A transgender guy has revealed in a video that he confided in his 83-year-old gran, and her response is incredible.
Gavin Cueto came out as transgender to his gran when he was 11, as he was too scared to come out to his mum.
Elaine, 83, says she “didn’t understand it was possible to be born in the wrong body”, and that she had never heard the word transgender before.
But she supported him through his transition and even encouraged him to do so.
“She was so supportive, and told me that if this was something I wanted to do, then I had to go and do it,” Cueto says in the video, now 20.
Telling the story of how her grandson confided in her, Elaine says:
“I’d been to skittles, come home, Gavin was staying the night and I’d had half a lager so I was tired and I was about to go to bed.
“Gavin came in wanting to talk to me. He said, ‘nan, I’ve got something to tell you. I want to be a boy’.”
She continues: “I said, ‘Wouldn’t we all?’ We’d all like to be a man, because they’ve got a better life than us.”
“It made sense in a way… we knew there was something wrong, so it was nice then to know what it was so that we could help.”
Elaine even chose Gavin’s new name to match his gender identity.
Cueto says he first learned about gender dysphoria after watching Hollyoaks when he was 11.
“I’d never heard of it before, so watching a character on telly juggling the same emotions as me was illuminating,” he says.
“It was such a relief to know that I wasn’t going through it alone.
Afterwards, I began researching gender dysphoria on the Internet.
“Once I knew it was real, I had to tell someone how I felt.”
“I’ve always been really close to my nan,” he adds.
“I know I can always talk to her and she won’t judge me. I decided to wait until she got back from skittles, where she’d been drinking with her pals, before I told her.”
After coming out, Cueto says he got depressed as he began puberty and got his first period.
He says: “I had my first period when I was 14. It felt so wrong because it felt so feminine and translated into having babies, something I could never imagine doing.
“I was horrified and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Then I started to grow breasts, so I did everything I could to disguise them by wearing baggy clothes.
“I even wore four sports bras at a time to try and flatten them down.”
After self-harming, he eventually came out to his mum in a four-page letter and visited his GP.
He now campaigns with the charity Fixers, which aims to help young people get support with their gender dysphoria.
Watch the Q&A below – you’ll probably need a tissue:
