“Being trans is like running away from home.” — Alok Vaid-Menon

I moved to the U.S. from the Philippines when I was 15, where I had been raised as a boy. About a decade later, I started to live as a woman and eventually transitioned. I think of migration and transition as two examples of the same process – moving from one home, one reality, to another.

But the two are also similar in a less obvious way. Like immigrants to the U.S., trans people who’ve moved from one gender to another are often expected to pick sides, to forget what we lost along the way just because we’re now in a happier place. There might be immigrants and trans people who are completely happy in their new homes, but I am not one of them. My relation to home, both in place and in gender, will always be conflicted and fraught. And being an immigrant helps me navigate my difficult feelings about gender as a trans person.