The walkway from the campus library to the student union was lined with rainbow flags mixed with blue, pink, and white transgender flags. The Pride Week flag display guided the noontime pedestrian traffic toward the busy plaza filled with food trucks, merchandise booths, and tables representing advocacy organizations.

This year our local university health service had a table framed by banners promoting their Trans Health program. They were not being coy or subtle about medical interventions. The banners openly listed the availability of a full range of services: counseling, puberty blockers, hormone replacement, brow reshaping, tracheal reshaping, breast augmentation or reduction, vaginoplasty and phalloplasty. The table was loaded with flyers and pamphlets providing phone numbers and web addresses for service providers and support groups.

I stopped by to talk with the two people staffing the table, and thanked them for being there. We discussed about how much times had changed from the days when transgender was seen as a shameful mental health problem to be managed quietly. Outreach like this is so important to increase public awareness of the trans community, and to provide a welcoming assurance to those questioning their gender that they will be taken seriously and treated compassionately. I am sure the lives of many BC readers would have been very different if trans health outreach like this booth had been encountered when we were younger.