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Michelle Ainsworth, GENDA Advocate

Photography by Arnaldo Vargas.

I have lived in New York for most of my life, and the burden of not being the gender I wanted to be was increasingly hard to bear, and so I came out and transitioned to living as a woman.

The only dark spot was when a psychiatrist told me that I couldn’t be transgender because I like women, which made me feel like I couldn’t confide in him. He didn’t understand that the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, and that transgender women, such as myself, like women, and some like men.

I am very grateful for my family and friends, both men and women, who have been supportive of me. My Mom affectionately jokes, “I had a boy and a girl and I only had one child!”

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