A Californian congressman has become one of the first lawmakers in Congress to publicly announce that his granddaughter is transgender.
Rep. Mike Honda publicly lent his support to the idea of a gender spectrum by introducing his transgender grandchild on Wednesday, CNN reported.
"As the proud grandpa of a transgender grandchild, I hope she can feel safe at school without fear of being bullied," he tweeted along with a photo of himself with his arm around eight-year-old Malisa.
Malisa, who was born a boy and initially called Brody, wanted to be referred to as a girl since she began to speak, Mom Michelle Honda-Phillips told San Jose Mercury News. Recently, she told her grandfather that she would like to be a role model for others in her position and gave him permission to go public with her story.
People may say, "It's just a phase or they'll grow out of it," Honda, who is a member of the House LGBTQ caucus, said. "But we have to be a little bit more in tune with what youngsters are telling us. From there we can develop better solutions, be more thoughtful."
"She has never hidden who she was," said Honda-Phillips, 39, on Thursday. "The only thing that's changed is her pronoun and her name. She's been exactly the same."
"She's very proud of being transgender. She's embraced the fact she's transgender and she's different and everyone should be comfortable in their skin," she added.
The idea of gender should be more fluid than just the distinction between a boy and a girl, Honda said.
"We look at gender as binary," the eight-term San Jose Democrat said, as though there are "ones and zeros and nothing in between. But when you spread them out, you have a spectrum of who we are."
Although the family is expecting people to voice criticism and concern over allowing someone so young to determine such a big change, Michelle said they had waited until they were confident that Malisa was "insistent, persistent and consistent" about her gender, the three thresholds recommended by the transgender community.
Meanwhile, the family is currently looking into hormone therapies that will help delay Malisa's puberty, according to UK MailOnline.
