Transgender Studies

I'm ftm transgender and I was born in Brazil. I'm 20 and have lived in the US for the last 18 years. I have my green card and I can now finally start applying for my US citizenship, all the while I am starting my transition in the next month or two. Here's my question/request of advice and knowledge: Do I go ahead and apply for my citizenship as male and change my name within my application process? (all with the help, of course, of a doctors note from my clinic Callen-Lorde) Would this hinder my application in any way? Would it delay it from being processed or even risk my citizenship from being denied by the US? If anyone has had any experience with this in the past or knows about it please let me know, any advice or answers would help. Thanks again.

left until my 1st appt. at Callen-Lorde to start the process of getting on T. Fuck man I can't wait, I'm getting so impatient but I know the less I think about (or try to at least) the faster these next couple of weeks will pass by. I can;t wait, I'm so excited and ready for this. Finally I can start to live my life and stop watching on the sidelines, seeing my life pass me by. Rebirth is on its way.

1 month down, about 2 months left.

I'm looking back on everything we learned as a class this semester, all the talks we went to, all the topics we touched upon each week, all the readings we did, all the people we got to know so deeply and personally through the stories the rich history that we covered over the course of this semester. This semester ends my sophomore year at Rutgers, and with being halfway done I'm really grateful for taking this class because other than it being the only class I've taken that I've hated to see end but, the knowledge I'm leaving with is so dear to my heart and special, and not to mention powerful. A lot of the people we learned about and the topics we discussed, at first, left me really sad and upset of how people are treated so badly and how this community is mistreated. Any other course would have just left me pitying the community, but this class had a good balance where we also learned actually political strategies on how to try and go about fixing what is not currently right. This class instilled a sense of confidence on this subject in which i now feel like i can carry out an intelligent and extremely well informed conversation and opinion if and when any of the topics we went over this semester are brought up. Awesome class filled with nothing but good energy and powerful knowledge. Thank you.

I loved this short yet powerful reading. Very in your face, demanding, and respectful all at the same time. I can imagine it being empowering and reassuring to other trans* women. This manifesto in particular talks to the trans* feminine community about growing up as young boys and expected to be "assertive, competitive, aggressive. etc." and their want to "wear makeup, and dresses, etc." were automatic portrayals of their 'faggotry'. i found it interesting that the author states that "we are not men, we are non-men, we are not women" because I've never seen or heard of trans* feminine individuals refer to themselves as 'non-men'. 

This reading was on the issues of trans*ness and immigration and the extreme hardship that ensues when both are merged and intertwined. It follows one Mexican trans* woman's, Christina Madrazo, account as a immigrant seeking refuge in the US. She ended up coming to the states illegally and got caught by US officials and sent to immigration detention where she was sexually abused by guards and placed with male detainees. She was planning to sue for harassment and violence she experienced but the guard that raped her only got charged with less than a year in prison. This reading exposes, through Madrazo's account while incarcerated, the flaws with the US immigration's handling and treatment of trans* immigrants and how their immigrant and trans* status worked together to put these individuals at larger disadvantages, subjecting them to violence, abuse, and extreme pain and suffering. When people are put into these immigration detentions, they have no real rights as human beings but are usually just kept there a while and sent back to their countries, but with someone like Madrazo who was trans* and seen as a spectacle, they become the center of abuse and without any resources, family, friends, anyone or anyway of getting help, they become lost in these systems and suffer harshly and even kept in detention for longer than they should be.