Trans actress Evie Macdonald plays Hannah Bradshaw (far left) in First Day. (YouTube/CBBC)
The nerve-wracking first day of school for a 12-year-old trans girl has been portrayed in CBBC series First Day.
The four-part series, which first aired on Australia’s ABC network earlier this year, documents the life of Hannah Bradford (played by trans actress Evie Macdonald) as she starts a new school.
Trans charities and the parents of trans children have praised CBBC and the BBC for giving trans youth a rare piece of on-screen representation.
CBBC, the BBC’s children’s network, aired the first 24 minute long episode of First Day yesterday (19 August).
It begins with Hannah’s last day of primary school, in which vicious bullies repeatedly call her by her deadname, before showing her dress shopping with her mother ahead of her first day at high school.
Macdonald, the 15-year-old trans actress who plays the lead role, previously confronted Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for his views on transgender people.
In 2018, Morrison, who voted against same-sex marriage in the country, responded to a news report in Australia’s The Daily Telegraph, which claimed that teachers were being trained to identify transgender children.
“We do not need ‘gender whisperers’ in our schools. Let kids be kids,” he posted on Twitter.
In a video response that made global headlines, Macdonald replied: “My name is Evie Macdonald, I’m 13 years old and I’m a transgender kid. And this is what I want to say to the prime minister.
“There are thousands of kids in Australia that are gender diverse. We don’t deserve to be disrespected like that through tweets from our prime minister.
“I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of attitudes like this.
“I went to a Christian school where I had to pretend to be a boy and spent weeks in conversion therapy. We get one childhood and mine was stolen from me by attitudes like this.”
First Day is being aired just months after the BBC was branded “institutionally transphobic” by senior MPs and LGBT+ activists in June.
In July, the UK’s biggest LGBT+ organisations united to condemn the public broadcaster for removing all trans-specific charities for England, Scotland and Wales from its Action Line support page.