which I equate to my youthful looks… more than anything else, though the low T helped a ton I guess)
As far as the rest goes, I don’t really care much. I’ve always been an outsider and never had many friends. I have never had any really all my life, only my wife now but regrets? Not any really other than I do wish I’d transitioned sooner more so that my chronic pain could maybe be alleviated somewhat but I don’t know… I maybe might have not been bullied as much being the other binary gender at some point but now I don’t care for any binaries in most of life. I have seen how much society is built on bullshit that included… a sliding scale over my lifetime from a creature from the void that lives inside my skin…
Thank you! This is a beautiful experience to share.
You might enjoy the manga. It seems you can relate even more than me
I’m not sure but I will give it a look, purely because I don’t get much dysphoria over how I look. I also have kind of different perspective being long transitioned at this stage… a lot of it I’ve come to terms with but I don’t dwell on things as much as I would have at the start… I still have good and bad days, some regrets and such here or there but a lot is set now and I’ve long come to terms with being non binary coming from being convinced I was transfem but I’m more than that and always have been… I dunno, I’ve been on this journey so long that I find things all the time or things that once bothered me I care little for or have completely changed my perspective on. A lot of clothing and such I just wear what I want, I wear makeup when I feel like it but I don’t think so much about how I present or look, I stopped caring about what most people think long ago so maybe that’s part of it too… hard to know. But I know what it’s like to be at the start and what it’s like to be in your 30s and a baby trans too…
I had “the realization” when I was about 40, and then started dabbling in DIY HRT when I was 41 and had to go back off of it within about three months because of health issues. I went back on DIY (via a less problematic approach) just before I turned 43, and I’ve been at it ever since. Since then, I have definitely developed femme waist/hip/chest proportions compared to before, but body hair growth is as bad as ever, and home IPL zappers only do so much. Ravages of testosterone exposure, I guess.
I still present as masc because I don’t feel safe to come out publicly while living where I do; I absolutely do not want to jeopardize my job or get assaulted by local CHUDs. Apparently the baggy t-shirt + MILF jeans combo isn’t cutting it anymore though, because I may have been clocked by a 7 year old. It’s possible that the little shit has just never seen an aging metalhead with long hair, but it’s still pretty fucking jarring when a kid just looks at you and blurts out, “ARE YOU A BOY OR A GIRL?” before hearing your voice.
Wall 'o Text/disjointed infodump
I wish I had the awareness that kids nowadays get, but back in my day (at least where I lived), trans literally wasn’t a thing. We had no language or conception of it. In fact, I’m remembering now that when I came out to my wife while bawling, I kept repeating, “I just didn’t know we could do this [transition]” >.>
This is my experience to a T. A large part of it was never possessing the vocabulary to articulate what I felt deep down, but I think some of it was also quite literally beaten out of me by my teenage uncles when I was little. It got to the point that I hid those thoughts and images from myself and buried them so deep that it took decades to de-program that latent trauma response.
Maybe it’s the [extremely probable] undiagnosed autism/AuDHD, but I was always an outcast as a kid, was constantly bullied, and never felt comfortable around the overwhelming majority of boys in my age group. That said, I really don’t feel like I ever fit the mold of the “I ALWAYS KNEW I WAS A LIL’ GIRL TRAPPED IN A MALE BODY” stereotype that medical gatekeepers treated as a requirement back in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, so it’s not like I could have medically transitioned or even gotten on puberty blockers if I had possessed the vocabulary. (And if your lived experience meshes with that “stereotype,” that’s fine! You’re valid!) All I knew at the time was that I always felt a little “off” and, after puberty, always had this low-level sense of being grossed out by my own body.
Looking back, I wonder if it would have changed anything if I had known why I always felt so out of place and why I had so many self-destructive and self-sabotaging impulses well into my 30s, or if it would have been a case of being able to identify the issue with no path available toward resolving it. That being said, even just getting on HRT the past several years has done me a world of good psychologically. I can look in the mirror without disassociating, so that’s something.
I definitely vibe with the stuff about agonizing over picking out eyeglasses, but I’d like to add another: hair styles for the low-key boymoder, and learning to love your frizzy gray streaks.
Yeah, I’m not gonna fuck with DIY at all because I have too much health anxiety.
That said, I really don’t feel like I ever fit the mold of the “I ALWAYS KNEW I WAS A LIL’ GIRL TRAPPED IN A MALE BODY”
Yeah, me either. My experience is significantly more blurred.
All I knew at the time was that I always felt a little “off” and, after puberty, always had this low-level sense of being grossed out by my own body.
Yup! Luckily very low level for me
learning to love your frizzy gray streaks.
Actually, I think my gray streaks rule!
Yeah, I’m not gonna fuck with DIY at all because I have too much health anxiety.
Understandable. It’s a little daunting. Even after starting DIY, I was terrified to switch from gel to injections because I can’t stand needles, but I kept missing my gel doses by several hours, which always left me sluggish. Having to spend 8-10 minutes airing things out every day was getting tedious, too. So, fuck it, it’s stabbin’ time…
CW: Stabby stabby talk
Problem is, homebrew injectable E usually contains benzyl benzoate, which, for some people, is a massive skin irritant if you inject it subcutaneously. I had to learn the hard way that I am one of those people. (Thankfully I don’t go into anaphylactic shock if I do subQ or miss the injection site slightly when doing intramuscular!) I had this silver dollar-sized dark/purplish spot on my stomach around the injection site, and it took around three weeks for the discoloration to go away.
So, no teeny-tiny needles for me; I have to do the thigh muscle route with larger-bore needles, and I’ve managed to fuck that up and hit a vein on the way in at least twice now. The first time wasn’t so bad, but the most recent one left a hell of a bruise because I had some ibuprofen in my system at the time. The ibuprofen acted like a blood thinner and caused the blood (and therefore the bruise) to spread out a lot more than you’d expect. I still fucking hate needles, but at least I’ll know what I’m doing if one of my cats ends up diabetic or something.
I should probably talk to an actual doctor at some point so that I can get a real, actual EC/EV prescription, preferably without benzyl benzoate, but I currently have almost a two-year supply left of grey market Brazilian weeb juice that will go to waste otherwise. Regardless, I think my game plan was to get a new primary care doc, walk in with a massive pair of hanging out, and frame it as, “look, I don’t need to see a goddamned therapist for six months – I’m not asking permission to trans my freakin’ gender; I already fucking did it. Now can you hook me up with a gender care specialist so that I can get some EC or not?” and see how that shakes out.
And thank you for sharing your experiences! It’s nice to hear that I’m not alone.
“ARE YOU A BOY OR A GIRL?”
I am beyond human comprehension
Jokes aside, it’s better to be safe, I grew up in a fairly conservative place. I also got bullied and alienated when younger too. I also mostly knew about trans people from the few snippets I’d see on TV or I remember watching the Crying Game when it came out… so that’s when I had some idea of who I was or at least… I got it then but I knew from around 8 I wasn’t “normal” in the typical cis sense
I remember watching the Crying Game
Big oof, jokes about that film (and the ending to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which is itself a lazy Crying Game reference) are about the level of exposure that I had growing up. And maybe Silence of the Lambs. Not exactly ringing endorsements of embracing one’s non-cisgendered identity, lol
I remember from around age 5 or 6 always wanting to grow out my hair, but my mom and grandparents always threatened me: if I ever actually did it, my uncles would hold me down and shave my head. When I was 12, my mom actually did completely shave my head in the summer in a misguided attempt to treat a chronic skin condition. Someone got me on video tape back then, and I absolutely could not recognize myself in the video footage that they shot at whatever family gathering that was. It was to the point where hearing my own voice come out of that was enough to make me feel physically ill.
As for that little kid, he’s the son of a CHUD from a CHUD part of a mostly-CHUD town in a CHUD state that is among the worst in the nation for LGBTQ rights, anti-trans legislation, and hate crimes. I expect absolutely nothing, and yet I am still disappointed. I really need to get myself and my family out of here.
Oh yeah the crying game was what made me afraid and then seeing all the shitty jokes made throughout the 90s… was a bad time. I grew my hair down to my butt in high school then got my head kicked in daily for years because I was seen as gay and accused of wearing makeup (I have translucent skin so super pale…) the normal bullying kind of shit… but it set me back a lot and I’d get a lot of shit at home too
cw abuse, violence mentioned
spoiler
at home I’d get various forms of verbal abuse, being hit and slapped, had my hand held in a pot of boiling water, got throttled for wearing makeup, loads of other stuff but I won’t go on…
just know I can relate to living with past trauma and abuse, so growing up I felt so alone…
I always hated getting pictures taken, I destroyed all of them… so none remain of me and well I don’t have family anymore either…
I hope you can find peace and find somewhere you can be yourself and call home
I’m kinda at a point I just try real hard not to think about it.
