Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. “I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.

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Persons: Grace Powell, Powell, didn’t, “, ” Powell, Grayson, Sarah Organizations: Reading, Sarah Lawrence College Locations: Grand Rapids, Mich