As the world is becoming more accepting of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, the Philippines has taken a significant step towards acceptance: model Joey Mead’s husband has transitioned to a woman, and everyone has been supportive.
The news was announced via the couple’s Instagram accounts yesterday, when both Joey Mead and Ian Mead King (now Angelina Mead King) posted the same photo:
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A photo posted by Ian King (@hailtothe_king) on
Despite only making the news yesterday, Angelina has a second Instagram account where she posts photos of herself, the first photo dating back to September 30, 2012.
Joey is a model who hosted the second and third season of Asia’s Next Top Model. Angelina is the managing director of Victoria Court and owner of Car Porn Racing, an automotive business venture. The couple married in 2011.
The best part of the story: everyone has been accepting, including Joey. In her first Instagram post acknowledging it, she posted a checklist of sexual orientations, with the box marked humanย checked. In another post,ย Angelina said that Joey is her “rock and number one supporter.”
Even Angelina’s mother spoke highly of her daughter, saying “”It takes courage to speak your truth…I am thrilled and happy that my child has found bliss!”
In psychology, being transgender means that one’s “gender identity differs from the sex the doctor marked on their birth certificate.ย Gender identity is a person’s internal, personal sense of being a man or a woman (or someone outside of that gender binary). For transgender people, the sex they were assigned at birth and their own internal gender identity do not match.”
(Editor’s note: being gay and being transgender are two different things. Being gay means being attracted to the same sex and still identifying with the sex assigned at birth. On the other hand, being transgender means that the sex they are assigned at birth does not match their personal sense.)
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