Answer:
I am a 24 yr old in transition from male to female and been on hormones for 8 months now.
The steps needed to start are:
1. Goto your GP and ask for recommended shrinks to see, and get a referal.
2. See shrink to do an assessment on you if they think your mentally female and physically one..cause not anyone can just choose to be a female off the top of a hat.
3. The will either refer you to a GP that knows how to treat Transgender people or send you to a gender clinic.
4. You will also get blood tests to see what your hormone level's are at.
5. After you have been on hormones for a certain amount of time "depending on your financial setup and hormone levels" you can go to your shrink again and talk about a sex change (SRS), you can get breast implants and FFS anytime you want but SRS will need 2 signatures from 2 shrinks and you also need to do the (real life) test..Its living as a female full time for 1 year..so you would talk about sex change then do the test.
6. You then find a doctor to do the operation which you can get help from a support group, your shrink, or GP/gender clinic.
7. After the OP your female just need to change some forms like passport, make your license state F instead of M, and your birth cert..they all can be changed after the OP.
8. Now your a female :)
Hope this helps.
Step 3 may take a month or 2 so in that time you should think about facial and body hair and to remove it, practise voice changing, dressing in public and also find Transgender support groups, also coming out to friends, family..etc (I came out to family and friends before I went to the doctor or shrink only cause I was younger and needed them to know).
Step 5 you may also want to think about changing your name to a female one.