When Diana Tourjee was growing up, she had a hard time looking at the boy in the mirror. She didn’t identify with the male body she saw—the one that people around her saw and confirmed. But when she played video games, where she could embody a sorceress or choose a dress and a hairstyle, she found a glimmer of hope and comfort. As she traversed these make-believe universes with the body that she identified with in real life.
“Avatars were especially important to me then. I was growing up in a male body, and, while I felt completely in charge online, I had little control over my offline life,” Tourjee says.
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In VICE magazine’s Privacy & Perception issue, Tourjee wrote about her
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