Growing up in an evangelical Christian family in Brazil, life was pretty tough for Ariel Nobre. Designated female at birth, the 31-year-old transgender man was sent to a gay conversion therapy centre when he was just 18. “They wanted to cure me,” Nobre told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I stayed there six months. After I left, I had my first kiss with a woman at 19. Then I quit the church completely.” Nobre moved to Rio de Janeiro to go to university and later to Sao Paulo.