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Transgender Identity

Decent Essays

Transgender, a term I was not too familiar with until I read the insightful book Luna by Julie Anne Peters. Before reading this novel I thought that if you were transgender that meant you wanted to change your sex, because you thought you were born as the wrong one; however, there is more to it than this. A person that is transgender goes through cycles of transformation in order to get to the point where they finally look the same outside as they do on the inside. Luna, the chosen name for Liam, is not only the name for the transgender character that goes from male to female, it is also a major symbol that makes the theme of the novel stronger. The author chose the name Luna to symbolize the moon, and the moon represents the cycles that a transgender person must go through; similar to how the moon goes through cycles. The cycles that Luna goes through include: first, by dressing in girl clothes only in Regan’s room at night, then, she went out in a public and out of routine area dressed up, next, she went to school as her real self, and lastly Luna told her parents who she really is. But ultimately the true final stage would be to start living as a woman for an entire year, then after getting two letters from psychotherapists, Luna would undergo sex reassignment surgery; also known as “the Harry Benjamin standards” (Peters 239). Luna went through many cycles of change, and these cycles took lots of time and patience. Another way the name of Luna relates to the moon, is

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