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 fall under the “old” category here and I feel that my story is an odd one. My egg fully cracked at 32. I started transitioning at 33. I am turning 35 soon and hitting 2 years HRT. Hells, I had my bottom surgery 3 months ago here next Friday. I don’t think my age really did anything to me except, in the early throes of my transition, made me feel like I was a fake for not having my egg crack when I was 12 like my wife. I also feel very awful because I never got to have that social transition in my childhood to have a semi-normal girl childhood (which, in hindsight, was probably a good thing with my childhood’s circumstances, but that’s another story). But one has to also realize that, in the 2000s, there really wasn’t any form of awareness when it came to being trans. I didn’t meet me first trans person until I met my wife in 2010. Even then, I didn’t understand her “I want to be a girl” was anything other than just a thought. I didn’t know you could change that. Not even when I met a transmasc person that I worked with in 2012. I didn’t know HRT was an option until literally 2019. And that’s when my gender thoughts started and I proclaimed myself non-binary because I didn’t fit what it meant to be a male. It sucks! It’s why I’m super happy for the younger generations now because they can be exposed to thinking about their gender and moving things in a good direction for themselves earlier in life.
All that aside, my transition as it is has actually been pretty great. While my transition is still young (22 months HRT), I would say that my age hasn’t really hampered anything. Physically my transition has hit off extremely well, moreso than some early 20 somethings I know that have been transitioning for longer. I recently saw a fullbody pic I took of myself right at the start and compared it to myself (now 22 months later) and the changes are huge. Breasts have gotten much much larger. Fat redistribution has done a ton more than I though as I have a discernible hourglass shape (though it’s still forming). My skin is awesomely smooth. Emotionally, my emotions have awoken way way more than when I started, though I can definitely still feel puberty #2 ravaging my mind. My emotions do fall off the rails from time to time, especially when PMS slams me. Along those lines, I have done a metric fuckton of work on the things you can manually change. I immediately socially transitioned after my egg cracked. I voice trained already and have a passing voice. I’m slowly learning how to properly dress myself for my body type. I learned basic makeup super early (by going to Ulta and asking for a lesson). I changed my legal name already. A ton of work, but oh so worth it.
All that said, every little bit of this has been extremely difficult. The last 2 years of my life have been grueling. It has been filled with a ton of mental and physical pain that I otherwise would not have to deal with. But I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. Everything feels better. Everything feels right. And sure, while I didn’t get to figure these things out earlier, I still managed to and I’m correcting it now nearing the halfway point of my life. At least I’ll get to enjoy that last half the way I should’ve in the first place. And even though life is harder in just about every aspect, I wouldn’t dare trade it for anything in the world.
This is so real.
Yeah, despite me growing out my hair, doing voice training, having an entire woman’s wardrobe, lasering my leg hair off, scheduling facial hair removal, painting my nails, changing my pronouns here, coming out to my wife and friends, reading queer lit, and posting here constantly, I still like to pretend I’m just a confused cis guy
Well, you’re braver than the troops. Thank you for your service. Speed running bottom surgery that quickly is so wild to me!
CW: Talking about genitals and self mutilation
It’s definitely one of those things that is odd about me, but it definitely was needed. I never really liked my penis. It caused me a lot of anxiety and I certainly never really cared to use it. Sex was a chore cause I always forced myself to get off with penetration even though I just didn’t like it at all. Shortly after my egg broke, all of the feelings I had over the years kinda coalesced into some fairly powerful bottom dysphoria. Thanks to my mousy wife’s insurance, I was able to get the ball rolling immediately at the 6 month of HRT mark. But I’m not kidding you that I didn’t look at the damned thing on purpose for the last 12 months or so that I had it. It disgusted me. It enraged me. I just wanted to grab one of my kitchen knives and slice it off and just be done with it. I fucking hated it. My puppy wife, after having had her bottom surgery last year, was as mindful around me as possible cause she could see how egregiously bad my bottom dysphoria was. So, in short, it was a quick ride, but gods it definitely saved my life.
I’m really glad you got what you needed. That sounds so hard
sex and genitals
Tbh, I’ve never like penetrative sex either (unless I’m receiving it). I actually just told my wife today after more than a decade. I told her that I like doing it for her, but it wouldn’t really make a difference to me if I were using a strap-on vs. my actual penis. In fact, I might actually prefer the strap on.
HOWEVER, I do like my penis and want to keep it. I just want to use it in different ways.
I still have a penis and fantasize about having a strap on for my partner.
It’s fun! Putting it on is a real power boost
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