Transgender children and teenagers are transitioning earlier than ever, raising a new set of challenges for doctors and families.

The story of how CeCe McDonald, a transgender woman who endured homelessness and other hardships as a teen, galvanized the trans and queer community and became a hero after defending herself in an attack.

On the oddly spiritual experience of transitioning:

I have made my transition into a ritual. It’s like church to me, every other Sunday. It takes me about half an hour in the little bathroom. I lay everything out like a makeshift altar: bag of syringes, alcohol wipes, pickle Band-Aids, vial of testosterone. I don’t like to be bothered, but sometimes I think about certain people being there. It seems strange to invite anybody. Sometimes my mouth gets dry in the middle and I go for a glass of water. Or I feel lightheaded so I break and chew some multivitamins. Down in Iowa for Christmas, my mother asks me if my shots are “self-administered”; she means am I doing them on my own, but all I can hear is the word “minister” and I remember when, as a toddler on the brink of baptism, I asked my parents if I was going to be “pasteurized.” Like milk, boiled clean. When we say we are moved, it is always some liquid, as Anne Enright writes in “My Milk.”

If you’ve been following Longreads for a while, you may have seen this excellent Rolling Stone story from last year by Josh Eells, “The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel”, about Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace’s transition.

This MTV House of Style short reveals more about her life, and the small things she’s discovered with regard to clothing, makeup and style. And as Grace notes at the end of the clip, “A lot of tips I picked up were from other trans women on the Internet… When I was 14 years old if I was watching House of Style watching a transsexual being interviewed and talking about that, it would have completely changed my life. I would have felt saved.”

The lead singer of Against Me!, married with a child, is now Laura Jane Grace. She speaks out about gender dysphoria, which left her uncomfortable in a male body for as long as she can remember:

“In retrospect, the lyrics are almost shockingly direct: If I could have chosen I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her / One day I’d find an honest man to make my husband

“Gabel says he thought he was ‘completely outing himself’ with a lyric like that. He expected to be confronted – a part of him even craved it. But if anyone suspected anything, no one brought it up. ‘When we did that song, I was like, “What is that about?”‘ says Butch Vig, who produced Against Me!’s last two albums. ‘He just kind of laughed it off. He said, “I was stoned and dreaming about what life can be.”‘”