1 / 25 Penelope Ghartey

Penelope Ghartey does a one-handed pushup at his home in Brooklyn, New York, on Dec. 13, 2016. Jodie Patterson's 3-year-old was brooding and angry until one day she asked her child what was wrong. Penelope, who was assigned female at birth, was upset "because everyone thinks I'm a girl," but he said he was really a boy. "I said, 'However you feel inside is fine,'" Patterson recalled from their home in Brooklyn. "And then Penelope looked at me and said, 'No, mama, I don't feel like a boy. I am a boy.'" Almost immediately, Patterson embraced the reality that Penelope was a transgender boy, and by age 5 he was going to school as a boy. Today, at age 9, Penelope is happy and healthy as a boy who loves karate and superheroes and decided to keep his birth name.

Brendan McDermid/Reuters