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What do we want from our transitions
Transition implies many things. Metamorphosis, hope, relief, an unburdening of the soul. Yet, all transitions are intended to be passing things, a moment in time so that the future may be brighter, not a perpetual spec in the eye we keep coming back to. This notion of incompletion is a rhyme recurring throughout much of trans discourse; go back to early trans testimonies and there is no seal on transition, just a perpetual set of coming outs which never truly end. This begs the question what do we want from transitioning, as if the point is to complete something then what do trans people actually seek to complete.
This may seem an obvious question with an obvious answer: to live as our affirmed gender in society without needing to rehash the past. If that were the answer then the entire concept of “transgender” would simply be the transitioning process, with the capstone being that upon completion trans people would be normative and fade back into an assimilated life. Yet, as every trans person will attest to, this is neither socially achievable without significant personal cost nor is it what many trans people actually want for themselves. Which then begets the question once more: what do we actually want from transition?
I propose a deeper answer, one which sits at odds from any attempt at normative framing. Namely, trans people seek catharsis from the…
