Transition
The process of living as the gender you are. It has no fixed contents.
Transition is the process of moving from living as the gender you were assigned to living as the gender you are. What it contains varies completely from person to person, and there is no required list.
It is usually described in three strands that do not have to happen together. Social transition is name, pronouns, clothes, telling people. Legal transition is documents. Medical transition is hormones or surgery, for those who want and can access them.
Many people do one strand and not the others, for reasons that include cost, safety, waiting lists, health, and simply not wanting to. None of that makes a transition incomplete, because there is no completion state to fall short of.
The word also implies a beginning and an end, which most trans people find inaccurate about their own experience. What usually happens is that at some point the question stops being the organising fact of daily life.
There is no such thing as a complete transition
The word suggests a journey with a destination, and the question that follows is always whether someone has arrived. There is no arrival point, because the contents are chosen rather than prescribed.
Asking whether someone has finished is nearly always a question about surgery wearing different clothes, and it is the reason most trans people hear the word with some suspicion.
Saying it well
Say this
- I transitioned six years ago.
- Socially, not medically.
- I am partway through, in the sense that everyone always is.
- Transition looks different for everyone.
Not this
- When did you complete your transition?
- So you have not had the surgery yet
- A full transition
- So you are pre-op
Questions people actually ask
What does transition mean?
The process of living as the gender you are, which can be social, legal, medical, or any combination.
Do you have to medically transition?
No. Many people transition socially or legally only, and their transition is not less real.
When is a transition complete?
There is no completion state. The contents are chosen, so there is nothing to finish.
What is social transition?
Name, pronouns, presentation and telling people, without any medical or legal step.