Transgender is more than just a transition
When does the word transition mean more than simply a phase or momentary action? When it comes to gender and trans identities in particular. In general understanding of trans issues we conceive of trans folk being on the other side of their assigned gender at birth, as in trans Alpine being on the other side of the Alps to the Romans. Yet, folk who undertake the transition process from one gender to another are perpetually labelled as trans, transient, in perpetual transition by those who view them from the outside.
This is perpetual transience, the never getting to a satisfactory destination where trans can be shed, is problematic, as it inherently means that a person is forever trans no matter how they live or exist in the world. In English we have built a semantic framework that situates gender as to poles on a single axis, where to exit one pole, one station, does not mean that you will be welcomed wholesale into the other. Indeed, trans semantics suggests that you can pull as close as you want towards the station, but you will forever be held in transit just outside.
Am I being obtuse? Am I simply picking about semantics for the sake of it? No. Trans identities are bounded in this notion that to transition from one gender to another is aberrant, somehow inverting the natural order of things. If you predicate gender identity as a social construct, then it is the social construction of gendered identities that is the aberration, not the individual. Just because a person pushes past normative understandings of gender does not make that person inherently mentally ill or deviant; rather, it is the outside view of their gender that labels them ill and deviant.
Within trans communities how transition narratives and semantics are passed down to those newly coming out impacts on how transition is perceived. One does not simply access trans linguistics in the wild, unless your parents or peers are knowledgeable, meaning that our understanding of transition and transitioning are shaped by the sources of information we encounter. Yes, the medical profession frames gender journeys as a medicalised process, but even then the language we are equipped with, and the understand we are given, is very much contextual to the communities we inhabit.
The perpetual transition, the eternal transness of it all, is an artefact of none acceptance. To be a woman you first must be ascribed female at birth. To be a trans woman you first must ascribe femaleness to your maleness at whatever point you reach your own internal conclusions. Nothing about the internal decision makes you trans, it is the language we have equipped ourselves with that makes the trans experience inherently trans. To be a woman should simply be a matter declaring it, without the need to have an outward holding pattern that always holds you are some distance from the final destination. Womanhood is only ever reached if you were assigned female at birth, otherwise you are ascribed a lesser thing in the eyes of society.
There are plenty of trans folk who exist in the hinterland beyond the station quite happily, seeing their radical selves as the apotheosis of identity. This is fantastic, a state of self that should be lauded. Yet, it is not those individuals who I am writing about. The construction of language matters because it gives power to those who wield it. Laws are shaped by it. Ideas and conceptions of what is normative flow from our constructed language. Trans linguistics were constructed to account for the other, to place the other in a clear basket that could be safely set to one side to either ignore or jeer at. It was not the individual’s choice to be othered, rather, it was in the attempt to journey from one station to the other that set the othering in motion.
This is why constructively trans semantics are so inherently problematic. Transgender suggests transience, deviance, inversion of reality. It is an ironic term, as it suggests subversion of a construct we had no part in choosing to play along with. Transsexual is likewise a loaded term, for it loads onto the trans individual a set of understanding that in reality they only may partially ascribe to. No person is an island alone with their gender identity, they are in reality a reflection of all the social constructions they are exposed to across their lives. Yes, each person has an innate understanding of self and in a genderless sexless world there would still be people who wish to refashion their bodies. Bodies are weirdly wonderful, yet in othering this process we assume that there is such a thing as a normal gender identity and normal way to have a sexed body.
Transgender is more than just transitioning between two genders, it is a societal outcasting process that does not have an end. You step onto the train between the stations and you forever are tattooed with the ticket. Non-binary folk inhabit a similar situation, yet their intention is not to arrive at the other destination. The binary trans experience is framed in 160 years of cisgender attempts at corralling gender into two neat boxes, two neat ways of explaining eight billion ways of experiencing gender. We only consider trans to be trans because societally we consider trans people to be on the other side of gender, eternal travellers doomed to never quite arrive at their destination. Do away with trans semantics and you are left with binary gender and the constellation of non-binaries in between. Allow the traveller to arrive at their desired gender destination and just call them male or female without the trans sobriquet. Is that such a radical idea?
