Transgender people are sharing inspiring photos of how they have changed with #MomentsInTransition
“I wanted to badly to find ME”
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Louise Thomas
Editor
Transgender people are raising awareness of the process of transitioning by sharing photos of how they have physically changed alongside #MomentsInTransition.
Gabrielle Diana, a 17-year-old from Ottawa, Canada, is believed to have sparked the trend by posting a photo of herself on Instagram.
She used the hashtag to caption an image of herself before she came out as trans.
“I was highly depressed, felt trapped, unhappy and f*cking low,” she wrote.
“I wanted to badly to find ME," she added.
She made the post before International Transgender Day of Visibility on 30 March.
The hashtag then quickly spread across Instagram and Twitter and made headlines worldwide, as transgender people shared photos of themselves at defining moments.
Many of the photos showed transgender people at points in their lives before they were more comfortable with their appearance.
Gabrielle told Buzzfeed that she felt it was important to "look back" on defining moments of transition.
“It’s our way of saying, these are moments in our transition that defined us even more, and we are gonna wear these moments for our own desire, not to please anyone else," she said.
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However, the US LGBT rights organisation Glaad has stressed that it is important for people not to share photos of a person before their transition without their permission
Transgender rights have come to mainstream attention in recent years, thanks to the work of campaigners as well as celebrities such as Orange is the New Black actress Laverne Cox. In June 2014, she appeared on the cover of Time magazine, beside the headline "The Transgender Tipping Point."
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