From the moment we’re brought home from the hospital, most everybody is presented as a specific gender. You don either a blue or pink hat, and “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” birth announcements are soon delivered to family and friends. Gender is instilled in us, drilled into our heads and accepted by many – but what about those who don’t identify with the label they were given?

16-year-old senior Ash Miller stated that he began his own transition “somewhere in freshman or sophomore year.”

With short black hair and kind brown eyes, Ash is your typical boy – except he was assigned the incorrect gender at birth. When asked if he had always known his gender identity, Ash shook his head. “It took me a while to realize,” he said.

Gender identity is one’s personal sense of self, and whether one identifies as male, female, both, or neither. Transgender, according to the American Psychological Association, is an “umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.

“I think I realized in about 7th grade… only really late 8th did I realize what I was feeling, but I started feeling like, ‘this isn’t quite right,’ in 7th grade.” However, the idea of being transgender wasn’t new to him – his older brother, who also attended Eleanor Roosevelt HS, is transgender as well. A smile spread across Ash’s face as he joked that he was “following in his [brother’s] footsteps.”

Self-reflection led Ash to reply in a way that forever changed his life – “I kind of feel like that too.”

Coming to terms with his identity “felt really good,” though he admitted that “it was a little scary at first.” “I didn’t really want to accept it… I didn’t want to be different, but when I got to high school I realized that I could really change and I could be who I wanted to be. It was really freeing and liberating.”

Ash admitted that the outpour of support from both friends and family after coming out was unexpected, but greatly appreciated.

Such acceptance does not take away from the fact that discrimination is still a huge issue. Trans Student Educational Resources reports that 58.7% of gender nonconforming individuals were verbally harassed in school due to their identity.

Ash knows verbal harassment all too well. “People just come up to me in the hallways and be like ‘Are you a girl or a boy?’” Although he has faced hardships, Ash’s message is clear. “There’s a community for everyone. If people don’t accept you where you are, you will find a group of people who are embracing and lovely, and they’ll accept you no matter what… you can be whatever, and they’re like, ‘sure!’”

If you are or believe you may be transgender and would like to speak to someone who is also transgender, please call the Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860.