Dealing with a difference

SUMMERSIDE
Long black hair extensions. Heavily lined eyes. Bright pink fingernails. That's how Yuki Damon presents herself. But it's not what makes her female.
"Mentally I am," she says. "It's just the way I am."
Yuki, 15, is trans-gendered.
As she explains it, she's physically male but thinks and feels like a female.
The Summerside-area teen has been dressing as a woman for about two years.
"I just put on girls' clothes one day and went to school," Yuki says, chatting in the kitchen as mom Shelly Damon prepares supper. "I am who I am. Deal with it."
Mom remembers it as more complicated, noting they've argued about Yuki's clothing.
"We've had to change our way of thinking," Shelly says. "It's not our son or our daughter. It's our child. And if our child was in a wheelchair, would you accept him any less? If our child was walking around four-foot-nothing and five feet wide, would you accept him any less? You just have to kind of go with it."
Mom suggests it's a phase.
Yuki replies it must be a lifelong one.
"Even as a little kid, I played with Barbies and makeup."
Yuki goes to Three Oaks Senior High and says she's got plenty of friends. She recalls being teased in younger grades, but not now. Yuki speculates no one would dare bully her at school because they'd get in trouble.
Elsewhere, it can be a different story. Shelly recalls insults being hurled at Yuki during a trip to the mall. She worries about her child getting beaten up.
She also feels there's a lack of resources for parents.
Despite that, Shelly says Yuki is mentally healthy and doing well in school.
Joey Wargachuk, who designed a website for Yuki, has become a friend and a sort of mentor.
Wargachuk, 25, lives in Toronto, Ont., but is formerly of Summerside and attended Three Oaks. He says being openly gay at school means he understands what it's like for Yuki to be different in a small town. Wargachuk says it's even more difficult for someone who is trans-gendered.
"You were put in the wrong body," he explains.
Yuki says she wants to have sex change surgery some day.
She'd like to work as a fashion designer and become famous.
"Being noticed is very important to me," she admits.
Sometimes Yuki wears her dark hair fanlike around her head. She's also had it blonde and bright pink.
Though she's very polite and friendly in this interview, she agrees sometimes she uses words people might find inappropriate and she can be confrontational and headstrong.
"I'm just so out there because I feel a lot of people can relate to me," she says. "I have so many things in common with people that they just don't realize because they take one look at me and they're like - eewwww."
What's the common ground?
"I'm human."