“My child who I thought was a boy is… a girl!” Charlize Theron reveals her daughter is transgender

Academy Award winning actress Charlize Theron has reportedly revealed that her oldest child is transgender.

Theron said the seven-year-old Jackson proclaimed her gender to the actress at the age of three.

“Yes, I thought she was a boy, too,” Charlize told the Daily Mail. “Until she looked at me when she was three years old and said, ‘I am not a boy!’

“So, there you go! I have two beautiful daughters who, just like any parent, I want to protect and I want to see thrive.”

Jackson is an older sibling to three-year-old August.

“They were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and who they want to be, is not for me to decide,” Theron said. “My job as a parent is to celebrate them and to love them and to make sure that they have everything they need in order to be what they want to be. And I will do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that.”

Theron has long been an LGBTI ally. The actress, who was awarded the Vanguard Award for increasing “visibility and understanding” at the 17th annual GLAAD Media Awards in 2006, famously vowed to not get married until same-sex marriage was legalized. In 2017, following the premiere of her movie Atomic Blonde, she criticised the lack of bisexual representation in Hollywood.

Many celebrated Theron’s support of her daughter, including Sense8 actress, Jamie Clayton.

‘Sending you so much love and light. Thank you beyond,’ Clayton wrote on Twitter.

.@CharlizeAfrica Sending you so much ✨?✨ Thank you beyond. ⚡️

— Jamie Clayton (@MsJamieClayton) April 19, 2019

UK based charity, Mermaids, who work with young gender-diverse people not only celebrated Theron’s news, but the way the mainstream media handled it. UK media has often come under fire for anti-trans articles and editorials.

Mermaids CEO, Susie Green, reportedly said that the respectful coverage of the story by mainstream media was a welcome change.

“Parents are constantly criticized for believing their gender-variant children and supporting them to live authentically,” she said. “We applaud Charline Theron for listening to her daughter. Too often, children are dismissed, their feelings regarded as irrelevant. Recognition that a child or young person knows who they are is hugely important, whatever age they trust their parents with this truth.”