It’s quite possible I’m the first openly transgender person you know. That likely isn’t because you’ve avoided transgender people, there just aren’t that many of us. It is estimated that only about 1% of the population are gender non-conforming to some degree, and of those many will prefer not to be open about it. I therefore wanted to provide some links to useful information to shine a light on what it is to be transgender and show that whilst it isn’t usual (i.e. statistically) it isn’t unusual (i.e. weird or scary!).
Ayla Holdom
Ayla is someone I’ve personally seen as a role model. I find her inspiring and so of course she is first in my blog post of inspiring people! If you follow no other links on this page, watch this short video!
nGendr
nGendr is a project doing exactly what I said above: shining a light on what it is to be trans or non-binary. I found the video series they recorded to be really enlightening. Six transgender people (all trans women) recorded six short (a few minutes) videos. It was so useful to see different peoples experiences on the same topic. The topics included, coming out, the best thing about being transgender, the hardest thing about being transgender, relationships, work and when did they know they were transgender. Well worth watching!
NHS
The word ‘transgender’ is generally now used as an umbrella term to mean anyone on a fairly wide spectrum of gender non-conformity, be that from something done occasionally in private, to living openly in your chosen gender (or as non-binary). The medical term used to describe those transgender people that feel the gender they identify as isn’t, in full or in part, the gender assigned at birth, and feel discomfort or distress from this fact, is Gender Dysphoria. The NHS website has some really useful pages describing the condition, treatment options and real world stories. I found it very helpful.