When I was a freshman in college, I met someone who was transgender – she later became one of my closest friends. Back them, she was a mentor, an older peer educator who would teach me much of what I now know about gender politics. I listened to her coming out story as we all had to share ours and cried my eyes out. I had no idea there were people like her, as weird as that sounds. Those three days fundamentally changed my being – about 3 years later I would enter my own struggle with my given gender and reject it. But it took some time to truly understand some of the concepts I now discuss and it was all thanks to her struggles. I stood by her through many altercations on the streets with people, through many vigils for trans friends murdered, through her being on a cover of a book about transgender youth in NY, etc. I am lucky to have her as a friend and my children are luckier still.