9781422275290

Words to Understand Asexual: A person who feels very little or no sexual attraction to people of any gender. Genderqueer: When a person doesn’t identify as only male or female. They could identity as neither gender or some combination of both. Identity: How people define themselves, including all aspects they consider important to who they are. Pansexual: A person whose attraction to a person is independent of that person’s gender. Stereotype: Using one aspect of a person to make assumptions about the rest of who they are. Born as a biological girl, Jamie was always just thought of as a tomboy. But he felt there was more to it. “I had always just thought I was a boy when I was a really young kid, and then as I grew up I realized that I was different. I felt like I just needed to fit in and live as female. I felt very uncomfortable. I had these feelings, but I didn’t know how to describe them. I didn’t know what I was feeling was possible and was a real thing that I could do something about.” It wasn’t until later that he found the word to put to what he was experiencing. “The light bulb moment came when I was sixteen, and I just happened to watch a documentary about a young trans guy,” he said on his YouTube channel, Jammidodger. “I made this huge discovery about myself, and I finally had a way to describe how I was feeling.” Watching the documentary and realizing there were others like him also allowed Jamie to “accept it about myself.” Realizing his identity as a transgender man also gave him the ability to find others like him who could relate to what he was going through.

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