Read Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out for Free Online

shocked.
    Once my mom found out, everything started changing for my brother. He started dressing more feminine. He wore more colors. He brought gay people to the house. My mom wanted to be supportive, but she couldn’t. She went to church and prayed for him. She cried over it. I have no idea if she spoke to the priest, but she did speak with her sisters. They all said, “He’ll come out of it. It’s just a phase.” Bull crap!
    I really was close to my extended family, but not anymore. They are just so narrow-minded. Every time I go over to my grandmother’s house, they want to pray for me. I really don’t need to be prayed for.
    I was always feminine. Even in my early teens, I was feminine. I’d ask my mom, “How come my voice isn’t getting deep?”
    “Oh, you’re just a late bloomer. Eventually, you will get a deep voice.” But I never did.

    Christina begged her mother not to send her to an all-boys Catholic school. Her mother insisted.
    At least send me to a coed Catholic school. She didn’t want to do that. She was under the assumption that I was straight — straight but feminine.
    My oldest brother, Elvin, had gone to an all-boys Catholic school, where he became disciplined and focused. So off I went to Mount Saint Michael Academy, a Catholic school for boys.

    I was so nervous. Before I went there, I asked my gay brother, Jonathan, “How do I act like a man?” He would tell me I had to walk a certain way, like the hoodlums on the street, walking with a little lean, like, a little ghetto, gangsta boy. I practiced.
    Jonathan said, “You have to change your clothes style too.”
    “Okay, what do I have to wear?”
    “You have to wear baggy pants. You have to wear oversize T-shirts, a do-rag, and sneakers.” Ugh! Everything I was not interested in! I liked wearing simple T-shirts with jeans. I’d look at girls’ clothes and think,
Oh, my God, I wish I could wear that!
    Jonathan taught me how to sit with my legs open, which I could never do naturally. I hated it. It was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world for me. It looked gross.
    Nothing came naturally to me. He told me I had to deepen my voice a little bit and talk like a man. That was kinda hard to keep up.
    When I walked into the all-boys school that first day, I felt I had done everything Jonathan taught me. I said, “Oh, hey, what’s up? My name is Matthew. Oh, what’s your name?” I wore baggy pants. It came off so phony; it just wasn’t me. At all!
    No one accepted me as a straight boy. Within a week, they started picking up that I was naturally feminine, a quiet kid, a shy kid. When I talked, I moved my hands around. When I drank something, I put my pinkie finger up. Those are not exactly masculine traits.
    People started talking. “I think he’s gay.” One boy who was nasty called me a faggot. I would stand in the courtyard in the school, and someone would beam double-A batteries at me, just to hurt me. If someone beams double-A batteries at you, it’s going to hurt. They would throw branches and twigs at me. They didn’t do it to my face. They would just toss it and act like it wasn’t them.
    Once the kids started picking on me, calling me names, I needed somewhere to go and vent. I went to the school counselors. I had four counselors in four years. I trusted all of them because I assumed they were professionals. And they were. They helped me a lot.
    Eventually I did find somebody to be my friend. Christopher. Christopher was a very feminine boy who liked Britney Spears, just like me. I had the feeling he was gay. When I asked him, though, he said he wasn’t. He played it up that he was a straight boy, but I wasn’t buying it. Eventually he came out to me and he became my best gay friend. He wasn’t transgender. He was just gay. We still talk to this day.
    Hoay is my best straight boy friend. I used to be very attracted to Hoay. When I was in my androgynous stage, I told him on several occasions, “I like you a