'Prison within a prison': A transgender inmate's years-long battle for treatment
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/26/transgender-woman-inmate-prison-michelle-norsworthy
The Guardian/Ed Pilkington in Mule Creek state prison, Ione, California
@edpilkington
Sunday 26 July 2015 07.09 EDT
"A single word changed Michelle Norsworthy's life forever. Until she heard it, she had no way to express herself and her emotions always came out wrong. She would explode in anger, or in desperation cut herself until the blood flowed.
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Then in 1994, at the age of 30, she met a psychiatrist who gave her the gift of that one word: transsexual. "I'd never heard it before," Norsworthy said. "I looked it up in a dictionary back in my cell and it clicked – a person who strongly identifies with the opposite sex."