Consider the scenario - you are the mother of an infant who, despite being born male, wants to act and dress like a girl. You are scared for them because you know tolerance of such behaviour is scarce. But you can see that your child is miserable being male and so you allow them to express their femininity at home but under no circumstances must they do it outside!
Years roll by and your child is still miserable having to pretend to be male. It breaks your heart to see them come home in tears for being forced to be a boy at school all day! But you know that if your child goes out dressed as a girl they will be subjected to ridicule and much much worse. What on earth do you do?!!
On the one hand you can't bear to see your child in pain but on the other hand you're scared of the pain that will be brought to bear on your child should the truth be known. If there ever was a case of 'Stuck between a rock and a hard place' this is surely it!
Well, one mother looked at her morals and recognised that it was wrong for her child to live in fear and so she made the incredibly difficult decision to allow her child to live as a girl full time.
But there was no way she was gonna just throw her child - her daughter - to the lions and so she made provision as best she could and contacted the school to inform them of the impending transition. The school then, quite rightly, made the announcement in assembly that a former male pupil would be attending as a female pupil.
However, you can never underestimate the depths to which people will sink, and this is when what had already been an incredibly difficult journey became a living nightmare.
The mother's daughter was called a "freak" and a "tart" to her face not by her peers but by the PARENTS of them!
What a fine example to teach your children! Fuck love, tolerance or even just minding your own fucking business!! No, HATE is what makes the world goes round!
But hate was not enough for these warped individuals, they had to add SPITE to the mix as well! So fuck the family's right to privacy! Inform the press everything they could possibly ever want to know about this "freak" and her "freak family"!
And did the press think, "No, this is a TEN YEAR OLD CHILD! It is totally wrong to expose them in the press"? Did they fuck!! Like any business, the press need to sell their products and here was a story guaranteed to make a quick buck for them!
So GREED was added to hate and spite and the family found their local nightmare had turned into an international nightmare!
At which point the mother realised any hope that her child would have a life like - or even maybe just a little bit similar to - any other ten year old was lying in tatters.
What is more - with the hate, spite and greed now gone international - her child's life was in very real danger! There was no putting the cork back into the bottle now! What on earth was she to do?!!
Well, first things first, get the police involved. But then a realisation dawned on her - maybe all this attention could be turned from causing harm to her daughter to, instead, protecting her and children like her. After all, it's far more off putting to consider harming a child when you know the whole world's attention is focused on that child!
So, believing, as she already did, that her child should not hide away in fear, she decided to go public and put across her side of the story about her daughter and her family.
But the public is a very hard beast to please because, in some twisted kind of irony, the mother then found herself criticised for going public! The public clearly felt, as the mother had, that she and her daughter were entitled to some form of privacy! Talk about "Damned if you do and damned if you don't"!
So you could forgive the mother if she was bitter. After all, she had found herself confronted with the incredibly difficult situation of her child being transgender and then criticised for every which way she tried to handle it.
But this mother is not bitter. She believes, despite her child being taught about HATE, SPITE, GREED and FEAR at a very young age, the most valuable lesson she can teach her daughter is LOVE.
And that is what you will see when you encounter Livvy James and her mother. You will see a very bright, tender, girl and a passionate, loving, mother. They are beacons of hope that love will win out in this unbelievably cruel world.
But, I have a warning for you, that beacon is of limited use if we don't pick up it's message and pass it on.
For, as sure as eggs is eggs, Livvy James and her mother are not of infinite public interest - they will become old news very soon. So, if we want to make a difference, then WE have to make a difference!
The evil in this world won't shrink away just because of Livvy James but it might - it just might - if we all stand beside her and champion what we know to be right.
