There are 700,000 transgender people in the United States (Gates). Imagine you are one of them. You recently turned nineteen and are enrolled at university. You are among the luckiest transgender people. Your university chose not to discriminate against you because of your gender identity when you applied. You come from a supportive family, so you have the opportunity to attend college and eventually have a well-paying job and the ability to support yourself, instead of being kicked out of your childhood home and forced into the sex trade to survive , like many young transgender people (Bigelsen). Your doctor chose to treat you despite your gender identity. For this reason you are luckier than most transgender people; However, you still face many daily challenges, even at your seemingly progressive university. Public toilets are always a dilemma. If you use the bathroom of your anatomical sex at birth, you will likely be molested. If you use the bathroom of the gender you identify, you may be kicked out. There is a set of unisex public restrooms on your university campus near the dining hall. You use them when you're near them, but spend most of your day in buildings on the other side of campus. You have to plan when you will eat and drink during the day because you don't have the luxury of using the bathroom whenever you want. When you meet new people, you often come across uncomfortable questions and comments like, "Have you had surgery?" or “So you really are the (wrong gender or sex).” Even after you correct people, some may choose to refer to you by pronouns other than the ones you prefer or to address you by the name you were given at birth rat... middle of paper... absolute determiners of behavior. Sex is a biological characteristic, and general differences between the sexes are byproducts of evolution. Gender, on the other hand, is a man-made concept, not a biological byproduct of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, so it is possible to redefine and reinterpret what gender is. Works Cited Bigelsen, Jayne. Homelessness, survival sex and human trafficking. House of the Alliance. Covenant House, May 2013. Web. December 6, 2013. Gates, Gary J., Ph.D. “How Many People Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender?” Williams Institute. UCLA School of Law, April 2011. Web. 06 December 2013. "Hate Crimes." Equality in Maryland. Equality Maryland, n.d. Web. December 06, 2013."Laboratory Members." Visual attention laboratory. Havard University, 2013. Web. 06 December 2013.LOVING v. VIRGINIA. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 06 December 2013.