Transition Terminology – Why it matters.

Conversations about sex, gender and transition have changed enormously over the past few decades. That change has brought greater safety, wider inclusion, and more space for people to understand themselves on their own terms.

This progress matters. It saves lives.

But with progress comes new issues. Some of the language and terminology we rely on to protect trans people from harm can, when used without care, erase parts of our lived experience – particularly for those who have undergone, or need, extensive medical transition.

This article isn’t about offering a perfect answer. There isn’t one.

My relationship with these questions is not theoretical. It has been shaped by a medical transition that was necessary, deeply personal, and life‑altering. It is a journey that involved fear, pain, vulnerability, and a body that had to change in order for me to survive.

I believe strongly in inclusive language, because it creates space for people to find themselves safely and on their own terms.

But I also know how it feels when the physical reality of transition – the cost, the risk, the permanence – is softened into abstraction or quietly brushed aside.

I don’t share this to centre myself, or to suggest that my path should be anyone else’s. I share it because lived experience matters. This article comes from a place of wanting us to care for one another more gently – to use language that holds everyone, without unintentionally erasing the depth of what some of us have endured.

The phrase “sex and gender are different” has played an important role in trans liberation. It challenged the idea that biology rigidly determines identity, and it created space for people to exist without being forced into roles assigned at birth.

However, problems arise when this phrase is treated as a final truth rather than a starting point.

Too often, it is used to imply that:

• Sex is binary
• Sex is fixed and unchangeable
• Gender exists only as identity, separate from the body

This framing is not neutral. It is frequently used to justify policies that permanently categorise trans people according to birth assignment, regardless of medical history, anatomy, or lived reality. In those contexts, the phrase becomes a tool of exclusion rather than liberation.

One of the most persistent misunderstandings in public discourse is the idea that sex is a single, simple, immutable fact. In reality, sex is a collection of traits, including but not limited to:

• Hormonal profile
• Primary and secondary sex characteristics
• Gonadal configuration
• External anatomy
• Phenotype as perceived by others

Medical transition can meaningfully change these traits. Hormone therapy alters endocrine function and secondary sex characteristics. Surgeries can change anatomy in ways that are medically and socially significant.

For many trans people, these changes are not cosmetic or symbolic. They are necessary, embodied transformations that affect health, safety, and daily life. Reducing sex to an unchanging label ignores this reality and undermines the legitimacy of medical transition itself.

Language has evolved for good reasons. Terms like “sex change” or “SRS” were often crude, reductive, or pathologising. Replacing them with broader concepts such as “gender-affirming care” has allowed for more inclusive, humane conversations.

But this shift has also had unintended consequences.

When all transition-related experiences are folded into the language of identity alone, the physical, medical, and sometimes traumatic aspects of transition can disappear from view. For people who have endured years of dysphoria, invasive medical procedures, complications, pain, or loss, this invisibility can feel like erasure.

Inclusivity should not require silence about the body.

One of the most sensitive fault lines within trans communities is the fear of hierarchy – the idea that some trans people are “more real” or “more valid” than others based on medical steps taken.

That fear is understandable, and it must be taken seriously.

But acknowledging difference is not the same as creating hierarchy.

• A trans person who does not want or cannot access medical transition is not less valid.
• A trans person who needs extensive medical transition is not simply expressing an identity.

Both realities can coexist without ranking one above the other. Problems arise when we attempt to resolve discomfort by flattening all experiences into a single narrative. Doing so does not remove hierarchy – it merely shifts it, often in ways that privilege the least materially affected voices.

For many trans people, transition is not primarily about expression or exploration. It is about survival. It involves real risk, real pain, and long-term medical consequences.

When discourse treats sex as eternally fixed and transition as purely social or psychological, it undermines not only personal truth but also practical needs – from healthcare to legal recognition to personal safety.

Recognising this does not invalidate anyone else’s experience. It simply affirms that trans lives are not uniform, and that difference deserves language precise enough to honour it.

There is no perfectly clean framework that captures every trans experience. Any attempt to create one will fail someone.

What we can do instead is:

• Affirm all identities and expressions as valid
• Speak honestly about the material realities of medical transition
• Resist language that erases bodies in the name of simplicity
• Avoid creating categories or hierarchies among trans people

Nuance is not weakness. It is care.

Conclusion

Trans people do not need to agree on every definition to stand together. What we do need is language that protects the vulnerable without silencing the wounded, that embraces inclusivity without denying embodiment, and that recognises difference without turning it into division.