Hello Lisa,

Do people “fail” at transition? Yes. Do people change their minds? Yes. Do people regret going through with hormones and surgery? Yes.

But people fail at marriage and regret who they chose as a partner, but I would be skeptical of someone who divorced and then wrote a book, “Marriages don’t work.” Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. Half of marriages end in divorce. But we don’t try and ban them. Marriages are opening up to everyone, including people like me. So I get to fail at marriage, but at least no one tries to tell me how crazy I am given the odds of divorce.

And we don’t have to leave it at marriage. We could be looking at how many people fail to get into law school, or medical school, or who are trying to get ordained, or teams trying to make it to the superbowl.

Ah! But suicide. Few of those people commit suicide over it. Right? People should only be prevented from getting something if they are going to commit suicide. Right?

But why are the rates so high? Is it the fault of the people whose core identity is dismissed as an oddity, or a one liner by some standup comic going for the cheap laugh, or who are ridiculed for their very being? Take the average person and heap that on them and see what happens. Try living a lie every day. Year in and year out. Most people would say that living a lie is soul destroying.

Yet, who wouldn’t be damaged by having to go through the motions of the wrong sex role. By your name and writing, Lisa, I assume you are a heteronormative, cis, female. What if you were sentenced to live in a men’s prison for a crime you did not commit? Or if that’s too harsh an analogy, how about being put in the armed forces in an all-male unit on a remote island? What if during that time they put male hormones into you, against your will!, to “toughen you up” for what’s ahead? Would you at some point decide to end it all? And your body starts morphing into a male form. Would you have suicidal thoughts? Many would.

But say you tough it out and try to blend in as one of the guys so you don’t get sh*t kicked out of you by your fellows? And then one day a pardon comes through. Or maybe the war is over. The day you have dreamt of all these years when you thought you had a life sentence. Free at last! And then you go back into society, thoroughly masculinized. And suddenly men shun you. They won’t date you. You are called names. People tell you what a weirdo you are.

You try and get medical help to undo all the effects of the male hormone,and people mostly laugh at you. Be happy in the body you have! You are told you will not be allowed to undo the effects of the hormones because the suicide rate is so high among people who are given treatment.

But you persist. You so through hell, but you manage to get the treatment after coughing up $50,000 to $100,000. And afterwards people still people insist you are a jailbird or a soldier and that you were the cause of your situation and you got what was coming to you. You can’t change your spots. You are defined by the experience of jail or being in that all-male military unit.

Can you even slightly identify with this scenario? Zoe Dolan speaks to this in a video in the film series “What’s Underneath.” People talk for about 10 or 15 minutes while taking off their outer layers of clothing, which is analogous to getting down to their basic stories. Sorry, less nudity than a Victoria’s Secret catalog, but there you are.

I invite you to watch her tell the agony she went through.

It is very tempting to read an article about how wrong and crazy people are who transition. How comical we are and unworthy of any kind of human understanding. Freaks. Right?

She speaks for herself, but she speaks for so many of us. Hear her words as you weigh where you come out on this issue.