Watch as an 11-year-old trans girl meets a 70-year-old trans woman

"I know that you're going to have a much fuller and complete life."

Poppy and Josie

Source: YouTube, Degenderation

A lot has changed for members of the trans and gender diverse community - just ask 70-year-old Josie, who didn't come out until she was 60.

In a powerful video produced by ongoing film project , the elderly British woman meets 11-year-old Poppy - and the unlikely pair reflect on their respective journeys to living as their authentic selves.

"How did things go when you were my age, Josie?" Poppy asks her new friend in the clip.

"Well, it was a very different time, Poppy," Josie replies, adding that she met "very few people" in the rural town she grew up in.

"I didn't meet a girl until I was five," she continues. "And I knew as soon as I met her, I thought: 'That's me'".
"It wasn't like I could consider transitioning or thinking I was a girl. This just wasn't on the agenda. We had no internet, we had no television, we had no radio," Josie recalls.

"So I was left in a village full of coal miners, quarry workers... it just steadily got worse inside of me and by the time I was nine, I knew. I knew that this body was wrong."

Despite this, Josie explains to Poppy that there "weren't any words you could use to tell people".

"I was able to talk to my parents and my friends and my family about it, and be open about it," Poppy reflects. "But I guess when you were younger you didn't have the opportunity to be open about it like I was."
Josie continues to explain that she "woke up" and came out as trans when she was 60-years-old, but had a "disastrous" experience with gender confirmation surgery.

"I know that you're going to have a much fuller and complete life," Josie tells Poppy. "And who knows what miracles technology can bring."

"Maybe one day it will be possible for you to have your own baby. That's what I dream for. That we can become what some awful people in this life call 'real women'".

Josie adds: "We are real women, we are real girls. But for some reason, some people think we're not."

Share
2 min read
Published 2 November 2018 10:42am
Updated 2 November 2018 12:44pm
By Samuel Leighton-Dore


Share this with family and friends