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? 
dysphoria
I'm in my later 30s and came out as NB a year ago (to one cis person who wasn't very supportive). I then spent nearly the entirety of the last year being too afraid to date or meet anyone because I thought I looked too cis-male. A few months ago I finally connected with someone commiserating about Palestine and politics and we hit it off and I got pulled into queer spaces for the first time and I've never felt so welcome and unjudged before. It is life-changing to have friends that aren't just vaguely supportive but have been there/are there and know what you're going through. If you haven't connected with local queer folk in your area, please do, it will change your perspective so much.
Similarly, I've always known I was different and like you never really had the words to describe it. I knew about trans women/men and did a LOT of introspection over the years and came to the conclusion that I was not trans because non-binary was just not a thing when I was young. I knew I wasn't straight but I was also in a long-term, ostensibly cishet relationship and just thought to myself, "Well, if this is my life partner, why bother about coming out and connecting with the LGBTQ community?" I kept it bottled up for so long and it caused me a lot of pain, especially thinking about how my life might be different if I hadn't been in the closet for so long. I could have been out and spending my time doing gay stuff with cute folks instead of feeling like shit and developing PTSD. Ultimately, you can't go back and do things differently. You need to do what you need to to love yourself now, though. I hate my facial hair, too, and I'm 100% getting electrolysis so I never have to shave again. I'm still trying to find a look that suits me but it feels less important when people already accept me as NB, though I would like to look different enough that I'm not constantly misgendered by cishets. Deleting the social programming in your head is hard but starts to go faster once you make a dent in it. Don't wait around to be yourself.
Thank you for sharing ^^ I still hate shaving.. I've discussed electrolysis with Ash before and I may get it done at some stage. I relate to the not wanting to look cis but looking back I barely did lol I'd boobs and such so it's funny what growing out my hair did but I know its also having to deal with the doubts and brainworms.. I also grew up without friends and no support outlet, I never knew any queer people either. It's better to look forward than back for sure
The doubts and brainworms are thankfully receding as I make more queer friends. I'm finally learning to love myself, too.
when i do laps i just repeat to myself over and over, audibly, variations of ' Valentine is so pretty and she loves herself limitlessly'.
I can entertain you for a long time on the science behind why this works but as a person with severe ptsd and bipolar disorder I emphatically endorse the self affirmation technique.
I have been in a bad place for a while but after telling myself so many times how pretty and full of self love I am i'm really feeling it. good luck!!
No joke. Affirmations work really well
Glad to hear things are improving for you, loving oneself is one of the hardest things
I'm living abroad, and if I want queer friends, I'll have to move back to the hell country
Is there no community there?
Not one that I could locate or be a part of.
Language barrier is a bitch.
shaving is so frustrating!
If I shave 'smooth enough' i get bumps and if I shave with the grain and don't get bumps i'm a shark and can only pet myself one way!
One thing that is helping me is treating it like self care and getting a bath bomb and just taking 2 hours in the tub doing a little voice training, shaving everything slow and careful.
The daily face though is 😖 foundation only works with s close shave so i'm waffling between a safety razor, a 5 blade disposable and the old titanium electric shaver.
The jury is still out on which causes less irritation!
For me, safety razor definitely gives the least irritation.
I'm gonna start laser next week
how do you know when it's time to swap the razor?
I tend to find it starts to get harder to get rid of the hairs.. I use a 4 bladed lady shaver on my face which can vary in how long it takes until I have to swap to another. But I have found when you start to have difficulty getting a closer shave it's time to swap then. Hope this helps (for face and neck) Body I tend to shave when I feel like but a lot of my body hair stopped completely but then I'm long transitioned, I would go between electric razor for legs and body hair or epilator, depends on how much effort I want to put in.. I tend to go with electric razor attachment that was on my epilator so it gets very close but doesn't last as long as pulling the hair out
huh I kept reading that the epilators are useless. if you don't care about the pain will the epilator increase the time between having to deal with the hair? a i'm so lazy! i appreciate the help.
I hope to deal with it long term but my skin is super sensitive so it seems like it's going to be a long slog
which makes me think wow is it worth all this trouble and effort to conform to a beauty standard that was easy to condemn as a male?
I don't understand it. i love feeling smooth like a woman though and I love being feminine 🤷🏼♀️
I enjoy the pain in a way... lol but I'm a weirdo
but usually it can take up to a month until the hair grows back
I would say knees and below aren't the worst parts same with arms being tolerable, I have done chest and tummy and everything else with the epilator so the closer you get to below the waist the worse the pain will be. It takes time and can be a pain in more ways than one but I'd try waxing.
Personally I don't like body hair on myself.. but I also don't really care as much to remove absolutely everything though I do like to be hairless.. depends a lot now on if I can be arsed..
is self waxing a thing? you just commit and do it? I have so much to learn
Yeah you can get self wax strips where you pull off yourself, can be messy but are good too
I just swap every 3 uses. You can get maybe 5 tops tho
for just the face?
Ah, yeah, just the face. The body will probably wear them out a lot more because of the surface area, but also the body should be a lot thinner than your facial hair
<3 i think I have been overusing the razors i'm gonna bump the safety razor in the rotation.
Don't use a bladed razor more than once a day!
If you need cleanup throughout the day, use an electric one
oh no I never have shaved more than once in a day i meant i use the razors 5-6 times i think i'm using them too dull
I shave using hair conditioner and going slow so it's super soft after and doesn't leave as much redness, tip I picked up years ago. Just rub that stuff on and use it like shaving gel. I then use a light moisturiser after (nothing too thick to prevent it clogging up but it works well) but I do wish I could go without completely. I love taking a bath but been a long time since I've done so. I'm fast in the shower but pampering is important for sure ^^