Smoking a cigarette outside of his local Starbucks on a Friday afternoon, Miles Cox looks like the typical 19-year-old with a rebellious streak. He is dressed in jeans, a leather jacket over a white shirt, dark sunglasses and Chuck Taylors, and is nonchalantly reclining in his chair as I walk up and introduce myself. His voice is a little high for a 19-year-old, and he thinks his eyes are a bit feminine. I disagree with the latter, but Miles is very conscious of these details. He is conscious of anything that gives away that he was physically born a girl.

“You have to change your body language a lot,” he says. “I changed the way I walked, and I changed the way I dressed. I tried to do everything I could to fit in.” Miles soon takes off his sunglasses and relaxes. It is obvious that he enjoys talking about the process that he was–and still is–going through.

His original name is Amelia (he also thinks this is hilariously girlish), but he went by the nickname Millie throughout high school, which transitioned naturally into Miles when he changed his name. But not everything was as natural as the name change. In high school he identified as a lesbian, but something about the role just felt off. He had trouble connecting with other lesbians and felt uncomfortable with the identity.

Miles started scanning Wikipedia for anything he could find related to gender expression, from third gender to two-spirits. What followed was the hard realization that he is, in fact, a man. It was not difficult for Miles himself to accept this—he is surprised at how easy it was compared to the trouble he had with the term lesbian. But the idea of being trans, and the social consequences attached to it, led Miles to start drinking and huffing—sniffing fumes from aerosol cans and paints. “I would go to Rite Aid right over there and I would just buy cans of Dust-Off, and I would just put the straw in my mouth,” he said.

His fears and frustrations were not unfounded. He had a serious girlfriend in high school whom he hoped to continue dating through college and onward. He told her he was trans and recalls her saying: “I’m never going to respect you as a man. I have always known you as my lesbian lover and it is a difficult change for me to accept, and as a result I choose not to accept it.” This was one of the last things Miles heard before going into his bathroom, huffing, and calling a transgender male-to-female friend whom he had met at a Prop 8 rally for support. While lying on his bathroom floor, Miles inhaled so many chemicals he began losing consciousness. His friend wanted to call an ambulance. “She was like ‘what is your address?’ and I was like ‘I am not telling you, I do not want them to pick me up and then send me to the mental hospital.’” His friend tracked down his address through his cell phone company and he was taken to the ER.

“I had to convince them that I didn’t have a problem, that I was not insane, that I was not a drug addict: that I was just alone and did not know what to do with the thought of being transgender,” Miles says. This was on the night after Obama’s election. His parents, who originally thought his suicide attempt was related to the passing of Prop 8, found out that night that their daughter is actually a son. “They were crying and screaming: ‘no, I cannot believe you would make this decision!’”

“I had to convince them that I didn’t have a problem, that I was not insane, that I was not a drug addict: that I was just alone and did not know what to do with the thought of being transgender.”

Miles thinks he is in a better place now, but says that his parents still have not accepted him as a son. “We don’t really talk, I just live with them,” he explained. While they have not been antagonistic, they refuse to stop calling him Amelia or Millie. “They kind of choose to ignore it,” he says.

Despite the tension, Miles speaks about his parents fondly. During high school his mom watched TV with him and would ask him if he thought various girls were attractive, and his dad sends him random articles that he thinks Miles would be interested in. Miles says he will probably continue living with them until he transfers to a four year college. “My mom is refusing to let me get my license or get a job,” he says. He thinks they are trying to keep him from leaving home, so most of the time he is stuck in his neighborhood, an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. But Miles has tried to make the best of this situation.

“There were so many Yes on 8 signs,” says Miles. “And my friends and I were like ‘OK, you know what we are going to do, we are going to go tagging’, so we went to all the signs and we pulled out spray paint—we had full face gear and dressed in all black—and we were spraying out the yes and writing no. It was the pinnacle of my teenage years. It is the thing I hope I can tell my grandchildren. ‘Guess what I did when I was younger? I vandalized things for a good cause!’”

His mother was not as amused by this adventure, but Miles thinks it was well worth it. Of course, he is disappointed that the proposition passed, but not surprised. “But I know it is going to turn over,” he says, assuredly. “There was just Maine and Iowa: in the span of a month we already achieved so much change.”

The recent change of administration also gave him cause for hope. He cast his first vote ever for Barack Obama, despite initially being a Clinton supporter. “I was always really proud of Hillary Clinton for talking to Philadelphia Gay News, and then I remembered hearing on the other side that Obama refused to talk to them.” There are a few more details—including a financial contribution by the editor to the Clinton campaign—but Miles was definitely wary of the possible candidates’ stance on LGBT issues, and he is committed to working towards its repeal as an activist and active voter. But Prop 8 is only one thing on long list of changes he is hoping for. Topping his list is the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the passage of a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that includes a clause for gender expression.

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