Some gender dysphoric individuals proceed into their senior years with their needs and desires to be female still unresolved. Even now the natal male's feelings about the matter may be as strong as ever. The relative freedom of gender expression that women enjoy throughout their lives continues, and there is even less pressure on G2 females to be attractive or feminine now than when they were younger. For natal males, the situation is reversed.
Little is known about these individuals. That they exist, however, is indisputable. Surgeons report performing sex re-assignment surgery on individuals as old as 71. I have personally worked with four natal males in their early to mid sixties. Colleagues in my peer-supervision group report working with others in their mid-sixties to early seventies.
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Senior gender dysphoric males typically report they have been waiting, many since childhood in the hope that their desire to be female would simply "go away." Like those who are younger, they say in resignation that if they had known the dysphoria was going to remain such a strong force in their lives, they would have braved anything to face their dilemma decades sooner.
There is one other problem this population faces. In interviews, one gets the impression that the struggle to contain their gender expression deprivation anxiety--in and of itself--has become deeply ingrained in their psyche. It is as if the gender dysphoria has become a critical component of who they have become. Characteristically these people can be described as sad, depressed and deeply resentful.
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