A Conversation About Trans People Getting Old

Friend: You're amazing

Cait (she/her/elle)
Why is that? I'm just a trans girl who got old.

Friend: Because that rarely happens

Cait (she/her/elle)
Not true at all. There are plenty out there. But when we transitioned, the rule - like, if you break it you're out of the clinic entirely - was that you MUST be stealth. It was strongly recommended that you move cities, and cut ties with everyone you knew.

So we did what we had to. We hid from the world. We pretended to be cis women. Some of us married men, and adopted kids because we were infertile cis women. And never told them our past.

And they got old. But they're still stealth, only now they have a second life built up. They have spouses and kids and friends and jobs and everything. And if they come out, they fear losing it all, as they already did once. Believe me, having lost it all? I would never do it again, for anyone.

They're not "not there". They just can't afford to be out. Some few of us can, for various reasons. I have been for 20-odd years. But it's not been easy, and I pay for it. I can't resent my sisters who choose not to pay a second time.

So we exist. There are many of us. I know a few, a very few. And they're super careful about even talking to me, the green-haired widely-known activist trans woman. We talk on Signal only, and they use burner phones. I'm their only contact with trans community, because they're terrified.

We exist. We just can't all be out about it. So I try extra hard to be super out. To help make up for their necessary absence.

We do get old, dear. You will too. The present bullshit will pass, in time, and we will live openly and happily again. It has before, and it will again. That's why we fight against it, those of us who can. Because we know we can and will win, in the end. We have before.

Hold strong, my friend. We're not doomed.

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If you're moved, help me do activism if you can:

https://gogetfunding.com/help-zara-reach-safety/

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.

In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.

In 2005 I started medical transition. For the state to recognise this I had to submit to standards of "care" which were humiliating, degrading and which placed me at risk of violence.

But I did it "by the book"

As I did it "by the book", the NHS agreed to reregister me as female, which makes sense because my anatomy now is.

In 2007 I had sex reassignment surgery. This had to be signed off by two mental health professionals, "by the book", and it was.

In 2008 I applied for gender recognition. This involved signing a statutory obligation, stating that I promised, BY LAW, to live fully as female for the rest of my life. As this was done, "by the book", the government promised that it would treat me as such.

Its first act as treating me as female was to annul our marriage because it was a same sex marriage and those were not allowed.

The state then reissued my birth certificate, correcting the "mistake" it had originally made when it recorded me as male, "by the book".

In 2009 Sylvia and I married for the second time, in a same sex civil partnership, which was done "by the book", because the state regarded me as female and I was bound by law to be female.

In 2013 we married again, because the state decided that same sex marriage was in fact allowed after all. This was done, "by the book". Despite having been married for 12 years, we had to submit ourselves to individual questioning to prove our relationship was genuine, "by the book".

In April of 2025 the state turned round and told me that I had been mistaken. That it never regarded me as female. That I was male the whole time. That the marriage it annulled because it was a same sex marriage was never a same sex marriage (but it stays annulled). That the civil partnership in 2009 never really happened because "opposite sex" civil partnerships were not allowed in 2009.

And that the legal obligation I have to live as female for the rest of my life, which I signed and gave up my marriage for, is still in effect but also if I keep following it, I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. As it's still valid, presumably if I don't keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest.

The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest.

At every stage I did what the state asked me to, even though it was humiliating, degrading and cruel.

And it kept moving the goalposts, and reneging on the agreements it made, whilst continuing to hold me to them even when they are now mutually contradictory.

Apparently this is "all my fault" and I should have known that this would be the consequences of my actions when I started medical transition 2 decades ago.

Perhaps you can now appreciate why we are upset?