Saras World

Wearing a khaki skirt and black tank top with a splash of heart-shaped rhinestones, 9-year-old Josie Romero skips across her family’s living room, eager to show off her Great Dane, her little sister, and the birds in her backyard.

When asked about her necklace – a silver triangle on a black cord – she beams. ”This is a transgender symbol,” she says of the circle that joins the symbols for male and female with a third symbol that combines the first two. She whispers something in her mother’s ear.

“You decide what you want to say,” Venessia Romero, 42, tells her daughter. ”I haven’t had my surgery yet,” Josie says as she goes into the kitchen to help her mom make cinnamon rolls.

Josie Claudine Romero was born Joseph Manalang Romero in Colorado in April 2001. Her twin sister died shortly after being born. Though biologically male, “Joey” was diagnosed with a condition called gender identity disorder at the age of 5 by a U.S. military doctor in Japan, where the family was living.

By age 6, Joey was Josie.

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