focusing on transgender people, praising the legislation as the means for the state to “remain a refuge of sanity.”Raised as a boy, she was uncomfortable in her body but never sure why. The khaki pants and polo shirts she wore to church seemed wrong. She never felt right taking herViolet Rin looks at a computer screen as she works her IT job from her home in Middleburg, Fla.
Raised in a Republican family but uninterested in politics, Rin didn’t know then that she was transgender.Florida is banning gender-affirming care for minors and enacting a series of other anti-LGBTQ+ bills signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. “I turned the flashlight on myself. The walls I had built up weren’t there. It was sticks glued to rocks and it tumbled,” she said. “It was like a dark dungeon around me fell, revealing the sunlight in a world of colors.”For months, she continued to virtually embody a girl. She hired an artist to create an avatar in a bubble-gum pink off-the-shoulder long-sleeved crop top with matching mini-shorts and striped over-the-knee socks. The big bow on the head remained, now in pink.
On May 2, 2022, she took her first dose of estrogen and started giving herself weekly shots to the thigh. Over months, she felt and looked different. Her breasts grew. Body fat spread to her hips and backside. Her skin became softer.Some transgender people stop hormone replacement therapy after a short period and others go on and off, depending on the effects they desire. Some don’t take hormones at all. Rin expected to be on them for the rest of her life.
The occasional stranger called her “sir.” One friend suggested she fell for a trend in gender fluidity.