A lot of people may feel very
comfortable in the gender that they were
assigned at birth and other people may
feel that there's a great discrepancy,
but, at the end of the day, it's the human
being we're talking about and that's
where we come in, the mental health
professionals, the psychiatrist, to treat
the entire person. It's wonderful that
people want to educate themselves to
learn more, but, at the day of the day, there
will be some things that we don't fully
understand. One has to respect both sides,
both the sameness of humanity and the
many, many different wonderful faces that
humanity has. In the past, it used to be
about tolerance, tolerating a difference,
tolerating a gay person, tolerating a
transgender person; allowing the person
who is much less privileged to enjoy a
little bit of life herself or himself as
well. Thankfully, we have moved away from
that kind of very hierarchical way of
looking at the world and these days
we talk about celebrating the lives,
the differences that we see all around
us. My advice would be keep educating
yourself, finding more about different
aspects of sexuality, different aspects
of gender identity, of gender expression.
Meet some transgender people. Get to know
some people who may not be quite as
black and white as most of us were
raised to be and to feel, and that will
go a long long long way.
 
