There is a particularly cruel little bargain many transgender people make with themselves.
I’ll do it when I pass, I’ll wear the swimsuit when my body looks better, and I’ll take the pictures when my face looks more feminine. I’ll go to the beach after surgery, I’ll visit Europe when my voice is better, I’ll start dating when I’m further along, and I’ll travel when strangers stop looking at me.
We rarely say all of it out loud. Sometimes we barely realize we are doing it. But somewhere along the way, transitioning can turn into a waiting room. And we can spend years sitting in it.
I know, because two months from now, I’m taking my first international trip. I’ll be traveling to the Philippines to meet my girlfriend in person for the first time. That sentence still feels a little surreal to write.
At 57, I’m getting my first passport. I’m figuring out international flights, what I need to bring, what I probably shouldn’t bring, and all the little details that experienced international travelers apparently learned while I was busy doing other things with my life.
There’s excitement. There are nerves. There is also something much bigger happening underneath all of it. I’m going.
Not when my transition reaches some imaginary finish line. Now.
The Finish Line That Keeps Moving
Transition can make it incredibly easy to divide life into “before” and “after.” Before hormones and after hormones. Before coming out and after coming out. Before surgery and after surgery. Before changing your name and after changing your name.
Some of those milestones are incredibly meaningful. The problem starts when we attach permission to live to them.
Maybe you’re six months into HRT and think you’ll feel comfortable traveling at two years. Then two years arrive, and suddenly you decide you need facial surgery first. After that, maybe it’s your voice. Your hair. Your body. Your wardrobe.
There is always another milestone available if you need an excuse to wait.
Passing makes this particularly complicated because it isn’t even something you can objectively measure. Pass according to whom?
The cashier at Target? The person sitting beside you on an airplane? Someone looking at a carefully selected selfie online? A stranger who saw you from 40 feet away?
You can have ten interactions where nobody gives you a second glance and then spend the rest of the day thinking about the eleventh person who stared.
That is a terrible measuring stick for deciding whether you deserve a vacation.
I Could Wait Too
I understand the temptation.
I’ve been transitioning for several years, and there are still things I would change about myself. There are things I hope happen with more time. There are procedures I’ve considered. There are days when I feel fantastic about how I look and others when a mirror manages to become my mortal enemy before breakfast.
Apparently mirrors enjoy violence.
If I wanted to construct a list of reasons why I should postpone this trip, I absolutely could.
I could wait until I feel like I pass better. I could wait until I’m more confident about my voice. I could wait until some future version of myself appears who walks into an airport without worrying about being read as transgender.
But there is one fairly significant problem with that plan. My girlfriend is there now. My life is happening now.
And for the first time in my life, I’m about to have a passport with my name on it and somewhere halfway around the world I desperately want to go.
I don’t want another milestone between me and living.
Transition Is Supposed to Give Us More Life
This is the part we sometimes lose sight of. Transition isn’t supposed to become another prison.
For many of us, transitioning is ultimately about finally participating in our own lives instead of watching them happen to somebody we were pretending to be.
Yet it is surprisingly easy to replace one set of restrictions with another. We finally come out, only to tell ourselves we can’t go swimming. We finally buy clothes we love but decide we shouldn’t wear them somewhere unfamiliar. We finally become comfortable enough to date but convince ourselves nobody could possibly want to travel with us. We finally start recognizing ourselves in photographs and then refuse to get in front of the camera because we don’t look perfect yet.
Screw that. There is no requirement that your transition be complete before your life can begin. Actually, there isn’t even a universal definition of a completed transition.
For one person, transition might include multiple surgeries. Another may never want surgery. Someone might take hormones for decades. Someone else can’t or doesn’t want to take them at all.
None of those people needs to earn the right to sit beside the ocean drinking something with an unnecessary little umbrella in it.
Yes, Traveling While Trans Requires Some Homework
None of this means pretending the world is equally safe for transgender travelers everywhere. It isn’t.
Depending on where you are traveling, transgender people may need to research local laws, cultural attitudes, identification requirements, airport procedures, and access to medications.
International travel deserves even more homework.
Make sure your identification and travel documents are valid and understand the rules that apply to them. Research the countries you’ll visit and any countries where you may have a layover. Keep essential medications in your carry-on rather than checked luggage, and investigate any restrictions involving medications or injection supplies before crossing international borders.
Know where you’re staying. Give someone you trust your itinerary. Have backup access to money. Keep copies of important documents somewhere secure.
If you’re traveling to meet somebody you first met online, there are additional common-sense precautions worth taking regardless of how much you trust that person. Have your own access to money and transportation. Know where you are staying. Make sure people back home know your plans.
Being romantic does not require being reckless. I’m thinking about these things for my own trip. There is a difference, however, between preparing for risk and allowing fear to make every decision.
Preparation says, “How can I do this safely?” Fear says, “Maybe I shouldn’t do it at all.” Those are very different questions.
Your First Trip as Yourself Might Feel Weird
There is another part of transgender travel we don’t discuss nearly enough. The ordinary stuff can hit surprisingly hard.
Checking into a hotel as yourself. Hearing someone call your name at an airport. Walking through a city where nobody knows the person you used to be. Putting on the swimsuit you spent three weeks debating whether to buy. Taking vacation pictures and actually wanting to be in them.
For people who transitioned later in life, these moments can be particularly strange. You may have decades of memories from vacations taken while presenting as somebody you no longer recognize as yourself.
Now you get to make new ones. That doesn’t erase your past. It adds something your past may have been missing. You.
Take the Damn Picture
This one deserves its own rule. Take pictures!
Trans people can become incredibly skilled at avoiding cameras. We know exactly where to stand, which angles we hate, and how quickly to volunteer to be the person taking the group photo.
Vacation can become another performance in avoiding photographic evidence that we existed. Take the picture anyway; you don’t have to post it. You don’t have to put it on Instagram. You don’t have to make it your profile picture. You don’t even have to like how you look in it today.
Save it, because ten years from now, you probably won’t be examining your jawline or wondering whether your shoulders looked too broad.
You’ll remember where you were. You’ll remember who you were with. You’ll remember what happened five minutes after the picture was taken. And you might realize the person in that photograph was far more beautiful than you allowed her to believe at the time.
Two Months From Now
Soon, a passport that didn’t exist before will arrive with my picture inside it. Then I’ll pack a suitcase. I’ll get on an airplane, cross an ocean, and land somewhere I’ve never been.
And waiting there will be someone I’ve spent nearly a year talking with, laughing with, and falling in love with. For the first time, there won’t be a screen.
I have absolutely no idea what that first moment is going to feel like.
I suspect there will be excitement, nerves, probably some tears, and a decent chance that every clever thing I’ve imagined saying will immediately disappear from my brain.
That’s okay. I’m not going there because I’ve finally achieved some mythical level of transgender perfection. I’m going because I’m alive.
Because I love someone. Because there’s a gigantic world outside my front door, and transition was never supposed to make that world smaller.
If you’ve been postponing your own trip because you don’t think you’re ready to be seen yet, ask yourself what you’re actually waiting for. Take sensible precautions. Research where you’re going. Protect yourself. Know your limits. But don’t confuse caution with postponing your life indefinitely.
You don’t need another year of hormones to watch the sunset somewhere beautiful. You don’t need facial surgery to wander through a city you’ve always wanted to see. You don’t need the perfect voice to order dinner in another country. You don’t need to be a certain size to wear the swimsuit. And you absolutely do not need a stranger’s approval of your gender before you’re allowed to have adventures.
Two months from now, I’ll be having one of mine. I’m nervous. and excited. I’m getting my first passport, and I’m going. Maybe that’s the whole point. We didn’t transition just to become somebody different; we transitioned so we could finally be here.
So take the vacation, take the picture. Wear the swimsuit, and order the ridiculous tropical drink. Your life doesn’t start when you pass. It’s already happening.
