This video is an update of my eighth week on testosterone. I've been noticing a little facial hair growth and also some increase in muscle mass.
This week I would like to tell you about a movie I watched at the Berkshire Museum that has to do with confusion about ones gender. It is a French independent film called Tomboy. It is about a 10-year-old who moves to a new town and begins presenting as a boy named Mikael. He meets a lot of new friends and a girl who is interested in him. But once Mikael's mother discovers what he's been doing, she tells his friends and they start to bully him.
Throughout the movie, it is unclear whether Mikael/Laure is a transgender boy or just a girl who is androgynous or confused about gender. But either way, it made me feel very sad to see the way Mikael's former friends treated him once they found out his secret. It reminded me very much of another transgender film called Boys Don't Cry. But unlike Brandon Teena, a real life young adult transman, Mikael was just a little kid. Although he was a fictional character, I felt a deep sympathy for him.
Being transgender myself, I understand how cruel people can be sometimes when they don't understand. I am often asked why -- if I felt like a boy since the age of three -- I did not come out as a child. I think the biggest reason was fear of ending up like Mikael, being picked on more than ever for being different. For someone that young, transition can be even harder than for transgenders of the older generation, not just because of the mean children but because of parents that might feel uncomfortable for the transgender child to be around their own.
I did some research on children who came out as transgender at young ages and got very mixed results. All of them appeared to be satisfied living as the opposite sex. But a majority of them were shy and scared of what other kids might say or do to them. When I looked at these kids I didn't think of them in terms of being transgender kids with the normal struggles of a transgender. I thought of them as normal kids that wanted to fit in but were bullied for being different.
Many people think that children can't be so aware of who they are at such a young age, but I urge you to look at some of these children such as Josie Romero, a child who acts like an ordinary little girl and is in fact very aware of who she is and how she feels.
I hope that one day transgender children won't have to be singled out or viewed as freaks like Mikael. A child is a child no matter what's between their legs.
We are the rainbow!