This blog post is a part of the series, “So Good,” developed by the APAGS Committee for Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. This series will discuss current events and how these events relate to LGBTQ+ graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the “So Good” series, please contact Mallaigh McGinley (they/them).

I believe that science can help us move towards a more kind, more just, and more equitable world, and that science can truly change lives for the better. When I initially attended undergrad from 2004-2006, I found I was consistently questioning myself and my life’s path. I felt, as I had for my entire life, that there was something wrong with me. No matter how hard I tried, I could not come up with the answers I needed to be successful. What I needed was to take the time necessary to figure out what I perceived was wrong with me, and to figure out what my path could actually be. I finally returned to continue my undergraduate degree in the Spring of 2015 after pursuing a completely different career in the restaurant industry. While I hadn’t exactly figured out what felt off, I did have a path – I saw the way the world treated those who did not fit within the standard conceptions of what was “normal” (e.g., transgender people, queer folks, BIPOC), and I wanted to do something to make it better. It’s the typical undergraduate student’s reason for pursuing an education in psychology: I wanted to help people. Less than one month after returning, I began to see news articles about the first in a series of papers from a longitudinal study following transgender children (Olson, Key, & Eaton, 2015). Reading the coverage of this article, and eventually the article itself, helped me realize that there were children out there who felt the way that I had felt as a child, and that they were remarkably similar to their cisgender peers. What this told me in that moment was that the way that I had felt all my life wasn’t beyond normal human variation; there was nothing wrong with me. It was then that I realized the power of scientific research to impact individuals and societies, while engaging in positive social change. While we have talked many times since I initially reached out to her, I don’t know if I have ever actually told Kristina that the article itself actually led me to becoming comfortable with who I am, and it led coming out. So… thanks, Kristina!

But we still live in a world where transgender people are misunderstood and discriminated against, in spite of landmark court decisions like Bostock v. Clayton County as well as the so-called “Transgender Tipping Point” that Time magazine declared in 2014.