Throughout reading this novel, my thoughts on transgender and transsexual people were quite fixed. For example, I knew from reading the textbook that a transgender is a person who was born (in Jenny's case) a man, but was born psychologically and emotionally as a woman. However, Jenny went even further and became a transsexual, that is, a person who underwent surgery to obtain the genitals corresponding to the psychological and emotional gender she possessed, which in her case was a woman. 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 gender is. To be honest, I never thought about the process a transsexual had to go through to become themselves, I didn't think about the many steps it took to achieve the female voice or appearance that Jenny was looking for . I also didn't think about the surgery and how scary this type of surgery could be. For example, on page 124, Jennifer discusses the transition process with her psychologist, Dr. Strange. On this page, Dr. Strange begins to educate Jenny, and essentially me, on how to begin the transition to becoming a woman. First, Dr. Strange listed the effects the hormones would have on Jenny's body, and at first they made sense to me; softer skin, fluffier hair, but I never imagined the physical changes hormones could have on someone, especially a man. For example, I learned that there is a thing called “fat migration.” This is when fat from previous parts of your body migrates to another location. I learned from this novel that fat migration is the result of hormones, and because Jenny was once a man, her face became less straight... middle of paper ...... Patrick was very young. In the last part of the novel, they were only six and eight years old. Aside from their age, they knew their "Maddy" had changed, but they didn't care, they still loved her because she was still herself. The most amazing part of the novel was the scene where Jennifer and her family were driving through Boston looking for the magic store. Jennifer and Grace reassured the boys that being transgender is not an illness, and in this discussion Jennifer apologizes for leaving them without a father, and Luke responds with such certainty that it doesn't bother him to grow up without a father, because he loves "Maddy" that way, as a woman and not as a man (p. 262). This is a very valuable lesson to learn from She's Not There; even though all the world won't accept (Jenny's sister), nothing matters as long as your children and your partner accept you.