The New York Times...

Had an interesting Op-Ed articles on Monday and yesterday that covered trans topics; one of them listed resources for the trans community yesterday, I won’t list them here because most of them are known to the trans community. One of the articles was,

The Quest for Transgender Equality
By Editorial Board
May 4, 2015

A generation ago, transgender Americans were widely regarded as deviants, unfit for dignified workplaces, a disgrace for families. Those who confided in relatives were, by and large, pitied and shunned. For most, transitioning on the job was tantamount to career suicide. Medical procedures to align a person’s body with that person’s gender identity — an internal sense of being male, female or something else — were a fringe specialty, available only to a few who paid out of pocket.

Coming out meant going through life as a pariah.

Being transgender today remains unreasonably and unnecessarily hard. But it is far from hopeless. More Americans who have wrestled with gender identity are transitioning openly, propelling a civil rights movement that has struggled even as gays and lesbians have reached irreversible momentum in their fight for equality. Those coming out now are doing so with trepidation, realizing that while pockets of tolerance are expanding, discriminatory policies and hostile, uninformed attitudes remain widespread.

For me I lived in fear that someone would find out about “my little secret” it kept me deeply closeted until the stress from living that lie built up causing me to have medical problems related to the stress.

I think if I came out earlier I would have faced what the writer said, “tantamount to career suicide” and I would have been “a disgrace for families.”

The article goes on to say,

A generation from now, scientists will most likely know more about gender dysphoria and physicians will undoubtedly have found better ways to help people transition. This generation should be the one that stopped thinking that being transgender is something to fear or shun.

I have to wonder about the kids nowadays who are transitioning in kindergarten and earlier, what will their life be like? Will they face discrimination? Will they have a better life than those who are transitioning late in life because of fear and stigma kept them hiding?

I look at the lesbian and gay community as a model for the trans community in the nineties the stigma and discrimination that the lesbian and gay communities faced lessened and many of them started coming out earlier and not hiding in the closets, while others stayed closeted until later in life. I see the same thing happening in the trans community, some will transition early in life while other will transition when they are older.