Matt Kailey

Do transsexual people go through a gender transition? Do we have a sex change? Do we undergo gender reassignment? Or is it sex reassignment? All of the above? Or none of the above?

The various terms used for transition and their implied meanings can make you long for the days when it just wasn’t talked about — when a person left town and resurfaced somewhere else as someone else and that was the end of it (I make it sound so easy, don’t I?).

But those days are long gone, and most people — though not all — would say it’s for the better. Now that the cat’s out of the bag and we’re out of the closet, we’re in a position to argue for more rights and more services — and, slowly but surely, we’re getting them. But being out means talking, and talking means having a language to describe not only who we are, but what our experience has been. So just what, exactly, is that “experience”?

I prefer the terms “gender transition” and “gender reassignment” for a couple of reasons. I think they sound a little more sophisticated and palatable (and I’m constantly fighting a losing battle in my attempts to be sophisticated and palatable).

Also, people are always confusing sex the noun with sex the “verb,” so anything with “sex” as part of its name gives people the false impression that I’m actually having some — and that this process has something to do with sex as an action word, which it does not.

And in my experience, I feel as if I actually did change my gender. My gender expression before transition was extremely feminine (the high-heeled shoes above are mine), and for me, transition was more about changing my gender expression than it was about changing my sex. I believe that I went through a gender transition.

But there are a lot of people who prefer the term “sex reassignment” or even “sex correction,” and they have good reason — so let’s take a look at what the terms might actually mean.

While “gender transition” is the term that I most often use to describe whatever this is that I did, it has its detractors. “Gender” involves a personal identity, and “transition” involves moving from one place to another, and many people would argue that there was no “gender transition” for them — that they have always been the gender in which they now live, and that they simply (or not so simply) changed the body to match the identity.

The same can be said of “gender reassignment.” While we are all “assigned” a gender at birth that goes along with the sex that we are assigned, based on the makeup of our physical body, there are those who would reasonably argue that the gender they were assigned never matched the gender they really were and always have been, and so there was no reassignment of gender — only of the gender marker on legal papers and such.

“Sex change” has gotten a bad rap. It was one of the earliest terms used in the media to describe the process of changing the body to match the identity, and it was often used crudely and sometimes as a noun (she’s a “sex change”), so many people, including me, have shied away from it. Because “sex change” has such negative connotations, non-trans people would be wise to steer clear of it. At the very least, it’s old-fashioned, and at its worst, it can highly offend.

“Sex reassignment” indicates that the sex (or physical body) you were assigned at birth has been reassigned — by you. And “sex correction” indicates that a person’s physical body has been corrected to match that person’s gender identity.

The most acceptable term now is simply “transition.” Whatever we do, including changing our physical body through hormones and/or surgery, changing our legal paperwork, and/or changing our gender expression, it is definitely a transition from one life situation to another. Most people would not argue with that.

But there is no right or wrong. Each person has to decide for him- or herself what words are comfortable and most accurately describe his or her experience. And really, for most people concentrating on maintaining a job, a family, friends, and some semblance of a “normal” life while going through this process, that will probably be the least of their worries.

Non-trans people can take their cues from their trans friends and acquaintances. Just listen to a person, and that person will tell you who he or she is.