I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.

Donations to my legal defense fund really help, and I think keeping me motivated and spreading the message are also very important.

There is an awful lot of work to do to protect trans folks. We are still disproportionally poor and administratively and institutionally discriminated against at all levels of society.

It's not my goal to be a leader or spokesperson, or anything like that.

Even if I didn't have the support that I have, I would still be fighting the same fights, and I would still be the same person that I am today.

I think we can achieve meaningful change, but only if we demand that the institutions themselves change their behavior.

I think the increased ubiquity of the internet and networked computing in general allowed me to have some tether no matter where I was geographically. I could log in to a computer from anywhere in the world and access the same information and the same people. It allowed me to transcend the physical differences.