Elisa Rae Shupe (born James Shupe and formerly known as Jamie Shupe) was the first person in the USA to get legally recognized as non-binary, even going so far as to get a new birth certificate with the false claim that the baby’s sex was “unknown.” Shupe’s whole long, agonizing gender journey is summarized in this Wikipedia entry, and by Shupe in this 2019 piece.

If anyone knows “transition” first hand, Elisa Rae Shupe does. In a recent podcast interview Shupe makes an important observation about gender or sex “transitions”:

One of the things I take issue with is the language [of “transition”], and I hope this isn’t offensive to anybody, but . . . we “transition,” that we “de-transition,” and we “re-transition.” But by my question on that: Is it really true? I don’t think it is. Again, it makes it sound good, selling it to the public, but did I really go from being a natal male to being a female, to being non-binary, to back to male, and now back under the female umbrella? Was all of that real? Sure, I took hormones and I cosmetically changed my body, but other than that, it’s, again, not real.

Right. A “transition” from being F to being G which does not actually result in the “transitioner” being G . . . well, it’s not a transition to being G at all.

Interestingly, the two podcast hosts, both “transmen” who admit to being female, immediately agree with Shupe that those were not real transitions.