What exactly is a gender transition?
It’s a topic we hear about more and more these days — a space where debates, fantasies, and stigmas collide. Yet beyond the noise, a transition is, above all, an intimate and deeply personal journey — one rooted in self-reflection.

Not so long ago, the word “transsexual” referred strictly to people who had undergone surgical sex reassignment. And that was the end of it — a raw, medical, almost clinical label, charged with sexual connotations.

Meanwhile, there were the so-called “transvestites” — or “trannies,” as people might sneer while laughing at a party — and the “transsexuals,” portrayed as strange, misunderstood creatures, somewhere between cabaret and psychiatry.

It seems to comfort some people, the idea of mocking what they don’t understand — of rebuilding the illusion of a binary, a safe and familiar normality.

But no.
Gender identity isn’t that. Gender expression isn’t that. And a gender transition certainly isn’t that.

Despite the resurgence of simplistic — and often hateful — rhetoric in recent years, society has also moved forward. Legal and medical frameworks have evolved, and more importantly, so have the words we use and the ways we think about gender.

Language has expanded to include lived experience. Reflection has deepened. And through that, countless people have finally found the space to recognize themselves — to speak, to break free from the walls built by fear and moral rigidity.

The internet played a decisive role in that shift. It offered connection to those who once felt utterly alone — people trapped in misunderstanding, who suddenly had access to resources, and, above all, to others walking the same uncertain path.

Without all that, I might not be here today. Not here, not like this — not myself.

For me, a transition is first and foremost a choice. A deeply intimate and personal one — perhaps one of the hardest paths a human being can walk, even when it feels inevitable.

In some way, I’d even say that everyone should experience a transition in their lifetime.

No — not everyone should change gender. But there’s something within the act of transition that could benefit anyone: the work of questioning, of dismantling what we’ve been told, of experimenting with who we truly are.
It’s about exploring the self we want to be — not the one we perform to please others, or to fit neatly into the boxes handed to us.

A gender transition, to me, always carries with it a process of self-examination. It’s an education in becoming — an ongoing apprenticeship of self-improvement.

Along the way, we meet our fears and our limits. We learn how to push past them, or sometimes, how to live alongside them. We come to know our strengths, and our weaknesses too.

Of course, this isn’t the only kind of life journey that can lead to such self-awareness. But it’s one that places introspection at its very core — and perhaps that’s why transgender people are often described as complex, or more likely than others to seek psychological support.

(And yes, I mean psychological, not psychiatric — the distinction matters.)

Beyond gender, beyond physical change, transition is first and foremost a work of introspection — an act of understanding oneself and opening to the world.

And however difficult that work may be, it’s also profoundly liberating. That’s why I believe that, in one way or another, everyone should “transition” at some point — or at least pause to look inward, to reflect on who they are, and who they might become.

Certainty narrows the mind. It breeds fear, dogma, and darkness.

Doubt — and the courage to question ourselves — brings new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new ways of being. It opens us, both to the world, and to our own light.

— Maud Weyl