Avery / United States
“The biggest challenge I’ve experienced is losing friends and still feeling good about myself. I have lost friends when they find out that I’m transgender, and it’s really easy to think that it’s because I’m not good enough or normal enough for them to like me. I have to tell myself that I am exactly who I’m supposed to be and I deserve to have only the best people in my life who appreciate every part of who I am.
Right now I’m 12, and being 12 is pretty hard whether you’re transgender or not. I’m growing up, I want to be more independent, but that’s also a bit scary. I’m trying to figure out my place in the world and what I can do to make the world a better place but I have so much to learn, like just being really safe online.
In the future, I want to work for a video game company, maybe in character development or animating. And I LOVE doing voices. Video games are where I was able to start exploring who I am. I made my first avatar on a pre-K game website a girl and it felt so good. Now I play games that have openly gay and lesbian characters. Just like the National Geographic photo encouraged a lot of trans people and let them feel like they could transition, video games did that for me. I don’t want to be known as the transgender girl on the magazine cover for the rest of my life. But I would love to be the girl who helped create more diverse game characters who also happens to be transgender herself. Or a pro gamer who gets a trophy and holds it up saying ‘This is for all the other trans gamers out there. We are all winners.’”
