This is the last of a dozen posts about each of my proposed sexual types. The transitioning category captures men and women who are in transit from one sexual identity to another. It is not really a sexual type but a stage between types. “Transitioning” is also the term used by transgendered individuals (see metamorphic) who have begun the process of transforming their gender and living as a different sex from the one into which they were born. I use the term more generally.
At one extreme, you may be married and have always considered yourself straight, but you have begun to realize that you are also attracted to, and perhaps prefer, members of the same sex. You may identify yourself as “really” gay or lesbian, rather than bisexual, perhaps because only that would justify coming out of the closet and making a major change in lifestyle. On the other hand, as you complete your transition from one identity to another, you may preserve a sense of sexual flexibility, and this seems to be the more common pattern among women.
You may also transition in the other direction. Your earliest romantic experience may have been with someone of the same gender, but you have come to realize that you are also attracted to the opposite sex. Since heterosexual relationships are more socially acceptable, you may decide that you went through a phase and are “really straight.” A woman in this situation may jokingly refer to herself as a “has-bian.” The term “ex-gay” is also used, though generally only by those who have sought church-based therapy that is hostile to homosexual expression.
In some macho or tribal societies, a man’s sexual identity and role may change in young adulthood when he grows a beard and gets married, at which point he switches from being homosexually receptive to become a bisexual “top.” In the West, the phrase, “today’s trade is tomorrow’s trick,” refers to another, perhaps apocryphal, sort of transition, when bisexual hustlers grow up to become homosexual customers (the implication being that they also switch from being tops to bottoms).
Flexuality 