Meet Shannon Axe and here’s what you’ll see: a confident, open young woman. Bright, funny and eager to get through the last couple of years of high school and out into the wider world.
What you won’t see is what the doctor who delivered Shannon saw: a boy. A boy in the way our society sees gender – genitalia first.
From a young age, Shannon knew better.
“Inside my heart, I knew it wasn’t right, I’m a girl. I’ve always been a girl,” she said.
Shannon had another asset beyond her certainty about her gender: a family who loved and accepted her, a family who was there for her on her journey. That included moving to Boulder County to enroll Shannon in Boulder Valley schools.
“It was drastically better than Highlands Ranch,” Shannon said. In the third grade, she told everyone at school about being trans, but in middle school, she initially tried something different.
“(I decided to) go stealth and not be out, but I just couldn’t take it. Hiding something was so much a big part of it,” she said. “To fit in with the cool group (I had to) be this Barbie doll.”
“(I thought) I have to come out and make sure everybody knows.”
The school arranged for an assembly for each grade, with teachers supporting Shannon. Shannon’s mother, Karen, who led support groups for eight years, told her part of the story.
Then Shannon spoke.
“I told the sixth graders, ‘This is who I am, and I’m proud of it.’ Then they brought in the seventh graders. No one could blab. Then the eighth grade class,” she said. “The hardest part was being the center of attention.”
Shannon plans to study law, specializing in civil rights. She also talks with younger kids who are trans.
“I love meeting little kids, love hanging out with them,” Shannon said. “I’m like their older sister. I tell them it’s going to be OK.”
She said she has been lucky to have a family that supports her, and she has a message for other parents who have a trans child:
“You have to love your kid. That is your job,” she said. “Just saying, ‘I love you. We’ll work through it’ can change a kid’s life.”
