Nonetheless, he is adamant that extensive therapy must accompany any medical transition. Part of a therapist’s role, he says, is to question adolescents’ self-assessment and to help them figure out if they are even trans. Because many of them, he says, may not be. “A sixteen-year-old kid might think that they’re this, but do they actually know? And I can say that, as a fifty-seven-year-old person. You grow and you learn through experience. And at sixteen, how much experience have you had?”
