Biological sex doesn’t always match up with ‘brain sex’. You may be born as a male but may feel like a female, or the opposite can happen. In any case, you should make a decision. You can become the person you feel and want to be, or you can spent your lifetime pretending you don’t feel different inside. I think none of your choices will be easy, but you should make the effort! We have only one life and you deserve to live your own life the way you want. Don’t you? I know two people who chose to become the person they feel. Although they were famous in Turkey, they didn’t think about what the public’s opinion would be. Who are those people? Bülent Ersoy and Rüzgar Erkoçlar. Bülent Ersoy is a Turkish trans-woman celebrity and popular singer. She is known as one of the greatest singers of Ottoman music, fans called her Diva or Elder Sister. She was born as a male and became famous as a male singer but she had a sex reassignment surgery in London in 1981. Even though it’s a male name, she kept the name "Bülent”. Over the years, Ersoy has become a symbol for the increased tolerance for LGBT figures in Turkey. Rüzgar Erkoçlar who is a former actress and model, was born in Turkey as a female person. He became famous with sanitary napkin ads before he had sex reassignment surgery in February 2013 and became a male. He didn’t keep his name -unlike Bülent Ersoy- and changed it to Rüzgar. I don’t know if they criticized Bülent Ersoy when she had her operation because I wasn’t born yet, but they did it too much to Rüzgar. When you search “Nil Erkoçlar” on Twitter, the results were both amazing and terrifying. Although his operation was a big scandal in the media at the beginning, people got used to the new situation in less than a year and embraced his new name quickly. He doesn’t want to be in the public eye so he’s not acting anymore, but he seems quite happy in his new life in a bakery. He even has a girlfriend! Maybe Turkey is not as conservative as you think, or maybe if you believe in yourself and have supporting friends and family around you, life is not that hard. What do you think? See you tomorrow!