After my gender transition, I became susceptible to harassment. I quickly learned being a woman in public could be terrifying.

• I started my gender transition at 21, and eventually, people started to see me as a woman.
• Men started catcalling me on the street, and while it was validating, it was also scary.

The summer I turned 21 was when I finally came to terms with being transgender.

I was studying at a small and very progressive liberal-arts college, where I was able to openly explore my gender presentation. I experimented by wearing dresses, skirts, and makeup. I quickly realized how authentic I felt presenting femininely. I was at last in an environment that welcomed me — no matter my gender identity. So I let myself acknowledge what part of me had known for many years: I'm a woman.

But after transitioning, I learned how difficult — and sometimes unsafe — it could be to be a woman in public.

I started hormone-replacement therapy and began to watch my body transform

I started hormone-replacement therapy, and ever so slowly, the fat in my body — even on my face — shifted like glaciers in an ocean.

Early in my transition, strangers gawked or stole furtive glances at me in the grocery store. I was an enigma that they needed to solve. My voice and demeanor were feminine, but my features were on the masculine side of androgyny.

That changed a couple of years into my gender transition. I warmly recall the day I was laughing with a friend in public. A passerby smiled at us and said, "You ladies seem so happy!"

I was over the moon at finally being perceived as a woman.

As the world began to see me as a woman, they also saw me as a sex object

Before deciding to transition, I anxiously weighed the pros and cons. Coming out as a gay man had been difficult. Slurs were thrown. Lifelong relationships crumbled. Dating proved difficult. Being in a small town hadn't helped. But if I transitioned, I'd have to deal with misogyny.

When it started happening, I was still self-conscious about having small breasts and being taller than most women, at 5-foot-9. But that didn't stop men in public from ogling or even catcalling me. Getting top surgery (for me, breast augmentation) intensified their attention.

After almost five years of my transitioning, some of it was validating — even exciting. I was feminine and desirable.

But one night rattled my confidence.

My first experience of persistent harassment made me fear for my safety in a different way

I was in a new city. Because I run hot, I dress skimpier than most people. When I was walking to get food one night, a group of men smoking on their stoop started to whoop and holler. One yelled, "Hey, tall girl! Look at those legs!"

I turned up the music in my earbuds and decided that I'd walk on the opposite side of the street when I returned from picking up my food. But when I got to the restaurant, they said that they needed a few minutes to prepare my order. An older man came in behind me and started flirting.

"Mami, you're so beautiful," he crooned. "What's your name? Do you have a boyfriend?"

I felt trapped as I waited for my food. It was a tiny restaurant, and the man followed me when I sat down in the far corner.

"I love you," he said.

Adding insult to injury, the staff behind the counter giggled, thinking this was innocent. But all I could think of was how I'd have to walk home in the dark under the subway overpass — where anything could happen. Perhaps I was overthinking this, but I feared sexual violence. I also feared the anger that might arise if my bottoms were removed and he saw my preoperative genitals.

He wouldn't let me leave without buying me a can of soda. A staff member chuckled again. I was terrified.

It was his sheer dogged determination that scared me. I said I wasn't interested and that I had a boyfriend. I put physical distance between us. Still, he circumnavigated all of this in his pursuit of my body.

My journey back was blessedly safe. But I still cried that night. Most men I've spoken with about this experience don't seem to get it. I wasn't physically attacked. Yet I have wounds.

Gender transition was one of the best choices of my life, but walking through the world as a woman is sometimes horrifying

I'm thankful that the world perceives me as a woman. But the world in which we live is harsh to women. Our boundaries are frequently violated. Our wishes are disregarded.

Perhaps this is the greatest evidence of the soundness of gender transition: Many of us are willing to descend the social ladder to be seen as we truly are.