Outside the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, a memorial has taken over the whole huge front lawn. There are flowers wilting in the heat, printed photos of the victims, and dozens of rainbow pinwheels spinning in the wind. People wind through slowly, looking overwhelmed.

I’m here to meet Katherine Gonzalez and her friend, Paige Morgan Laisch. Gonzalez says since the Pulse tragedy, she hasn’t been getting out much.

“Fear has kinda taken over me a little bit more than it should have. I’ve been at home a lot more often. I say 'I love you' to my partner a ton more than I should.”

She laughs as she says this, but the truth is, the massacre of 49 people at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in June brought back up all the difficulty she’s experienced as a Puerto Rican transgender woman growing up outside Orlando.

“My first experience of transgender discrimination was when I was at the early point of my transition,” she said. She went into a telemarketing job interview as herself, Kat, and she nailed it. “It went fantastic until I had to show identification.”

Her ID documents still had the sex she was assigned at birth and her old name on them, and the interview became suspicious when she presented her info. They actually momentarily seemed to think she’d stolen her own social security number and ID.

“Then once I showed the ID, that’s when it kinda broke in, settled in for my interviewer that I was a transgender individual. At which point she retracted the job offer immediately. Said that it would be a danger to other women at the job site. And then had me escorted out by security.”[[{"fid":"302718","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_description[und][0][value]":"Kat%26nbsp%3BGonzalez%20at%20work%20as%20a%20truck%20driver.","field_description[und][0][format]":"full_html","field_byline_text[und][0][value]":"Courtesy: Kat Gonzalez ","field_migra...