Mirror
Bride-to-be Shirley Austin was married twice as a man… and dad Daniel Harcott got hitched once as a woman.
But together they have found new happiness – and with Daniel’s two children are thought to be the world’s first entirely transgender family.
Daniel, 44, was born female before deciding to live as a man, while fiancée Shirley, 66, lives as a woman after years as a male digger driver.
And Daniel’s children Mason, 14, born a girl, and Joshua, 17, who was a boy, have also come out as transgender.
Today the Harcott family tell their incredible story to encourage other transgender people to be true to themselves.
Daniel says: “When the children decided to transition I think we understood each other, so that was kind of neat.
“It wasn’t like in families where one person comes out and they wonder how they’re going to be treated and whether they’re going to be rejected.”
Shirley met Daniel when he and his kids attended a support group for parents of trans children in Queen’s Creek, Arizona.
The couple began messaging on Facebook and got engaged in July 2019. Shirley says: “I’m the happiest I’ve been in my life.
“The last four years with Daniel have been the best.”
Both are on hormones but currently have no plans to undergo realignment surgery, although Shirley said she would “love to have breast implants”.
Daniel says he knew “something didn’t feel right” from an early age. After leaving school, he married and had two children but still felt unsettled.
It was only when son Joshua wanted to join the Girl Scouts that Daniel realised he, too, was transgender. Daniel says Joshua was six or seven when, as a boy, he battled to join the Brownies. Pack leaders refused, saying Joshua would need to join the Scouts.
But things came to a head in 2016 when Joshua, who uses a wheelchair and is assisted by a service dog, was asked to give a talk to Brownies about the family’s golden retriever, Promise. Joshua was by then aged 12.
Daniel says: “As soon as Josh was finished talking, she went to the leader and said, ‘Now can I be a Girl Scout?’ and she said, ‘No because you are not a girl’.
“Josh went home and just blew up. ‘They want my dog, but they don’t want me’.”
Daniel – then married to a nuclear specialist – started researching transgender after talking to the Brownie leader. He said: “I went home and it took me two weeks to realise I didn’t know what the word transgender meant and I’d heard it again and again.
“So I looked it up and I read through it and I went, ‘Oh, I know what this is’.”
Daniel gently asked Joshua if he thought he was a boy or a girl.
He says: “Josh looked at me suspiciously and said, ‘I am a boy’. I said, ‘Yes, but you like it when you get your nails painted, especially when they’re pink and you like flowers. How do you feel in your heart? Josh looked at me and said, ‘I’m a girl’.”
It was only when Daniel then spoke to Joshua’s doctor about the conversation that he realised he was transgender too.
He said: “The doctor said, ‘We know that Josh will be fine because you know what this is’.
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