People say, ''I'm a woman trapped in a man's body'' or ''I'm a man trapped in a woman's body,'' but I say ''I'm trapped in a body.''
I wonder, would I have transitioned from female to male if I was 30 years younger? Possibly. But if I had been born even 30 years later, because it seems like the technology will only get better, it seems like one might not ever need to settle down at all.
My parents started questioning me about whether or not I was transgender - whether or not I was trying to be a woman. It was a big argument.
This is the amazing thing about you. Had I not known anything about your story, I would have absolutely not a clue that you had ever been a boy - a male. Which makes me absolutely believe you always should have been a woman.
For the longest time, I thought I was a boy. I really did. I wore boys' clothes, played tag football.
It's actually one of the hardest things for trans people, is to go to the bathroom.
I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be a girl, to be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me. I remember looking into the mirror struggling to say just two words, 'I'm transgender.'
I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body!
When I told my parents that I was starting my transition, my Dad said, 'Well that makes so much more sense 'cause I never saw you any other way and now it totally works.'
I thought, transgender people are much worse off than I am. That's why they're willing to risk everything to be who they are. But the older I got, the harder it got to stay in my body.
Once a female, always a female. Nature is not always infallible but she always abides by her mistakes.
I am transgender. I knew that I was for as long as I can remember.
I don't know that I had context for being trans until I moved to Rochester, New York, to pursue my dream of acting, and started going to drag shows. I had never seen a transsexual before, and I didn't yet fully understand my own identity.
I'm pretty sure I'm a doppelganger for Alan Alda. I'm a trannie; I'm a man.
Ever since I could form coherent thoughts, I knew I was a girl trapped inside a boy's body. There was never any confusion in my mind. The confusing part was why no one else could see what was wrong.
Here's what's interesting about Katharine Hepburn: she was born a girl but identified as a boy, so she shaved her head and rechristened herself Jimmy.
When I first started out modelling, I was binding my chest at gigs to make sure my physique was able to be 'passable' as male. But now, I never bind. It's highly unsafe and unhealthy.
I woke up one morning with this song in my head, and the opening line of the song is, 'My name was Richard Nixon, only now I'm a girl.'
Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it.
There is a rather huge ethical difference between electing surgery and being faced with transphobic condemnation and diagnoses. I would say that the greatest risk of mutilation that trans people have comes directly from transphobia.
There's power in naming yourself, in proclaiming to the world that this is who you are. Wielding this power is often a difficult step for many transgender people because it's also a very visible one.
In a two-hour interview last Friday, Bruce Jenner told ABC's Diane Sawyer, 'For all intents and purposes, I'm a woman.' At which point, Joe Biden ran in and started giving Bruce a shoulder rub.
You don't go out and change your gender for a television show, O.K.? It ain't happening. I don't care who you are.
I believe the transsexual urge, at least as I have experienced it, to be far more than a social compulsion, but biological, imaginative, and essentially spiritual, too.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a boy. I really had gender issues.
