What does it mean to be...

Transgender?

You may have heard the word Transgender tossed around a lot recently and wondered what it meant. First thing to know is that it is not, by any means a bad word.

When you were born you were assigned a gender.

Many parents assign their child the girl or the boy gender.

For many people, the gender their parents chose for them fits perfectly and they love it!

But for some, their parents made a mistake and chose the wrong gender...

When the wrong gender is chosen, some people have to live with being called something they are not for awhile.

Jessica

She

Girl

I'm John.

I'm a boy.

I like "he"...

It's kind of like on Halloween how you wear a costume! You aren't yourself and you are pretending to be something else. But after Halloween is over you get to take your costume off.

Now imagine if you weren't allowed to ever take off your costume and nobody knew who you really were.

That would be very

frustrating!

Nobody would get to know the real you! Or know how cool you are!