Let’s Talk Gender S1E2: Transition Timelines

OVERVIEW

Transitioning is a slow, often frustrating, ongoing process. It can roughly be broken down into four phases: personal, social, medical, and legal. We discuss the general timeline of each phase and how they overlapped for Jake’s transition from female to male. At the end, Meaghan Ray shares what their transition has included so far.

SHOW NOTES

General Thoughts on Transitioning

• Typical FTM trans narrative
  • Binary transition from one to the other
  • Medical system sees it as a treatment to change from one to the other
• In reality, it’s a slow frustrating process
  • No sudden tipping point or specific end point
• Non-binary transition is even more vague
  • Often have to fake a binary identity to get the medical care you need
  • Wide variety of social, medical, and legal changes
• Generally made up of four stages
  • Personal transition: an exploration of your own identity
  • Social transition: the coming out process
  • Medical transition: any medical interventions that help ease dysphoria or increase gender euphoria (HRT, surgery, electrolysis, voice therapy)
  • Legal transition: changing name and gender marker on legal documents and with various institutions
• Stages can overlap or blend into each other
• Trans people do not need to go through all of these stages in order to transition or be considered trans.

Jake’s transition process:

Personal Transition

• Longest stage
• Began in 2015 until late 2016
• Self-questioning, self-doubt, internal conflict
• Talking to friends, looking things up on youtube
• Found a therapist that was trans friendly that was familiar with the referral process
  • Referral to gender psychiatrist
• Felt like the therapist and Meaghan Ray were much more convinced that it made sense and he would be going through with it than he was
• Finally determined that he would be more comfortable living as a man
• Personal exploration continues throughout transition
  • Getting used to body changes
  • Learning how to communicate your identity
  • Learning how to navigate new social status and changes in privilege

Social Transition

• Came out to parents with a message of ‘I’ve been thinking about this, I’m exploring this’
• Different approaches to coming out
  • Emails, letters, face to face
• You realize how many people you have in your life
  • Very overwhelming and exhausting
• Started with the people who would be most likely to be supportive
  • Didn’t always work out as planned but generally helped build support
• We were hoping that some people we told would pass on the information to others but it never actually worked out
  • Ended up having to tell them ourselves
• Reactions
  • Some people changed name and pronouns right away
  • Some people needed to be told multiple times and are still misgendering Jake (in late 2019)

Medical Transition

• Lots of gatekeepers
• Gender psychologist – referral to gender psychiatrist in summer 2016
• Gender psychiatrist in summer 2017 on a cancellation
  • Referrals for endocrine and surgery consult
• Family doctor who was willing to write prescriptions for HRT – started Testosterone in May 2017
  • Turned out to be an easy process once he built up the courage to ask the affirming doctor
• Top surgery consult in fall 2017, didn’t feel good about the two year wait or the type of surgery offered
• Had top surgery done at a private clinic (paying out of pocket) in April 2018
• Hysterectomy in October 2018
• Potential for bottom surgery in future – would require another visit to gender psychiatrist to get referrals to surgery and separate referral for funding
• Got most of the information about who is allowed to make referrals, who is willing to make referrals, who is accepting referrals, and what the wait times are through the trans community
  • Connections to community are very important

Legal Transition

• Different process in each province or local area
• First item was a piece of paper stating that [previous legal name] is transitioning from F to M that officially explains why you don’t look like the picture on your ID
  • Important during the stage when you’re already on hormones and presenting differently but haven’t yet changed any ID
• Name and gender marker change document that requires fingerprinting
  • Submitted in Aug 2017, received it in October 2017
• Immediately got driver’s license changed
  • Felt safer in general but now had conflicting documentation with national documents
• So many different documents that needed changing
  • SIN card
  • Banking information, loans, mortgages, credit score
  • Marriage certificate
  • School records, work ID, email addresses
• National documents were the hardest
  • Birth certificate took the longest due to waiting for laws to change – finally done in summer 2018
• Took over a year
  • No international travel
  • Lots of stress, confusion, frustration

Transition is never completely finished

• Will always be people to come out to or correct, medical history to explain, and documents that pop up that don’t match

Meaghan Ray’s Process:

• No medical or legal transition yet
• Personal transition started with a genderqueer experience back in grade 10
  • Ignored it, put it away until Jake’s transition provided more language, strategies, and community to give myself space to explore it
• Tracked my gender and explored it for a bit
• Have just started coming out to friends and family and coworkers one at a time, very carefully
  • Limited understanding of what non-binary means so coming out requires a lot of educating
• Will be an even longer, slower, more careful process than Jake’s
• May be interested in some form of top surgery or legal gender marker or name change in the future

RELATED POSTS

• My Story So Far
• My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 1 – Exploration)
• My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 2 – Social Transition)
• My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 3: Medical and Legal Transition)
• 6 Months of Self-Discovery

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