Earlier this month, Cosmopolitan published a touching documentary featuring Jodie Patterson, a Brooklyn mother of five, whose son Penelope, started showing signs that he was transgender at a very young age.
After facing continual rejection of clothing, grooming, and other things, Patterson asked Penelope what was wrong.
“Because everybody thinks I'm a girl,” Penelope replied.
Patterson explains: “And so I said, ‘oh baby, it's fine. However you feel on the inside is great.' And he said, ‘no I don't feel like a boy mom. I am a boy.' And so that sentence was really hard, because I was ill-equipped, like, okay what do I do with that? I don't know how to handle that.”
Cosmo's 7-minute doc reveals what the family went through and how Penelope blossomed when the family started letting him lead the way. Cosmo writes:
Patterson decided to share her family's story with Cosmopolitan.com because she realized that gender politics is no longer a private conversation. “People are dying over it,” she says. “Until that changes, it's important to speak out. All the evils — racism, genderism, all the isms — rely on silence. So in order to push social change, we need to speak up.”
Watch what it's like when your daughter becomes your son:
