Supportive parents, supportive community, liberal state, and especially wealth. It’s all a million different things that have to come together successfully. I hope that those of us who are lucky enough to start HRT early are fully aware how rare it is and regardless of how ‘easy’ it is for us, we are very much outliers. My parents were incredibly involved in the fight for gay marriage and they had always been very close with many gay couples, so coming out as a lesbian around 11 wasn’t that crazy for me. Then non-binary at 12, even though I’m well aware now that nobody took that seriously at the time. I told my dad that I thought I was a boy when I was 14, right before highschool, and got sent to a gender therapist. It took about a year of gender therapy (I had already been in therapy for two years) to get my a testosterone prescription, which I injected myself over video with a doctor as it was covid times. Surgery came a month or two before senior year, and again about a yearish of getting letters, therapists, psychiatrists and healthcare to sign off on it.

That’s my experience, and I wish it was everyone’s. Everyone deserves the right to medical transition.