STORY: MAX STAINKAMPH & TAYLAH BAKER. PHOTOGRAPHY: MEGAN FISHER.
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AVERY VINCENT SAYS SHE’S “NEVER BEEN HAPPIER”. THE FAMILY SHE HAS CHOSEN SAYS THE SOUND OF HER LAUGHTER IS “LIKE MUSIC”. BUT EVERYONE WENT THROUGH SOME DARK TIMES TO REACH THE LIGHT ON THE OTHER SIDE — AND THE JOURNEY ISN’T OVER YET.
Soon after she turned 16, Avery Vincent knew.
Despite, at the time, having a boy’s name and wearing boys’ clothes, she knew she wasn’t a boy.
She likes watching movies and playing video games. She’s a coffee aficionado. She loves history — especially World War II or medieval history.
She goes to school and has friends and is a regular normal human being trying to figure it all out.
She’s also transgender.
For six months, Avery Vincent grappled with who she was and who she wanted to become, and trapped with her parents she wasn’t given the space or the time to figure it all out.
Six months later, she left to live with her aunt and uncle, Rachelle and Nathan Vincent, and 12 months on from that move she’s blossoming.
“It really wasn’t until I got to my wonderful aunty and uncle’s place that I really started trying to be myself in a safe environment,” Avery said.
Nathan sits across from her, smiling.
“That’s why we say she’s our daughter, because she was born last year,” he said.
“I’m a one-year-old in Year 12,” Avery said in reply.
“They grow up so fast.”
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Over the past 12 months, Avery has learnt to stand on her own two feet, with help from her aunt and uncle.
Finding yourself in your teenage years is hard enough without also grappling with gender, sexuality and navigating a world which can be aggressive and full of people who believe you shouldn’t exist.
“You’re entitled to your beliefs even if it’s disagreeing,” she said.
“Just don’t openly be arguing about me existing.”
It’s also been a challenge for Rachelle and Nathan.
“Rachelle has had to leave a few groups because we’re not trans-friendly enough because of things we like, like Harry Potter, she’s been kicked out of a few,” Nathan said.
Avery dismissed that concern as “a loud minority” online, and said her aunt and uncle have also had a steep learning curve, embracing her new name, pronouns and identity.
It’s something which they’ve had help and training from Uniting Care for.
They’ve got it wrong along the journey. But it wasn’t something which bothered Avery because she knew they were trying.
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She was scared of coming out to her friends, doing it one by one with her close friends.
“I thought ‘this is taking too long’ and I came out to everybody via mass copy and pasted text on social media.”
Avery expected to lose half her friends after the announcement.
She lost one.
That was it.
Picking a new name was one of the first things Avery needed to do after coming out to her friends and family as transgender, but it took three or four months.
“It took me a while to even register that I needed a new name, because my old name was not a feminine name, not even near gender-neutral,” she said.
Avery trawled through baby name sites, making a list, then a top five, and then — because she still couldn’t split them — began looking at her favourite names’ meanings.
“I knew straight away, yes that’s me,” she said.
“I wanted a unique name, not to be another Bec or something.”
She asked a friend for advice on a new middle name, and landed on Rose, with Vincent taken as the family name.
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Greater Shepparton Secondary College has been a sanctuary of sorts at times for Avery.
“We have a Pride group, which is at the top floor of one of the buildings at lunchtime on Wednesdays,” she said.
“It was originally one room, but we’ve had so many new people come.”
More than that, support from her aunt and uncle has been the most important thing possible, giving her time and space to find who she is without pressure.
“She’s with us now, she’s safe. That’s all we care about,” Nathan said.
“And I’ve never been happier,” Avery said.
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The wheels have begun turning on the bigger picture transition, the physical and chemical nitty-gritty.
They’re off to see a gender specialist in April, but Avery has had to live as a girl, a woman, for a year before they’ll even consider giving her hormones like oestrogen.
It’s not an easy process — kids or adults can’t rock up to a doctor’s clinic off the street.
The process is long and tricky to navigate, with plenty of boxes needing to be ticked by plenty of medical professionals.
“You have to go through a specialist, a psychiatrist, making sure you’re right in the head and you’re genuinely wanting to go through with this,” Avery said.
Rachelle said for all the fear-mongering done, transitioning to a different gender wasn’t something which could be easily done.
“Their child, I can honestly tell you, is not going to put themselves through this process just to be a teenager and give you hell, they’re not going to do that,” Rachelle said.
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If and when Avery is ticked off to begin transitioning, she’ll be able to begin hormone treatment, which will kick off a second puberty.
“I can’t wait to be going through puberty until I’m 30. Yay, mood swings in my mid-20’s!” Avery said.
Rachelle has been helping her niece take the smaller steps — trying skirts and dresses and leggings and introducing her one-year-old 17-year-old to a whole new world.
Eventually Rachelle bought some for her.
It’s been weird being thrust into a world of weird clothes sizing and lack of pockets and different fashion choices, which many women are used to before they notice.
Avery said it was like being thrown in the deep end.
“There’s too many kinds of things, especially in women’s clothes,” she said.
Her style, like many other things in her life, is something Avery’s still trying to work on.
“I’m focusing on transitioning first. I want to finish Year 12, get my ATAR out of pure curiosity of what number I’ll get,” she said.
Rachelle and Nathan said they were happy for her to do whatever she wanted beyond Year 12 — they just want her to be happy.
Which, for the first time in a long time, she is.
“We hear you giggling each night,” Nathan said.
Avery previously stayed with Rachelle and Nathan with her brother, years ago, and Rachelle said it was a drastically different experience.
“She was so angry; she was such an angry kid. She never laughed. Never even giggled. Hardly smiled,” Rachelle said.
“Now, when I hear her laughing it’s like music and it’s the best song that could ever be played on any station ever.
“That giggle, I swear it never gets old. The first time I heard her giggle, I cried."