Remind me to make a long ass post on how we need better resources for older trans women because this idea that only trans youth face desperate poverty and abuse is totally untrue and working for Trans Lifeline has really hammered that fact home for me
THIS THIS THIS. Is it ok get started on that for you?
The idea that young = vulnerable is very deeply engrained into most of our thinking but vulnerability does happen at all ages and older trans women face troubles that are unique to their situation:
1. A significant number of older trans people face the combination of losing a job, transition costs and a bad divorce (judges are rarely sympathetic to a transgender person in a divorce ruling). Just one of these things can result in poverty, facing 2 or 3 of these things at the same time often results in deep poverty.
2. Older trans people often need health care and may be entirely dependent on health care providers or relatives on a daily basis. When these providers and relatives are transphobic, older trans people often face the choice between hiding their identity or losing the care that keeps them alive.
3. Older trans people who discovered their identity early have often spend long periods of their life in unemployment or homelessness and as a result have a low or non-existing pension.
4. Transmisogyny dictates that only a passing, beautiful trans woman is seen as a ‘succesful’ trans woman. Older trans women who get access to transition late in life have the hardest time meeting this difficult bar and are most likely to never ‘pass’, which makes just going outside dangerous in many places.
Older trans men also face the problems mentioned at point 1, 2 and 3.
Older trans people need our attention. Older trans people need our solidarity.
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(If you are an older trans person reading this I want you to understand that this is a post about problems that happen often enough to need our attention, but they are not universal problems. The fact that these things happen to some older trans people does not mean they will happen to you. There are older trans people whose careers and relationships last, whose family and health care providers accept them, who have transition results they are happy about and who do not face harrassment on the street. You are not destined for problems just because you are older and trans.)
QueerAnarchism 