Some students often feel that the sex they were born as differs from the gender they feel on the inside. Some students often struggle with changing their physical appearance to match how they feel. Two SRU students decided to transition to make themselves feel the same on the inside and outside.
Sophomore psychology major and trans-man, Morgan Scott said when he was younger, he was the basic tom boy.
“I had Legos, Ninja Turtles, Yu-Gi-Oh cards and Pokémon cards,” Scott said. “I really didn’t have anything feminine at all. I refused dresses as soon as I was knowledgable of it.”
Scott said to him, being female just didn’t feel right. He said he wasn’t feminine at all, but he wasn’t over-the-top masculine at the time either because he had to hide it until he figured out that he was transgender.
In order to receive top surgery to remove his breasts, Scott said he started a GoFundMe page. GoFundMe is a fundraising website used to raise money online. Scott said a GoFundMe page was his absolute last decision.
“I didn’t want to do it because the top surgery that I had was $8,000,” Scott said. “We tried to reach out to my insurance to see what they would do, but they only covered hormone therapy and counseling, not any surgeries. So, my parents thought about GoFundMe.”
Scott said he didn’t want to return to college until he had the top surgery. Since Scott said his parents didn’t want him to stop school, they dipped into their line of credit. Scott said he has to pay his parents back half of the $8,000 throughout the next few years.
Scott said now, he feels a lot better because the United States have passed a lot more laws involving the LGBT community. Scott also said he’s not as terrified to use the bathrooms anymore.
“In here (Smith Student Center,) I’ll use the gender neutral restrooms, but in buildings like Spotts, I’ll use the men’s restroom.”
Scott said if he would want students to know anything about his transition, it’s that he’s transitioning not just because he wants to, he’s transitioning because he needs to.
“It’s not just like I just decided one day to switch my gender,” Scott said.
Sophomore public relations major and trans-woman GiGi, who asked that her last name be withheld, said when she was younger, she would always play with Barbie dolls, but she would also play with Power Rangers as well. She said she was always interested in girly things, but that she also liked weird and creepy things, like Goosebumps. GiGi said she started to feel different in middle school.
She said she didn’t know there was a term for being transgender until she saw the YouTuber, Gigi Gorgeous.
Gorgeous is a trans-woman who makes daily videos on YouTube for her viewers.
“I was learning from her and I was like, ‘oh my goodness, this is me,’” GiGi said.
GiGi said her moods vary from day to day.
“You have your good days and you have your bad days,” GiGi said. “The good days are really, really good, so the bad days are worth the good days because the good outweighs the bad. It’s a struggle, but everyone in life has their own struggle, and this just happens to be my struggle.”
Transitioning isn’t just about the physical changes that a person goes through, but the mental changes as well, GiGi said. She said the mental transition is a lot harder than the physical transition.
“Although the physical transitions are a lot more expensive, the mental transition is like a war,” she said.
GiGi is also well known on Twitter for getting into an altercation with entertainment blogger, Perez Hilton. She said the argument occurred because Hilton was being negative to people online.
“For someone who is in the LGBT community and for Perez Hilton to be a gay man, and to be as openly mean as he is to other people, I just think that’s awful because you’re in a community yourself that is undermined and the bottom dogs,” she said. “So, I just let him know about himself in about ten different tweets, and I said a lot of bad thing to Perez, he said some bad things back, and then he blocked me”
GiGi said by being transgender, most people feel that it is an open invitation to come up and touch her, which isn’t true.
“My favorite one is when people are like, ‘oh my goodness, I never knew you were transgender until my friend told me; can I get a picture?’”
