“I’ve at all times tried to be a teacher because I feel that’s what has kept me alive for thus long,” Mardi Pieronek says. Based on Vancouver Island and generally known as @MardiPantz on TikTok, she’s only 61 years old – but it surely’s a number that trans women rarely reach. While there are not any official life expectancy figures for trans women (numbers float between 35 and 45 online, and it’s even lower for ladies of color), research shows that they’re more likely than cisgender women to face mental health problems, HIV-related illnesses, and physical and sexual violence.

On top of this, in recent times trans people all over the world have been coping with a tsunami of transphobic discourse, laws and ultimately, erasure. It’s this that led Mardi to TikTok, where she’s amassed 230,000 followers since 2021 through sharing the memories and wisdom she’s picked up over the a long time, from funding her gender-affirming surgeries through sex work within the 80s to like stories. She believes that by doing so, she’s helping a latest generation of trans women make decisions with safety and confidence. “It’s crucial for us to scream from the mountaintops about these stories and normalise these conversations,” she says. “There are such a lot of kids dying to acquire this sort of information.”

On the request of her friends and followers, Sophia Voines (also 61) uses TikTok to share anecdotes from her vibrant life, which has seen her shapeshift from a Latest York punk performer to the primary trans VP of an Estee Lauder-owned business. Now based in rural Vermont, the hair stylist’s videos tell stories of ordering hormones from the black market, losing friends in the course of the AIDS crisis, and the cosmetic procedures she’s received.

A stark contrast to the advanced gender-affirming treatments available to trans women today, and with most (if not all) doctors and surgeons refusing to perform on trans people on the time, Sophia – who began transitioning at 15 – often recounts her visits to a Harlem backstreet doctor generally known as ‘Joanne’. “Being trans back then was like joining a club of vampires… There was a hierarchy and everybody began at the underside. Once the queens at the highest liked you, then they might share Joanne’s details,” Sophia says. “But at times it felt unattainable to get there.”

Over the 80s and 90s, Joanne injected Sophia with “not less than 20lbs” of silicone in her lips, hips and buttocks. “I used to be eager to get it done and so blissful after I did, because back then you definitely couldn’t be viewed as masculine in any form,” she explains. For a part of that point, Sophia’s then-boyfriend of seven years (who never saw her fully naked) kept a note on her refrigerator with the reason why she must have gender confirmation surgery. “He kept adding reasons every single day, and I just thought, ‘Where am I going to get the cash? Who would even take care of me?’… I used to be busy taking good care of my very own friends, who were getting back from Joanne and soaking their beds with blood.” 

Along with coping with the painful aftercare of her own injections – like having her skin superglued back together and painfully smoothing her skin with a rolling pin to stop lumps – a long time later Sophia lives with the risks of getting free-floating silicone in her body, which could cause life-threatening infections, strokes and block blood vessels. “Planning for old age wasn’t an option for us on the time. I’ve seen so a lot of my friends die from complications – it’s prefer it’s a ticking time bomb.” 

While TikTok has been criticised for censoring LGBTQ+ content up to now, for older trans women like Mardi and Sophia it now provides an area to share their experiences authentically – and because of its algorithm – with the individuals who need it most. In addition to offering them a secure place to interact with a latest generation of trans women and debunk myths in regards to the existence of older trans people, their accounts are a robust reminder of how far transitioning – especially physically – has are available in the last 40 years.

“I’m thrilled that today’s generation doesn’t need to risk their lives to align with who they are surely,” Sophia says of facial feminisation surgery (FFS), which offers trans women anything from hairline lowering to chin and brow bone shaving. “It’s amazing that you simply never hear revision stories, because a long time ago no person got it right the primary time. Girls would go everywhere in the country to get something fixed again.”

“So a lot of my friends could be alive in the event that they had the possibility to have FFS,” Mardi adds. “A nose job and lip work were the furthest you can go before. In case your secondary characteristics kicked in and also you couldn’t pass as cis, doctors wouldn’t even recommend you to transition.” Although Mardi admits she initially resented people fortunate enough to receive FFS and similar procedures, she marvels at how much things have modified. “There’s a lot that could be done to make you are feeling comfortable now… Whether you may afford surgery, or if you happen to can’t but you’ve a support network around you who can champion you to live how you wish to live.”

Forming a sisterhood themselves after coming across one another’s channels, TikTok has also enabled Mardi and Sophia to satisfy other older trans creators including Alexandra Billings and Tranma – whose videos have helped Sophia remember the times when she was a “fearless, unstoppable” person. “It was such a special time – by the center of my transition I’d get on a crowded subway with the plastic and cream that numbed my face on my method to my electrolysis appointment. I actually didn’t give a fuck,” she says. “Seeing them feels validating, and offers me peace to know that one other person survived,” Mardi says. “It brings me to tears each time I come across one other one on my feed, because we’re so rare.”

Reading the comments left underneath all of those women’s videos, it’s clear the visibility of trans elders is indispensable. “Once I began, there have been so many individuals saying that they’ve never seen an older trans person before,” Sophia, who has earned the nickname of ‘mother’ from her followers, says. “People didn’t know we existed… now they thank me for being on TikTok every single day.” For Mardi, the relationships she’s formed along with her following and the act of sharing her truth have proven cathartic. “It’s the sort of representation I needed to see after I was a child. My relationships with these individuals are healing a wound within me,” she says. “It makes me emotional because I can live vicariously through them and watch them do what I couldn’t, like go to high school or prom. It fills my heart each time.”

However the trans youth of today aren’t the one ones that profit from Mardi and Sophia’s presence on TikTok. “One in all the largest pay-offs for me is the older trans women who live in stealth and message me privately,” Mardi says. Honoured to have reached them, each women feel that by utilizing their voice and sharing their experiences, they’re also honouring their trans sisters that didn’t make it to their age. “A complete generation of trans and queer people who helped me a lot after I needed it, died – whether it was AIDS or they were killed during sex work. I feel like I actually have to talk for them,” Sophia says.

“A very powerful thing I can do is show that, regardless of what, I’m still here.”

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