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8-Year-Old Writes Heartwarming Letter About Being Transgender

by Emily Arata

Q knows only he's happy in his own skin.

In a sweet video filmed from his own kitchen, the 8-year-old transgender boy (whose nickname is short for Qbdoo) explains that he doesn't know why he's always felt like a boy. He just has.

Since Q began dressing as a boy two years ago, he and his mother, Francisca, have been actively involved in efforts to gain transgender people freedom from "conversion therapy" and other efforts to reform their gender identity.

To date, a local transgender protection petition for New York City has nearly 11,000 signatures on Change.org.

As part of the campaign for equality, Q and Francisca took the time to share their very personal story to help others understand what it's like to be a transgender child or the mother of a transgender child.

This is Q.

After Q experienced bouts of depression because he didn't feel like any of the girls he knew, Francisca borrowed boys' pants and shirts from a friend with sons.

In a letter posted to Change.org, single mother Francisca describes how difficult it was to allow her half-black, half-Colombian son to add another layer of prejudice to his life.

I am brown, I am an immigrant, and I am a community organizer, so I think about racism and oppression and how they affect my family and my community almost every minute of my life. To look at my little boy and imagine his gender identity adding another layer of oppression to my child's life is torture.

But, she couldn't let Q struggle with his identity any longer.

When Q was just 6 years old, he started to get really frustrated about himself, his body, his clothes. He complained about not liking himself. He would compare himself to all his classmates and find himself wanting... He had always been a happy, cheerful, smiling child, but his happiness started to fade. I don't want to over simplify it, but a little experiment made everything clear.

Francisca allowed Q to begin wearing boys' clothes, and everything seemed to fall into place.

He was only a little child; he had no fear of oppression or discrimination – he only knew that he was different from how everyone was treating him, and wanted us to listen to who he really was. With the recognition that he was truly a boy, he was fully human and happy... I don't want to change him. I'm ready to change the world.

Q recorded his own version of the story, "reporting live from Brooklyn."

Even when Q feels "frushtraded," he's happy to remind others who he really is inside.

Citations: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11391878/Transgender-8-year-old-New-Yorker-Sometimes-people-forget-Im-a-boy.html (Telegraph)