Call her Jessica. Jess sounds too much like Jeff.

She sits across the table. Her hands are strong, but her body and eyes are gentle, feminine. Jessica Lynn is an open book.

“Do I freak you out?” she asks.

The coffee shop is cute and pretentious— an enclave of alternative ideas and people. Still, I’ve never been at a table with a she who used to be a he.

The irony.

The uneasy reservations I have are what Jessica is trying to pull out into the open and squash. She’s travelled up and down the west coast like a Spanish missionary on a quest for tolerance. She’s visited them all: Hancock College, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, CSULA, Loyola Marymount. She comes as the personification of sex textbooks and psychology class hypotheticals.

It started with a psychology class Lynn took at Hancock College. When transexualism became the topic of discussion, Jessica offered to share her story of transition with the professor, then the class. That’s when she realized the empowerment and knowledge she was in a position to present. Her conversations spread.

“I can help an unbelievable amount of people. When I go and speak to anywhere between 20 and 100 students, they’re engaged listening to me. Every time I’ve ever spoken, professors and students alike have said, ‘We get people lecturing in here all the time, but nobody converses with the students, nobody is open.’ You’re learning from me. Every one of those kids went home and told their mother, told their father, told their sisters, told their brothers.”

The momentum is building; Lynn isn’t looking back. In the past year, she’s established Your True Gender, a resource to help increase visibility for her public speaking and prevailing resource for seeking information on transexuallism. Growing up in a world where transexual feelings shoved her into a corner of isolation are unwavering in memory. With the internet and ease of communication, Lynn hopes to see a world where questioning sexuality isn’t something people have to suppress or smother away, but can bring out in the open to find answers.

“I wish that somebody was out there that I could ask questions. I’d never really heard of transexuality. I’ve had so many one-on-one’s with kids questioning their sexuality. Come and talk to me. My biggest thing was recommending that people talk to psychologists. I would love to open up peoples’ eyes to this,” she said.

Lynn paused, her eyes beamed past introspectively.

“If I had someone, or my parents to talk to about it, I would’ve transitioned at a much younger age.”

Jessica Lynn’s tour has inherently sparked conversations, with some participants in said discussion joining her cause. Cal Poly business administration senior Don Golinveaux hopped on the wagon, becoming a main contributor to the cause of Jessica Lynn. He’s helped her establish an internet presence and construct a legitimate organization to promote her roaming tour of acceptance.

Along with countless students, professors and passerby, he was captivated by her unique candidness.

“She has a gift for sharing who she is as an actual person. A lot of trans people that you have these days don’t really open up as much because there’s this movement in keeping things private. Jessica is entirely open, she shares everything. She doesn’t hide anything. She gives a really candid look to the life of a trans person.”

According to both Lynn and Golinveaux, emotional support is essential to transexuals given the especially harsh social stigma, which leads to much higher suicide and homicide rates within the community. According to the LA Times, the attempted suicide rate for transgendered people rests around 40%.

“It’s very different. Trans people are marginalized even within the LGBT community. They’re the most marginalized group that I can think of in society. It’s a really difficult life to live, and Jessica presents how that can be done and how you can come out of it a happy person. Transitioning can be good, and she presents it as it actually is.”

An ambition to perpetuate the trans conversation comes in the form of the upcoming Your True Gender Conference 2015. The organization’s first real project is materializing a gathering of resources for those asking themselves serious questions about their gender and corresponding sexualities. Tentatively to be held on October 9, 10, and 11 at Cal Poly’s campus, the conference will give attendees the opportunity to consult world leading transition surgeons, along with a myriad of options and answers.

“Dr. Bowers, Dr. Beck, Dr. Meltzer. These are the biggest doctors in the world for transgendered. Dr. Bowers is considered a rockstar, and Dr. Jamison Greene, a well known educator, speaker, author and advocate, will be the keynote speaker . Normally at these conferences you get one or two doctors. We’ve already confirmed five or six, they’re the very best in the world. They’re saying that this will be the biggest conference of its kind ever.”

Your True Gender Conference 2015

The 21st century has yielded a new era of acceptance for members of the LGBT community. That said, the conversation is far from over, especially for members of the transgender community, who’re still largely seen with disdain in contemporary society. Jessica Lynn hopes to bring her words and experiences to a larger audience, and provide help for those. She’ll never forget coming of age in a time when that helping hand wasn’t available for her.

Official: Jessica Lynn

By: William Peischel