When I was a teenager in the early 2000s and started to experience acute gender dysphoria with the onset of puberty, I didn’t believe it was possible for doctors to help me. I felt – as teenagers so often do – that I was the only person in the world feeling what I was feeling. Yet I also experienced a growing sense that the profound discomfort with my body and the gender role I was being compelled to occupy was not the typical teenage angst of my classmates. I developed an anxiety disorder and withdrew from friendships.
