This is an unpopular opinion, but y’all are forgetting about inflation. $60 in 2017 is $78 in 2025. $300 in 2017 is $390 today.

My ex always mocked me for the prices of Nintendo switch games. She even got me into playing games on my PC. But except for trackmania, I always gravitate back to the Switch. And I’m definitely in a priveleged place so take this with a grain of salt, but I’m buying the Switch 2 pretty much no matter what. To me it’s worth the cost.

I’m definitely still scared, but I’m still glad I did it

Of course they have a record of it

As a trans person, I’m so glad I listened to my paranoia last year and got my US passport and license updated to my current gender.

Yeah, it’s more like pulling the lever slows the trolley down. It’s still killing people, but pulling the lever is obviously better than doing nothing while we work on a way to derail the trolley.

This sounds like a great first step for him. I’m guessing it doesn’t feel great that support for you is conditional on you receiving mental health counseling. There are a few conditions that might look like gender dysphoria but are not (Dissociative Identity Disorder, in which a person has multiple parts living in the same brain, some of which may be a different gender, and Borderline Personality Disorder may lead some people to constantly switch identities), but generally speaking, and even with those disorders, it’s best practice to trust the person that says they are transgender and support them however they need.

Mental health counseling may still be a good idea for you. First, it’s good to establish a relationship with a mental health provider who can write letters of support for you to give to pcps and surgeons to help you receive any care you might need. Second, transgender people often have co-occurieg mental health issues. This is largely due to your identity being rejected during childhood, which causes gender minority stress. Some have theorized that DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) might be a good fit for people with gender dysphoria. And mindfulness, anecdotally, has been very good for me personally dealing with dysphoria. It is not a replacement for transitioning, though. A self guided transition still has the most evidence supporting its efficacy. And mental health should not be a prerequisite to transition related healthcare, even though it unfortunately is sometimes.

I am a social work student, not a mental health professional, so take what I say with a big grain of salt.