While reading this novel, my thoughts on transgender and transsexual individuals were pretty solid and solid. For example, I knew from reading the textbook that a transgender is a person who is born, in Jenny's case, male, but psychologically and emotionally born female. However, Jenny took it a step further and became a transsexual, which is an individual who has undergone surgery to obtain genitals that match their internal psychological and emotional gender, which in her case was female. Therefore, Jenny Finney Boylan would be considered a transsexual woman. What I didn't know before reading this book is how tedious the process of changing sex is. To be honest I never thought about the process a transsexual goes through to become themselves, I didn't think about the many steps needed to achieve the feminine voice or appearance that Jenny aspired to. I also didn't think about the surgery and how scary that type of surgery could be. For example, on page 124 Jennifer is discussing the transition process with her psychologist, Doctor Strange. On this page Doctor Strange is starting to educate Jenny, and essentially myself, on how to begin the transition to becoming a woman. First Doctor Strange was listing the effects the hormones would have on Jenny's body, and first of all they seemed to make sense; softer skin, softer hair, but I never knew the physical changes hormones could have on someone, especially a man. For example, I learned that there is something called “fat migration.” This is when the fat on previous parts of your body migrates to another location. I learned from this novel that fat migration is the result of hormones, and since Jenny was once a man, her face would become less r... middle of paper... Patrick was very young. In the last section of the novel they were only six and eight years old. Aside from age, they knew their “Maddy” had changed, but they didn't care, they still loved her because she was still herself. The most surprising part of the novel was the scene where Jennifer and her family drove through Boston looking for the magic shop. Jennifer and Grace were reassuring the kids that being transsexual is not a disease, and in this discussion Jennifer apologized for leaving them without a father, and Luke responds with such certainty that he doesn't mind growing up without a father, because he likes "Maddy" in this way, as a woman and not as a man (p. 262). This is a really valuable lesson to learn from She's Not There; while not everyone will accept (Jenny's sister), it doesn't matter as long as your kids and partner accept you.