Transgender homecoming queen responds to backlash: 'It made me feel like a woman'

A Missouri teen boy who believes he is a girl responded to backlash after he was crowned homecoming queen, stating that while he still had a voice in his head that others see him as a man, the award made him "feel like a woman."

Oak Park High School in Kansas City, Missouri, recently named a male student homecoming queen after he beat four female competitors on his way to the crown.

Tristan Young, the 17-year-old male recipient, said backlash has been rampant but so have words of praise.

“As much as my life isn’t normal right now, I’m trying to keep it normal,” Young said. “Navigating through the darkness of hate, like, you just get a sea of love contrasting it.”

The boy claimed he has known that he wanted to be a woman since he was in seventh grade, as reported by local outlets KSHB and KOAM, which yielded to the boy's gender confusion and preferred pronouns.

However, Young expressed that he has worried about still being seen as his biological self, feelings that were at least partially quelled when he received news of his nomination.

“I had a voice in my head, like, people still see you as a man, and obviously that doesn’t feel good. So when I was called into the library and told I was up for queen, it made me feel like a woman,” Young said.

Outlet KSHB noted that Young has aspirations of being a writer and for people to "care about what she has to say."

“There is a way you can be happy in being trans, because there is a lot of hate the world, but there is also so much good,” Young continued. “As time progresses, I’m hoping that we become a more supportive environment everywhere.”

Young is the second boy crowned as homecoming queen in the high school's history.

The school's new tradition dates back to 2015, when Oak Park crowned Landon Patterson with the typically female title.

“I was up there with all the other girls, so I felt like a normal girl. They think I represent Oak Park, and that meant the world to me,” Patterson said.

“He’s a cute boy, but a beautiful girl,” his mother, Debbie Hall, claimed. “All along, since Landon was little, [we] knew Landon was different,” Hall added. "I just assumed, like everybody else, that he was gay."

Patterson reportedly transitioned into being a girl the same year he won the award.

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