A Brazilian girl was placed with a foster family after it was discovered that her mother had secretly been raising her as a boy for two years.
The mother named her daughter Samuel and managed to erase the “female” check box on her birth certificate at the hospital. She then checked the “male” box, R7 Noticias said.
After the baby was discharged from the hospital, the mother registered “Samuel” as a boy at a municipal office in Senador Canedo.
The mother dressed her daughter in boy’s clothes and cut her hair short for two years, managing to convince everyone — including the child’s father — that the girl was her son. An aunt discovered the truth after she peeked into the child’s diaper.
“I didn’t suspect a thing,” the paternal grandmother said. “For me, he was a boy. Why would I think anything different?”
The grandmother went on to say, “It was a huge shock for everyone. Now I have to get used to the fact I don’t have a grandson any more, I have a granddaughter.”
The mother said she hid her daughter’s true identity because she was abused as a child and wanted her daughter to avoid the same fate by being a boy.
The municipal office in Senador Canedo that accepted the fake registration could also face charges for the ruse.
Gender switching, or even gender neutrality, isn’t as uncommon as it may seem. In Afghanistan, families sometimes disguise their daughters as boys because of economic and societal pressures to have sons. A British couple raised their child as “gender neutral” for five years before finally revealing that it was a boy.
Most recently, a Swedish toy company began practicing gender neutrality in its ads.
