Selfie Campaign Encourages Transgender Kids to Tell Their Stories

ashley.rae | August 20, 2015
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The Transgender Law Center and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network have embarked on a selfie campaign encouraging transgender children to come out and share their “truth”—about being trans.

According to the Transgender Law Center, “Everyone experiences their gender differently. There is no wrong way to be trans.”

“Through the #transTRUTH selfie campaign, youth can celebrate the diversity of trans youth experience, including the experience of being gender nonconforming, and push people to expand their image of what it means to be trans,” the Transgender Law Center claims.

Trans girls, trans boys, gender non-conforming, and youth “beyond the binary” are encouraged to participate by holding up a sign with their names, their preferred pronouns, and “the word [they] use to describe [their] gender.”

Many of the self-proclaimed transgender youth involved in the “#transTRUTH” campaign claim be “genderfluid,” which means they fluctuate between identifying as a boy or a girl:

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

The preferred gender pronouns for the “genderfluid” individuals seem to run the gamut between “ze/hir/hirs” to “they/them/theirs” and “any” for the less particular.

Rather than being constrained by simply being “genderfluid,” some of the children use the catch-all of “gender non-conforming” or “non-binary”:

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

Other participants refer to their gender as terms such as “agender,” neutrois,” “demigrrrl,” and “????:

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

(Image source: Instagram)

There are currently 140 images on Instagram that use the hashtag #transTRUTH.

The “#transTRUTH” hashtag campaign is part of a larger “TRUTH” program by the Transgender Law Center and Gay-Straight Alliance Network for youth to share their stories about being trans.

Although none of the individuals in the hashtag campaign on Instagram provide their age, one of the individuals in the informational pamphlet about the “TRUTH” campaign, Zoey Luna, is referred to as a fourteen-year-old. Luna was merely thirteen in a video conducted for “TRUTH.”

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