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 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
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.
I’m so sorry that happened to you comrade, thats such intense and unfair way to treat anyone, especially a child
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 so sorry you had to go through all of that; kids (and family) can be so thoughtless and cruel.
Huh; back in middle school/high school, I used to get accused of wearing lipstick. I went a long time without noticing this, but I’ve seen it more often lately where sometimes, especially right after eating, my lips will get very red. So of course 14-15 year olds are going to latch onto that and be snot-nosed little shits about it.
Almost the same here, actually! Even before I had consciously recognized that what I felt 24/7 was dysphoria, I didn’t really keep many pictures of myself around. Granted, I had a handful floating around back when I put myself out there on dating sites in the early 00s, mainly because saying things like “I kind of look like what would happen if Alec Baldwin and
got into the teleporter from The Fly together” would only get you so far. Since those days, there are some family selfies that my wife has snapped of us with our daughter over the years. Those are still a little jarring to look at, especially the ones from back when I still had my standard issue performative masculinity goatee, but at least they’re of happier memories.
Same lol, that would also be another thing I’d get pointed out. Or eye shadow if I was tired I sometimes get panda eyes because you can see through parts of my skin lol If I wasn’t afraid of having my shit beat in for how I naturally looked I’d have flaunted it harder but I was a kid then…
There’s more horrific stuff I’ve refrained from saying too but I don’t like feeling like a pity party either…
I’m glad you have some happy memories going forward. I still struggle to look at myself I think I have been through so much it has seriously warped some of my perspective. I struggle with accepting compliments and until I met my wife I never had people treat me like a human being. I have spent more of my life alone so it is almost a daily thing trying to reprogram how I’ve been conditioned by so much alienation. I also lack seeking out gay and queer things because I’ve never felt part of anything or able to relate to much. Hell I’ve never had any party for a birthday as I had no friends and it’s hard sometimes knowing how much I missed out on. But enough sad shit, I’m glad you are doing better, and I have new happy memories with my wife too c: