"My gender, as far as I have figured it out, is boy. My gender expression is femme and sometimes I like wearing really short skirts, and it’s really frowned upon in Georgia. So it was part being accepted, and also a part of expressing myself how I wanted to," says Dandelion Hunt-Smith, a 17-year-old transgender and nonbinary student, standing at a rainbow bridge in Dolores Park in San Francisco, Calif. on Feb. 23, 2023. Hunt-Smith moved across the country with their family from Columbus, Georgia to San Francisco for their senior year of high school in search of a welcoming school. While they excelled academically in Georgia, socially, they felt stunted. The bullying and insensitive comments aimed at queer students left them feeling like they couldn’t fully open up with peers about their gender identity.