“What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in this world?”

I was terrified that when I came into myself, I would lose everything. Instead, I found myself. I found the connection I had been searching for my entire life: people who loved me for me and not my category; beauty in my individuality, not my obedience.

Over time, I learned that where I was taught dissonance, I found harmony. This beard, this skirt, this love: There are no contradictions here, there is just someone trying to figure it out. Someone very similar to and very different from you.

— Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon, Ashley Lukashevsky