Erik Ly's crowdfunding campaign. Ly, who identifies as transmasculine, said he had already met with a Melbourne surgeon and booked the surgery for early December. The operation will remove most of the breast tissue and reconstruct the chest into a masculine shape. The campaign ends on Friday and has so far raised more than $4000. Ly said his family refused to accept him and that last year he made the difficult decision to leave home. "All I wanted was to be able to be myself entirely and to be able to start taking hormone and to get surgery as soon as I could," he said.

"After two-and-a-half years of struggling to find acceptance within my family and within the schools that I have been attending, I finally found the freedom to be exactly who I am." Ly told Fairfax Media last month he planned to lodge a complaint with the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission about two schools he said discriminated against him. Head of Transgender Victoria Sally Goldner said Ly's story was not uncommon and that out-of-pocket surgery expenses typically went as high as $15,000. "This is unfortunately a standard scenario that trans and gender diverse people need to cover out of pocket surgery costs," Ms Goldner said. "If you're isolated then you may not have as much connectedness to the trans and gender diverse world and may not be able to do a fund-raiser. You can therefore end up stuck, you can't move forward and you can't go back in terms of your journey to be who you need to be."

In his crowdfunding campaign statement, Ly said he suffered from dysphoria and felt "very distressed, depressed and trapped in a body that I can't relate to". He said he wears a binder to help flatten his chest. "But this is only a temporary solution and I'm still being restricted from many activities that most people would take it for granted," he said. "I know that it's a big risk and that it could damage my chest and stop me from breathing, but having other people seeing the unwanted part on my body would trigger my dysphoria a lot and made me feel even worse about myself." Ly said the operation would make his life "so much easier and significantly reduce the amount of distress and depression from the dysphoria that I have to face every day". "I'm very excited, sort of scared, nervous and happy at the same time," he said. "I can't wait until I could go swimming again and feel more comfortable hanging out with my classmates. Most importantly, I can't wait until I could see more of myself reflected in the mirror."





