From Flora to Bruno: the story of a child’s gender transition in Argentina

Like every morning, Mara Reicevic makes her children’s breakfast and thinks about her to-do list. With an automatic gesture, she brushes back her thick hair, while spreading butter on whole wheat toast — the bread that Bruno, her nine-year-old son, likes the most.

When she calls his name, she’s careful not to make a mistake: “Bruno, Bruno,” she tells herself, rehearsing in silence. A little over a year ago, he told her that he felt like a boy. This was the name he wanted to be called.

— “Mom, I’m going to call myself Bruno. My friends already call me that and the music teacher, too.”

— “Well… you’re going to have to be patient with me, because I’ve always been calling you Flora, the name we chose for you when you were born.”

— “Okay, mommy, no problem. Whenever you can…”

Bruno was born in 2014, with the body of a girl. His parents named him Flora, after Reicevic’s paternal grandmother. “I loved my grandmother very much and wanted my daughter to be named after her,” she explains. Mara lives in an old house, in a low-rise residential neighborhood in the city of Buenos Aires. Bruno’s school and swimming club are just a few blocks away.

“[Before] Flora was born, I wanted with all my heart to have a girl. The birth was at home, unlike that of Blas, my 15-year-old son, who was born in a clinic. [That was] very traumatic for me,” recalls the 47-year-old actress and communications specialist

Her life changed three years ago. During the pandemic lockdowns, Mara got divorced, while Flora began to identify as a boy. During the pandemic, Flora started wearing her brother’s clothes. “Who cared about how anybody was dressing, when we were all stuck inside the house?” Mara shrugs. She has a hard time remembering the order of events and the details of the changes that took place. “You can be the most progressive person in the world, but when these things happen to you, you stop being progressive at once,” she sighs sadly.

Her son’s change of identity is a transition that she is living through with perplexity. “I always thought that my children’s sexual choices [were their own], but not that they would change their gender,” she explains, while looking for old photos of Bruno on her cell phone. “First, I had to grieve: Flora no longer exists, I told myself. It’s very difficult to accept that a daughter becomes a son. But later, I realized that this wasn’t what had happened: I saw [my daughter] in Bruno.”

Mara Reicevic’s son is part of the 36% of transgender boys and girls who — between the ages of five and eight — manifest their self-perception of gender as being different from the one assigned to them at birth. This is according to a report by the Argentina-based Free Childhood Civil Association. In a sample of 100 cases, surveyed between 2018 and 2021, the report shows that 42% of this population does so before the age of four.

“Identity is never going to be something closed and definitive. Identity is always self-perceived. When a child begins to speak, self-perception begins to occur. We have to accompany [the child] and understand what this is all about,” explains pediatrician Rosa Pappola, a specialist in childhood and adolescence. She’s been the head of programming at the Penna Hospital in Buenos Aires since 2007.

The following year, in 2021, the change of clothes was followed by a new haircut. And, during the summer after that, Flora began wearing a boy’s swimsuit. “Eight months passed before I agreed to take her to a hairdresser,” Reicevic notes. “I felt so bad when he looked in the mirror and told me: ‘Now, I’m happy.’ I couldn’t stop crying.” After a while, Bruno asked that his earrings be removed and, little by little, he began to shed his appearance as a girl.

“The earrings for me have a much more important symbolism than I imagined. Taking them off was like crossing a border. I understood that this was a path of no return and that my obligation was to accompany him in his transition, although I didn’t quite know how,” Bruno’s mother confesses.

Argentina is one of the pioneering countries in the world with respect to gender identity. The law approved in 2012 establishes that “the internal and individual experience of gender as each person feels it, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth” is a human right. The law eliminates the condition of presenting a medical diagnosis, performing surgical interventions, or even going to court to guarantee the right to be named according to one’s self-perceived identity. It also requires that this identity be respected in all institutional settings — both in the public and private sectors (schools, health centers, corporations, etc.) — without the requirement to have the change registered in a person’s identity documents.

Bruno has not yet asked to make the change to his identity document. According to the National Registry of Persons, 16,090 people, including 1,529 under the age of 17, have filed a request for a new national identity document with a name according to their self-perceived gender. The number of children and adolescents who request a name change is a small minority, according to data from the Free Childhood Civil Association.

In Bruno’s family, the change was quickly accepted by everyone during the transition years. “My mom is a genius. At first, it was difficult for her, but she got used to it before I did. She now calls him Bru (short for Bruno) with total normality,” Reicevic laughs. “For Bru, being trans isn’t an issue — he lives it in a natural and genuine way.” However, at school and at the swimming club, Bruno had to go through some moments that made him cry.

When he cut his hair, some schoolmates scolded him in the girls’ bathroom and told him that he no longer belonged there. At the swimming club, after the medical examination, they sent him to the men’s locker room — his father had to intervene so that the person in charge understood why Bruno wanted a friend to accompany him to the locker room. “There are situations that are difficult to resolve, such as the issue of the bathroom or the changing rooms. I don’t want him to go to the men’s! And how will it be later with sports? And what about overnight field trips?” the mother wonders, without answers.

As Bruno’s transition progresses, his mother is always searching for information to understand what’s happening to him. “Today, he’s at Disney,” she says ironically, referring to the family and the community environment that cares for and respects Bruno. “But thinking about his adolescence causes me anguish. What will he feel like when his body changes? Will he want to intervene [surgically]? Or would he rather do nothing? I would prefer that nothing be done, but I don’t know…”

“Not all trans adolescents want to chemically stop their puberty [from occurring] and not all want to undergo surgery,” clarifies Dr. Pappola. “The processes are very personal and there are no general laws. To the extent that society is more open, it will accept that bodies are more diverse.”

Argentine law establishes free health care for transgender people of all ages and throughout the country. This includes hormonal treatments and surgical interventions after the age of 16.

Mara is accompanying Bruno on his transition journey with acceptance and love. “The only thing that scares me is not being up to the task,” she admits. She admires her son for the natural way in which he expresses his desired changes and the time he gives her to adjust. “Oftentimes, I find myself saying, ‘I have a trans son.’ I’m taking it one step at a time.”

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