No, it would not be more accurate. “Being trans” and “transitioning” are not at all the same thing. “Being trans” means that your assigned sex at birth is not correct; it is a bare fact about one’s life. “Transitioning” is a course of action by which one changes from living inauthentically as their assigned sex, to living authentically as their correct sex.
Not all people who are trans can transition, whether for social, legal, medical, or financial reasons. But they’re still just as valid as people who transition, because “being trans” is not the same as “transitioning.” A very small number of people who begin transition discover that they were mistaken and aren’t actually trans after all, so you can even transition without being trans. These are independent things that do not always go together.
Similarly, being gay is a thing you are, not a thing you do. You can’t change it. Some deeply closeted men think that by not acting on their sexual impulses — by not having sex with men, even though they want to, and having sex only with women (or not at all) — they will “be straight,” because nobody can diagnose Teh Ghey without reading their mind. You may often hear things like, “Being gay is a choice! I think about having sex with men EVERY DAY, but I don’t act on those thoughts, because I AM A STRAIGHT MAN,” from people suffering under this falsehood. They try so hard to “choose to be straight” every day.
But they’re not choosing to be straight, because they can’t be straight, because they’re not straight, because we are born straight or gay and we cannot change this fact about us. We do not choose who we are or what we want — we can only choose WHAT TO DO about those bare facts. We can be honest and authentic about who we are, or we can lie to everyone around us (and even ourselves) to stay in the closet. Those are the only options. So by transitioning, we trans folks do not “choose” to be trans; what we are choosing is to do what is right. Being trans is a bare fact about us that is neither chosen nor changeable.
