My name is Thomas, and I’m a transgender man. I grew up in a small farm town in Massachusetts in the United States. From the time that I was very little - around four or five years old - I knew that I was different. It didn’t bother me too much at first. I figured I was just one of the guys. Time passed, and I realized how different I was from other people. It wasn’t just my feeling that I was a boy, when everyone was calling me a girl. My perspective was different
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I grew up with a very strict Christian upbringing, and I followed it. I thought as a little kid, that as long as I agreed about all the things people said about people who were different, I would somehow slide by. I might actually survive all the people making fun of me and calling me names. I knew I was none of the things that people called me back then. I knew I was different.