Transition / Välitila
Transition means a passage from one form, state, style, or place to another. A person who goes through a transition of their sex is called a transperson. There are no Finnish words to describe a transperson, but the closest word to transition is välitila.
Välitila is made up of two words, väli and tila. Väli means the space between two differing objects or states. So for example there is a väli between between each word that I write. Tila is the word that means measurable space. So an object or place can have tila (but it’s not the same as the final frontier).
Together they make up the word that is closest to transition, välitila. But there is a marked difference, which is the major difference between Finnish and English in the sense of how the languages make us see the world. Transition is a state of being. You can be in a state of transition. Välitila is a space. You can be inside välitila, as you would be inside an airport. This may seem like a small thing, but the way we understand the world is eons apart in those little words.
So when we use the word transperson as English speakers, we are thinking about a person in a state of being. Going through transition they are moving between those states which are the recognized cissexes. But transition leads to being trans. It is a state that becomes who you are since it is a state that differs from the cisnorm. Transition is the journey a person takes. Trans is what they become through deciding to transition.
The word has never been properly translated into Finnish because in this sense välitila, being the key word for describing transition, means a completely different thing. So if we shorten it to, for example välimies – or transman, Finnish speakers will not think of transmen, but will think of a man who is a gobetween. Maybe someone who is arbitrating a dispute. Since välitila means a place in between, it must be something that one crosses. It is not something that becomes inherent in you, it is an abstract place where people can go on their way between two separate places.
So if we use this word, välitila, the whole concept of transperson changes. They are a person experiencing a place of transition between two states. They are neither completely women or completely men. When the transition is over, they stop being “in trans” and become coherent wholes because that is the meaning of the word: välitila only comes into existence when two coherent states are not seamlesly joined. Through those wholes, a välitila can be discerned.
So for a Finnish speaker, who is in välitila, transition is not a story that has a beginning, middle and an end. The word in English does: there is the moment when you leave your original state, the going from that to another and in the end closure as the action completes itself. Thus, through transition a person becomes transsexual. They have walked through the story of transition and it has added to them something that is not part of those who have not.
In välitila, you are simply navigating through a state that is in between. But you never become it, the place never becomes you unless you decide to stay. You do not grow into a transperson through välitila. Being inside välitila is the only moment you can in the logic of the word välitila be trans. And thus if we think about people who are in this välitila, we notice that they can be there for different reasons. There are those who might never find their way into either man or woman, or those who go from one to another. There can be movement, but it’s arch and direction changes. There is no law of motion.
The choices they make, the things they do become secondary. What is shared is the sense of being between. Those people who have lived in the välitila of the sexes are not separated by categories like butch vs. transman or queen vs. transwoman. What they share is the experience of the place, not the choices they make.
And in that sense, the moment we start to use Finnish words to talk about our existence, that existence changes. We simply become the people who know what it’s like to be there, beyond what we are percieved to be at any given moment of our lives.