A Tasmanian primary school student has opened up to her classmates that she is transgender in a heartwarming video.
Abbey Boon, 11, shared the video with her peers last week to reveal her true self in an assembly on the final day of the school term.
Abbey, formerly known as Ethan, holds a series of written signs in the clip to explain she wants to “share my secret with you”. She begins in a male school uniform before changing into a dress to show her real identity.
“Today I am telling you that I am transgender,” she wrote.
“This means I am a girl that was born in a boy’s body. Today we are saying goodbye to that boy Ethan. ”
She details how she has always felt out of place when she was Ethan.
"I've felt this way my whole life," she wrote.
"I've always had this thing for girl's things. It felt weird to play with boys because I wasn't into the same things as them."
For this, she says, she was given a hard time at her old school.
In grade three, she moved to Launceston's Mowbray Heights Primary School.
"I felt scared coming to a new school. I wondered if people would treat me the same way," she wrote.
But then she made new friends who helped her realise she could be herself, giving her the courage to tell her story.
"I decided it was time to be me," she wrote.
"My name is Abbey and I will see you next term."
Abbey told local paper The Examiner that she was very nervous before the video had been screened. And afterward, there were tears of joy.
“I can’t really explain it. It was like my heart was slowing down and I felt sick,” she said.
“I thought everyone was just going to turn around and be nasty and everything. They did turn around but they smiled to me."
Abbey will soon see a specialist to prevent the onset of male puberty and will begin hormone replacement therapy when she turns 18.