18-year-old Leo Sheng spoke to PBS NewsHour Weekend’s Hari Sreenivasan last week about his experience making the transition from woman to man.

Last week, when transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn took her life by jumping in front of a trailer-tractor, initial headlines read that a “17-year-old boy” was killed on an interstate in Ohio. But when the Cincinnati Enquirer learned the full story — that Leelah was a transgender girl whose death was no accident — they turned to City Councilman Chris Seelbach for advice on how to proceed.

In 2011, Seelbach became Cincinnati’s first openly gay councilman. He recently helped Cincinnati become the first city in the Midwest to include transgender health benefits. According to Seelbach, one of the topics of that recent conversation with the Enquirer was about the careful use of proper pronouns when referring to Leelah.

“He, she, him, her, its” — grammar learned in elementary school that sometimes stumps people when referring to a transgender man or woman. But at what cost?

For Leelah, her parents’ refusal to see her as a girl may have played a large part in her death. That was gleaned in the suicide note that surfaced on her Tumblr account last Monday, which has since been taken down at the request of her family and in keeping with Tumblr’s policy.

Leo Sheng, an 18-year-old who documented his transition from woman to man on Instagram and YouTube in 2014, says it’s “taxing” when he’s referred to by an incorrect pronoun.

“If people overlook that, they’re disregarding your identity, they’re disregarding your feelings of who you truly are,” he said.



On Monday’s broadcast, Leo Sheng and Mara Keisling, Executive Director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, discussed efforts to help transgender youth with Hari Sreenivasan.

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