Also thank you so much Anita for your advice. I like your idea of how to respond to people who question my gender identity. Thank you for being here for me and for helping me better understand myself and the life’s road that I travel on. Gender is a interesting topic that I have been exploring for a while since the started questioning my gender identity. I wasn’t sure about myself at first but being in college and meeting other LGBTQA students has allowed me to realize how my experiences mirror their experiences. Some of my transgender friends that have transitioned are happier with their lives. I met a transgender male who has transitioned already and he looks amazing. He has been on testosterone and has had top surgery. Lots of my transgender male friends struggled with eating disorders as they tried to make themselves look more masculine. I have a transgender male friend who has to take a semester off from school because his anorexia made his health really bad and he had to take time to heal. I’ve heard that many transgender people have eating disorders because they are trying to find a way to cope with the overwhelming dysphoria in their minds by finding a way to control their bodies and controlling their weight makes them feel in control of themselves sometimes. Other ways transgender people cope with the dysphoria are to dissociate themselves from their bodies and feel like they are looking through a glass at their bodies- from a distance on the outside looking in. This mutes the inner critic that they have that tells them that they don’t look like the gender identity that they present because it makes it feel like they are filtering their thoughts through a film and they are watching themselves as if they were watching a movie, not really there. The dissociation helps transgender people feel like they can escape their bodies and view it from a distance so the inner critic doesn’t feel like it’s pounding in their heads. This creates a lucid-numbness that makes the person feel like they aren’t really there. The dissociation from themselves is only temporary and they are still aware of their selves. They know that an emotional trigger will cause the film that they placed over themselves to shatter like glass and the words of the inner critic to flood in cutting like the shards of broken glass. And the lucid-numbness fades and they feel like there heart yearns for the gender they want to be, but their mind is going against them. Their heart feels like it is being constricted by rubber bands that the mind puts on them. The transgender person feels in their heart the gender they want, but it is hard to believe it when there mind seems to overanalyze things and go against them. Transgender people often feel like that they aren’t really living in their life as they are constantly at war with themselves. This is why many transgender people seek hormones and surgery to help them live their lives feeling more like they are alive and making them feel more comfortable with themselves. Transitioning is a relative term for transgender people in the LGBTQA community. Generally, transitioning for transgender people means any action that asserts the gender identity that they wish to present. Medical transitioning involves hormones and surgery, legal transitioning involves legal name change and gender marker changes. And social transitioning, which is often the first process involves telling family/friends about gender identity, dressing in the clothes of the gender they want to be seen as, telling people to use their preferred name and pronouns, doing things that help them appear as the gender they want, and also talking to a therapist ( this can also fit under medical transition as well). Regardless of which stage a transgender person is in- social, medical or legal- they are still valuable and deserve to be recognized for their preferred gender because they go through a lot of hardships and depression that can cause them to have self-destructive behaviors. Often transgender people feel happier after they have had a medical transition because they feel their bodies now match with their gender identity and it makes them feel like they have a sense of self as the gender dysphoria fades and they appreciate their bodies more. Medically and legally transitioning can help transgender people lead more productive lives and help them have a better sense of mental well-being.