Developmental Stages of the Transgender Coming-Out Process: Toward an Integrated Identity

Twenty-five years after the term transgender was coined (Feinberg 1996), much has changed in our understanding of transgenderism and the clinical management of gender dysphoria. The paradigm has shifted from a binary understanding of gender toward recognition of greater gender diversity (Bockting 1999). The sharp distinction between transsexualism and transvestism has made room for the unified concept of transgenderism, albeit with the acknowledgement of different developmental processes of coming out.