(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
GAVIN: Growing up is so many things.
SINGER: We'll get through it all together
AMIRI: Growing up is unpredictable.
SINGER: This feeling's not forever
SAGE: Growing up is a chance to change the world.
SINGER: Your time is right now...
Growing up was... ugh!
SINGER: Tell me how you feel
Your scars will start to heal...
We have the power and responsibility.
SINGER: Tell me how you feel
We're climbing up the hill
Just don't keep your lips sealed...
We deserve to be heard.
SINGER: Just tell me how you feel
GAVIN: Growing up is...
-EMILY: Tumultuous. -VANESSA: Cringy.
-ATHENA: Confusing. -SOFIA: Messy.
-EMILY: Beautiful. -GAVIN: Mandatory.
-We did it! -(APPLAUSE)
(CAMERA CLICKS)
(THEME MUSIC ENDS)
SAGE: I denied myself happiness for so long in so many ways
because I never saw somebody that looked like me on TV growing up.
And a lot of spaces that I step into, being openly queer, being happy,
people don't understand that. Too often we are not given the opportunity
to see ourselves reflected
in narratives of love and joy,
and I wanted to change that.
FEMALE VOICE: All right, Sage. Whenever is good for you.
-(WHISPERING) Let's go, Sage. -Oh, so, do I just start talking?
-Oh. -(LAUGHTER)
So, I'm Sage. I am 20 years old, and I grew up in Maryland, in D.C.
And I'm now based in New York.
KAREN: Hi, cutie! (LAUGHS)
I'm very, very proud to be Sage's mother,
and I think everybody who meets Sage would never forget her.
She never wavered.
She was strong. She was confident.
She didn't apologize for who she was.
And that strength and that confidence only grew as she grew.
IVAN: The most important thing to me is that she had the freedom
to become the person she wants to be.
The part that is important to me is to see her build what she wants for herself.
SAGE: My earliest memories of being a little girl,
is just mimicking the things that I saw my mom do.
Activism was really inherent in my growing up.
Watching my parents carve a space for themselves
really gave me the courage to do the same.
Ever since I was little, I knew that I was a girl.
I remember when I would go to the store with my mom,
I would always, like, point at boxes that had girls on them and say...
I would say "Mom, that's me."
I turned anything into a dress or into long hair,
having so much fun, but knowing that,
to an extent, that had to say at home.
I knew that I wasn't necessarily who everyone else saw me to be.
My parents were really welcoming, and I even went to a club
when I was younger called Boys Who Like Girls' Things.
Seeing a bunch of other little girls who
had been told that they were little boys and getting to write
my own name that I chose,
being respected as a little girl for a day.
How good that felt.
KAREN: They would put on fashion shows, and they were all very precocious
and they were little.
And then as she got a little bit older, nine, ten, eleven,
she started to identify as a gay boy.
Because she didn't have the language. "Well, what else could I be?"
(GENTLE MUSIC PLAYING)
SAGE: I remember my first year going to sleepaway camp. I was 11 years old.
I remember walking into my boy’s cabin.
-Hey. -SAGE: And there was another girl.
I was so surprised.
I was confused.
I was excited.
A part of me... saw myself.
This is definitely your color.
SAGE: And she explained to me that she was transgender.
Finding the language to express my own identity was so important.
Before that, I had no way to communicate
my understanding of myself.
I was just immediately, like, enamored.
A personal favorite of mine.
SAGE: I was so excited to learn more from her,
but what really excited me,
was getting a look at her suitcase. (CHUCKLES)
There was something so ultimately life changing.
of experiencing
another mixed Black trans girl
existing right in front of me.
Sporty but very, very nice. It is.
SAGE: That was the moment that I knew one hundred percent
that I was trans, because I finally had something to call it.
That was a moment that I will forever remember.
And I don't know her now.
We've not talked since summer camp.
But I thank her for showing up as she was.
I thank her for being herself before I could be me.
I'm really glad that my parents have accepted me,
and loved me and uplifted me in the ways that they have.
They didn't have to, you know?
Society would have been completely okay and supportive of them
turning their backs on me.
There's a really specific pain
that comes with waking up every morning, knowing who you are,
and putting on the wrong clothes,
putting on the wrong name, and putting on the wrong pronouns.
And knowing exactly who you are,
but having to continue to go through life being misgendered.
It hurts. And so, I began transitioning outside of school.
Every time I would get off the bus, I would come home, and I would, like,
put on my Forever 21 leggings and my hair and, like, combat boots
because I felt this sense of gender euphoria.
And I remember wanting to transition at school.
I begged my parents, like, I begged my mom, like,
"Please, Mom, please. Let me transition at school." And so, she asked the school.
They said, "Mm-mm. That's not happening.
"There's no way that she can transition.
"It'll be too much of a distraction to the rest of the kids."
So, my only way of expressing myself was outside of school,
and I wanted to share that with my friends.
One day, I decided to send them pictures of me transitioned.
We were sitting in English class,
and a boy came over to me and my friends.
He took her phone, and he decided to start going through her photos.
And there he saw photos of me transitioned.
And while I'm sitting, doing my English assignment...
-(PHONES VIBRATING, DINGING) -...I just hear little buzzes and pings,
and all of a sudden
everyone in the class looks up and they just stare at me.
And I knew immediately that I had been outed.
And there was just this, like, heat in my chest. It felt awful.
I remember this boy, he said to me,
"I dare you to come tomorrow cross-dressed."
And I took him up on that dare.
The next morning, I remember putting on my leggings, my wig...
(ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYING)
...my combat boots.
And then, I walk into the front doors, and everyone just stopped.
Every teacher in the hallway,
the office administrators, the security guard...
Everyone in the locker area just stopped and stared.
I lost friends. People stopped talking to me.
And a lot of what people stopped talking to me for was
not only how they felt about it,
but how their parents felt.
At the same time,
I was happy
because now there was nothing that the school could tell me.
Right? Everyone knew that I was trans.
There was no going back. You know, there was nothing
that anybody at that school could say or do to me
that was more painful than living a life that wasn't mine.
KAREN: Of course, there were lots of transgender and queer kids,
but it... they weren't out.
So, Sage was their first.
IVAN: If you know that your child has to go through different moments
where people are not accepting, it's painful.
It had been difficult,
but it's an education at the same time.
And I am very glad that I've been educated by her.
SAGE: The summer between eighth grade and freshman year,
I went back to that same summer camp
and was forced to be in a boys' cabin,
and I was now going into a boys cabin as a girl.
And I remember walking in and all the boys looked at me...
Why are you here?
They said I had to come to the boys' cabin.
-Was there no room in the girls' cabin? -Yeah. What's your deal?
And I was like... (CHUCKLES)
"Um... About that, I'm transgender.
"And I was told that I can't stay in the girls' cabin."
And I think someone said, "Well, like, what does that mean?"
And I said, "I was assigned male at birth, but I'm a girl."
And I think someone said,
"Well, that sucks that they won't let you stay with the girls."
And then one boy asked me to tell them all my story.
Well, trans is short for transgender, and...
(NARRATING) I think to see these boys accept
and acknowledge who I was,
was another testament to just how taught transphobia is.
And that these boys who were not with their parents,
who had never met a trans person before,
when given the opportunity to learn, to accept, many of them did.
But there was one camper who took a real issue with me being trans.
I was not good. I was not right.
There was something wrong with me,
and he was going to let me know that.
Sometimes he would tell me how much he hates me,
sometimes he would tell me how disgusting I am.
He told me, "No one will ever love a girl like you."
And I believed it.
It wasn't such a hard thing to believe.
I felt that that was going to be my future.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
And one night, I was walking home to my cabin
with the only other trans camper.
And... he approached us,
and then he attacked us.
We're just screaming for help. "Help! Help! Help, somebody!"
And no one's coming.
And finally, a camp counselor comes,
and we're all taken to the office.
We were sat down by the head of the camp,
and the narrative that was decided upon was
this was not a hate crime. This was, in fact, boys being boys.
And for that reason, my goal was to become stealth,
right? For no one to know that I was trans.
For everyone to think of me as a cis girl.
So, I switched school districts,
and I did try to enter high school stealth.
When that boy said that nobody would love you for who you are,
that's something that I really connect with.
And I think that a lot of people...
their journey is about learning to accept themselves as lovable.
Just because I felt the only way that I could be worthy
was to fit myself into a box that wasn't made for me.
(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING)
SAGE: I denied myself the outfits that I wear now,
wearing tights, wearing skirts,
because I felt uncomfortable in my body,
but I also felt I owed a version of femininity to the world
that wasn't authentic to me.
I denied myself happiness
because I didn't feel like I was worthy of it.
(SOBBING) I wish that I had found that confidence...
(SIGHS) ...and that happiness earlier, you know?
(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC CONCLUDES)
One of the most impactful moments for me, I remember, my mom picked me up
from school and we went out to lunch. There was a television in the corner,
and Janet Mock's interview came up on the screen.
She is speaking out and encouraging other trans women
to live their lives openly and happily.
MALE INTERVIEWER: Janet Mock is here to chat with us about her life,
her challenges and her book.
I think I wrote it just to kind of give girls,
that grew up like myself, a mirror.
I think we all kind of need reflections of ourselves in pop culture,
in media, and, of course, in literature.
Janet Mock actively disproved so many beliefs
that I had about being trans.
She had a loving partner.
She was an existence of a career woman.
The way she carried herself was so inspiring to me.
She did her book tour, and they came to Washington D.C.
And I got in line to get my book signed.
And I just started crying in the line.
And I remember, she came over to me.
She gave me a hug,
and I felt like there was a chance for me. And...
it was a moment that I promised myself that I would try my best
to become who I wanted to be.
And I knew that the reality of being trans
in school was terrible. It was harmful. It was painful. It was violent,
and I wanted to change that.
I remember in sophomore year, the administration put together
for some of us students to go to a White House summit
about being Black, Brown, and gay, queer in schools.
It was a room full of educators, who had real influence
to change school culture.
The executive director of the White House initiative asked...
What do trans students need from our schools?
SAGE: I had never been asked as a trans girl
what I needed from my school,
and it was an answer that I had been thinking of
for a long time.
What do trans students need from our schools?
We need to be allowed to use our pronouns.
We need to be allowed to use our chosen names.
I need to be allowed to use the girls' bathroom.
I need my teachers to stop saying,
"Boys line up on this side of the classroom,
"and girls line up on that side."
(SCOFFS) We need all of this to stop now. Because we deserve to be seen,
we deserve to be heard, and we deserve to be respected.
I felt, "Wow. I finally said that I'm trans in public, like, I can breathe."
And then I remembered, "I go to school with these people.
"Who's gonna find out? Who are they gonna tell?
"What's gonna happen tomorrow?"
That day, I made the decision that, although it would be scary
to go back to school and it'd be scary to hear what people had to say...
there was no way I was going back into stealth mode.
I wasn't gonna hide that I was trans anymore.
I was going to live in my truth for the rest of my life.
I felt such immense joy and pride about being trans.
My activism evolved.
I began doing more journalism, more speaking.
And I remember that piece I wrote on being a trans woman
at this Women's March.
I wrote about how hard I had fought to occupy my femininity.
The article was included in Condé Nast commemorative edition
of the Women's March,
and I became one of their first trans youth contributing authors.
She was very articulate and a great writer.
She kept writing and she just never stopped.
IVAN: I just want her to be happy and healthy,
so she can continue to do everything she wants to do.
(POP MUSIC PLAYING)
After I began writing and doing a lot of policy organization,
I wanted to connect to that education in a way that felt more authentic to me.
So, I decided to create my own magazine.
(INSPIRATIONAL MUSIC PLAYING)
It was born out of my desire to see myself and my peers
represented in a more authentic way than we were used to.
I still remember our first photo shoots.
It was scary. It was nerve-racking.
I can't work this thing.
They're here.
And I just remember the fear that overtook me,
but everything is always a learning opportunity.
Hey. Hey, I'm Sage. This is Zahri. We're the directors.
We're really glad that y'all here. Y'all look great.
(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)
This is gonna be the cover of the Genesis Issue.
And what we really want to capture with this is the power that y'all have.
Not only as members of the Gen Z generation,
but as artists and creatives.
Okay, great. Let's get started.
(POP MUSIC PLAYING)
(SHUTTER CLICKING)
It really taught me the importance of community
and that we really are our greatest resource.
And they trusted it would work out and it did.
(SHUTTER CLICKING)
Team Mag is invested in creating opportunities
-for young Black and Brown artists... -(SHUTTER CLICKING)
...to create art and to consume art
that represents them in narratives of love, celebration, acceptance and joy.
Here we are years later, and we're still creating work.
I went to school with you and saw how strong you were, and brave,
and, like, the everyday aspects of everything that you did.
And I'm so sorry that you had to sacrifice that part of yourself.
But it wasn't in vain, because there are so many young queer people
at our school now who feel absolutely, utmost,
completely loved by all the admin.
It's just amazing how much you were able to...
shift the school's culture. We owe so much to you
and you really did crawl so we could run and it's really true.
Thank you so much.
(ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYING)
SAGE: My journey to loving myself was a long one
and it was a hard one, and it's one that I'm still on.
I want to open the door for kids like us,
to be able to tell their stories authentically and unapologetically.
Following your joy will lead you
to the community that celebrates you and loves you, as you should be.
I was a girl
because the others called girls seemed to like the same things.
I learned this from my mother.
I watched her from the hallway,
after showers, wrap her hair in bath towels.
My father showed me how to walk, but it wasn't right for me.
So, he taught me how to laugh in their faces
and smile back when they sneer.
Putting on the act of a boy under the sun,
lip gloss in my pockets.
The mirror hurt to look in.
Boyhood was never meant for me. I always knew that.
I know who I am.
Who are you?
(ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYING)
(CHEERING)
-(LAUGHTER) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(MUSIC ENDS)