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" As for Amber, “I looked heavily into it,” she told me during our first meeting. “I could tell you everything under the sun about being transgender. I’d go through these lists I’d find online. They would ask questions like, ‘Do you cry when you think about having a vagina?’ And I’d think, ‘No, not really.’ Maybe if somebody told me I could choose one sex or the other I would have picked the other, but I don’t feel upset about it. I had all these conflicting feelings. Like, I don’t really care about my boobs. That’s weird, right? So then I dealt with ‘Am I a biological mistake?’” Ultimately, Amber realized she did not want to give up who she was, did not want to be someone completely new: “I mean, say your name is Cheryl,” she explained, “and you’re becoming Sean. You have to not want to be Cheryl anymore and never talk about Cheryl again. “Well,” she added, sitting forward in her chair, “I love being Amber. I could never in a million years imagine not being Amber. I am Amber. And I don’t know if I fit being a lesbian perfectly, but I’m definitely not a transgender person. I can live my life in this body, confident and happy, and in a healthy relationship.” She leaned back again, letting her hands drop to her lap. “And it took me a year, an entire year, to be able to sit here and tell you that. "

Peggy Orenstein , Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape


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Peggy Orenstein quote : As for Amber, “I looked heavily into it,” she told me during our first meeting. “I could tell you everything under the sun about being transgender. I’d go through these lists I’d find online. They would ask questions like, ‘Do you cry when you think about having a vagina?’ And I’d think, ‘No, not really.’ Maybe if somebody told me I could choose one sex or the other I would have picked the other, but I don’t feel upset about it. I had all these conflicting feelings. Like, I don’t really care about my boobs. That’s weird, right? So then I dealt with ‘Am I a biological mistake?’” Ultimately, Amber realized she did not want to give up who she was, did not want to be someone completely new: “I mean, say your name is Cheryl,” she explained, “and you’re becoming Sean. You have to not want to be Cheryl anymore and never talk about Cheryl again. “Well,” she added, sitting forward in her chair, “I love being Amber. I could never in a million years imagine not being Amber. I am Amber. And I don’t know if I fit being a lesbian perfectly, but I’m definitely not a transgender person. I can live my life in this body, confident and happy, and in a healthy relationship.” She leaned back again, letting her hands drop to her lap. “And it took me a year, an entire year, to be able to sit here and tell you that.