(hair dryer running)
- I'm Maddie. Madison Dalton.
I go by she/her pronouns,
and I identify as transfeminine.
I'm a junior now.
Back when I was in eighth grade,
over winter break,
that's when I first was exposed to,
I guess the word transgender,
as I was reading about it,
I just felt like that was me,
but I felt like I had
to prove it to myself.
It was a lot of just like researching
like how people felt,
and how other people
found out they were trans,
and eventually I just
said "To hell with it.
"If I'm spending this much time end energy
"trying to decide,
"then I probably am,
"because I don't think
I would be in this much,
"or I don't think I
would be agonizing over
"whether I am this much if I wasn't."
And so then nearly a year later,
then I came out to my parents.
That was the first
really difficult external
thing that I had done,
'cause I knew they were liberal,
but I wasn't sure quite
how they would react.
There was just a little bit of opposition,
like my mom originally didn't want me
to transition medically at all,
but as she learned more
about being transgender,
she came around to it.
- Aw, that's awesome.
That's good.
- If you had to say what
the most difficult part
of this process has been, what is it?
- Facing dysphoria probably.
Just that overwhelming feeling that makes,
it's just...
It's where
you feel like your body
or any aspect of you really,
just doesn't match your identity,
and it's awful.
It completely shatters your confidence.
It is so overwhelming.
It feels like everything is
crashing down all around you.
It makes you just want to
stay in your room under the covers
and hide away from the world.
It's one of the worst feelings
I've ever felt probably.
One of the times that it's the worst
is when you're misgendered,
or somebody deadnames you.
Deadnaming is just
where somebody calls you
by the name that you
were assigned at birth,
rather than your real name
that you actually use.
Yeah, it's as simple as that.
Misgendering is just where
somebody uses the pronouns
that match the gender that
you were assigned at birth,
or not match, but are traditionally used
with the gender that you
were assigned at birth.
- Why is that so painful
for a transgender person?
- On the surface, it
might not seem like much,
like you might think it's just words,
but it indicates a much
deeper disagreement than that.
It indicates that
they view your entire identity as fake,
or there's a concept called passing,
where people perceive you as cisgender,
which is the term for somebody
who is not transgender.
For some trans people
that's really important.
For some trans people they
don't care about that at all.
I don't always pass and I usually like to,
but when somebody
deadnames or misgenders you
it makes you think
that you don't pass, first of all.
You will never pass,
and they'd be calling me a boy,
and if they're calling me a boy
then that's how they see me.
Just, yeah.
Dysphoria like I talked about before.
- [Voiceover] How important
has it been to have supports
like Mr. Prince, Dr. Aberli
as you've been going
through this transition?
- So, so, so important.
If Dr. Aberli wasn't on my side,
then it means that the
students and teachers
wouldn't have to use my name and pronouns.
It means that I wouldn't
be able to use the bathroom
or locker rooms that I identify with.
I mean it all comes back to the dysphoria
that you feel because of that.
That I feel because of that.
- Can you imagine if you were at a school
where the school wasn't...
- Yeah I can.
I have friends in not so friendly places,
and some of them
So many trans people have depression.
Some of them are just barely hanging on.
They hate going to school.
Every day is a struggle just
to exist,
let alone learn and do the things
that you're supposed
to be doing in school.
That's a good argument
for schools supporting trans students.
It's so difficult for them to
actually receive an education
when they're constantly being harassed
by the students and
teachers and administrators.
I really wanna stress that
pretty much everything you've shown,
like all of my classmates being accepting
and allowing you to come into the school,
and my house, and my room,
and my makeup and jewelry,
and me having my hair long and my clothes.
I really want to stress that that is not,
most people don't get that
because they don't have as
much privilege as I've had,
or their situation in life.
Being trans is about so, so much more
than the bathroom issue.
There are so many homeless trans people,
or trans people living in poverty,
or trans people who've
attempted to kill themselves,
or trans people living
with depression and anxiety
or mental health,
or trans people who can't
get housing or jobs.
The bathroom issue is just
such a small part of it,
and I really want to stress that.
