THE AGES OF MAN Finn reflects on how transitioning can mess with chronological time, and how time has changed the face of trans consciousness.

Age is a funny thing. I’m currently in limbo between young and old. I’m dead in gay years yet still a spring chicken among many of my peers. Age is subjective to whom you’re speaking about and to whom they’re compared.

It’s a cliché, but age is simply a number and it depends on where you’re counting from. I feel like an old man in many ways, especially in comparison to my growing family of trans folk. While it wasn’t that long ago that I came out and subsequently began a physical transition, it was before the trans ‘tipping point’ and certainly before the recent flourish of trans consciousness, when the world woke up to trans identities and when Brighton became so bountiful in trans-led organisations.

I was talking recently with a young trans man who was incredulous that I transitioned more than 10 years ago, as though it were the dark ages of being trans. Maybe it was, comparatively.

Things have changed a lot in only a few years. Those years of experience have given me some kind of wisdom to pass on to others as others have done for me. Those who I consider to be my older trans brothers and sisters aren’t necessarily physically older than me. Indeed the man I consider to be my trans big brother is actually a year younger than me. Like a brother, I looked up to him and followed his example when I came to the realisation of my own transness. And there are trans people who are much older in years than me that I consider to be little siblings, due to their relative age in transition.

Puberty the first time was an interesting challenge. The second time, however, was dizzying and reset the clock in many ways – or rather, set the clock ticking on the rest of my life. I felt like I had lost a decade to muddling through, working out who I was and trying to do something about it. I recall once a year some, trying to be relevant, teacher at my school would read out the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s Time, to teach us as teenagers that youth is not eternal. As I age, the lyrics of that song haunt me. In some respects, I missed the starting gun.

Sailor Boy Finn,2010

Pic by Molly Landreth

Testosterone has had the odd effect of simultaneously ageing me and bestowing a new-found youth. The rejuvenating effects of testosterone are well publicised in titles such as Men’s Health magazine. But what they don’t discuss is how a furrowed brow and scruff on my face have added years. Looking like a teenage boy for most of my 20s, I gradually began to age exponentially with every shot of testosterone. After 10 years of it, and now at 37, I’m often mistaken, according to my Grindr research, for being a decade younger. It’s almost as though I was barely legal when I was given my first shot. I might be a decade behind but that also gives me cover to make up for the lost time of discovering what it is to be a queer man in this part of the world. Especially in a queer world where, regardless of age we have daddy/son dynamics, age gap relationships are much more commonplace and we can live like Peter Pan in Neverland (otherwise known as Brighton). Forever young and not really taking anything seriously. The goalposts have moved as we’ve gotten older. Expectations on having a family have crept up on many of my peers who are able to do such things. Buying a house is a pipe dream for my generation now. Middle age now starts in your mid-40s. But how is it that my knees can be this dodgy and yet I’m still not considered as middle aged?

Leatherboy Finn

Pic by Darren Brade

The trans experience isn’t all hormone-fuelled youthful vigour. The years lost to crippling self doubt and the wear and tear of systemic and daily doses of transphobia have taken their toll on me. As we learn more about minority stress theory and its effect on the health and wellbeing of minorities, including LGBTQ+ people of all stripes, I am aware of how it has affected me.

Looking to the future, despite the gains we have made as a community, I don’t feel massively optimistic. My concern is for my health and who will be around to look after me if I reach an age that requires it. I fear for when I might need personal care and being reliant on underpaid workers, who could quite possibly not treat me with dignity and respect because of my trans body. It’s not such a farfetched fear either, as currently it can be hit and miss to get that dignity and respect even now when I access healthcare. Worse still, my greatest fear is to end my days with dementia and forgetting that I transitioned, even if for just a moment. Reliving those dark days would be extremely distressing. I don’t know how likely that actually is, but I do know it’s a fear shared by others.

If anything good comes out of the pandemic, I hope that we will emerge with a society that is more caring for all, with stronger communities, which help each other out. That people who care for others are given the resources they deserve and in turn we are all able to respect one another more than we currently do.

“My greatest fear is to end my days with dementia and forgetting that I transitioned, even if for just a moment. Reliving those dark days would be extremely distressing”