Transgender Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Sharing Their Stories

As reported in the Los Angeles Times in a fascinating article by Emily Alpert Reyes,

"Thousands of teens and twentysomethings who are transgender — identifying with a gender that is different than their sex at birth – have turned to YouTube as a kind of public diary. As they start taking hormones or using new names, many are documenting their journeys on video, baring their souls and revealing their changing faces to strangers online.
Their videos tell stories that were once routinely hidden: Transgender people were told to abandon their old lives and craft a new history after making their transition."

but today, many teens are

"embracing their transition as an essential and even celebrated part of their identity."

It's a public shout-out to authenticity, to the courage of being yourself and not hiding your journey. Each one of us, no matter how different we might feel, is not alone.

Just knowing the videos exist (kind of like my Gender 101 series of videos exploring Gender Queer identity) makes our world a better, safer, more celebrating-of-diversity place.

And that's a good thing.

You can check out the article here, and check out the video journals at youtube for two of the trans people featured in the article: Kat Blaque and Asher Zickert. (I couldn't find Niko Walker and Naomi Ngoy's youtube channels - if you know those links, add them in a comment and I'll fix that here. Thanks!)

Namaste,
Lee


Thanks to my husband and our friend Chris for sharing this article with me, so I could share it with all of you!