A father-of-one insists that his 4-year-old son started showing signs of identifying as male at only two years old.
Matthew Stubbings and his wife Klara Jeynes from the UK say their son Stormy was assigned female gender at birth but he has ‘never been a girl.’
The 44-year-old father is now urging people to ‘accept others for who they are in life’ as he shared a photo of his child with a new haircut.
Matthew says that his son ‘hated pigtails and dresses’ as well as ‘pretty shoes,’ and when he was only 2 years old, he told his family: “I’m not a girl, I think I’m a boy.”
In his LinkedIn post, the father said: “This is one of my sons. A bright, happy boy who loves his life.
“What many people don’t know is that when he was born he was ‘sexed’ as a girl. His gender identity, what’s in his head, doesn’t match his physical sex.
“I am so proud that he knows who he is and isn’t constrained by societal norms and prejudices. We can all learn something from this small boy and I learn every day. Everyone is different.”
He continued: “We all need to accept that people are different and not try to force those around us to fit into a box that suits us.
“Accepting people for who they are is the only way to encourage innovation, embrace growth and harness the best in everyone. I have permission from my son to post this. He is proud of who he is.”
His post received dozens of comments from people praising him for his ‘inspirational’ message.
“Stormy would have been two, just before when we first noticed,” Matthew shared. “We did the things that people do. Dressed his brother is boy clothes and gave Stormy pigtails.
“He got to the point where his hair started getting longer and he didn’t want his pigtails anymore. We took them out. He didn’t like wearing dresses anymore and it got to the point where unless he was wearing stereotypical boys clothes, he wasn’t happy.
“He refused to wear pretty shoes. It got to the point where he was upset about being forced to wear them.
“He likes being a firefighter and police officer, but they’re actually things girls can do too. His friends are all boys. They’ve always been all boys.”
By the time Stormy was 3, the couple noticed that he was starting to understand more about his gender.
“When he started to speak, around two and a half, where he understood the context of what he was saying, he was very clear he wasn’t a girl,” Matthew said. “At some point, I can’t remember when, Stormy just said he was a boy. I can’t remember the moment when we first asked him, or if he just said it one day.
“We had a conversation with him, which is difficult, when it was around his third birthday.
“We asked ‘are you just not a girl, or are you a boy?’ Both myself and my wife have fairly grown up conversations quite regularly about his gender.
“He knows his gender is for him to decide, not us. It was maybe 12 months ago that we accepted he wasn’t a girl.”
He continued: “Adults have on many occasions insisted on calling him a girl. It was really difficult for them to accept he’s not called Emerald anymore, he’s Stormy, and he’s not a girl, he’s a boy.
“It’s really difficult. It’s hard. It’s hard with people who know the situation. To people who see him in the street, he’s a boy, no problem.”
“I’m really for people being inclusive of others. I’m not just talking about gender diversity; I’m talking about people understanding those around them. It’s really important to me,” he added.
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