Chaz Bono

As you get older it's more confusing. Suddenly, there's more pressure to fit in to your assigned gender. ”

People who don't have gender dysphoria aren't going to catch it by watching me dance on television. ”

Around 2001, I started analyzing lesbians. I started to realize that even really butch-acting or -dressing women still had a strong female identity that I never had. ”

Gender is between your ears and not between your legs. ”

I confused gender identity with sexual orientation. Your gender identity is about who you are, how you feel, the sex that you feel yourself to be. Sexual orientation is who you're attracted to. ”

There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they're mismatched. That's all it is. It's not complicated, it's not a neurosis. It's a mix-up. It's a birth defect, like a cleft palate. ”

It felt as if my body was, like, literally betraying me because I went from a very athletic, straight-up-and-down little kid to a very curvaceous woman, and it was just horrifying to me. ”

I feel so much more comfortable that I've ever been. I've felt male as far back as I can remember. ”

For me, it was never a question of whether or not I was transgender. It was a question of what I'd be able to handle transitioning and having to do it in the public eye. One of the issues that was hard for me to overcome was the fear of that. ”

Parents have to understand: if your kid isn't you, don't blame the kid. ”