A new Australian children’s drama about a transgender girl in her first year of high school will be premiering on ABC Me March 30, and specifically targets an audience of young children, Star Observer reports.
“First Day” features 14-year old transgender activist and actor Evie MacDonald, who plays a 12-year old transgender girl starting at a new school, according to the Star Observer. The trailer for the show was posted on YouTube by ABC Me last week.
MacDonald made history when she became the first transgender person to walk the runway in the International Kids Fashion Parade at age 11. She has been involved in numerous transgender awareness projects, including a 2017 campaign to remove family court from the “gender affirmation process” for transgender children.
MacDonald also caught the world’s attention when she responded to Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison at age 13 in a video after he made remarks on Twitter about a program that trains school teachers to recognize potential trans children.
We do not need ‘gender whisperers’ in our schools. Let kids be kids. https://t.co/POzM26PXU5
— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) September 4, 2018
MacDonald, who transitioned in primary school, responded with a video, saying “there are thousands of kids in Australia that are gender diverse and we don’t deserve to be disrespected like that through tweets from our Prime Minister,” Gay Star News reported.
“I want to help make it easier for other people to come out as trans in the future. Being transgender is not a choice – and we’ve been around forever,” MacDonald told Star Observer in regards to the show. (RELATED: New York Will Allow Transgender Minors To Change Sex On Birth Certificate)
The show was written by Julie Kalceff and was initially commissioned by ABC to write and direct the stand-alone pilot episode of First Day, which was later commissioned into a short children’s TV series. Kalceff told Star Observer that “many [trans] stories come from the conservative media so we need to balance those stories with positive stories such as this.”