I wanted to show America a different kind of man. If there was someone like me when I was growing up, my whole life would have been different.

So when I was about 13 or 14, I realized I was attracted to women and then made the assumption that I was a lesbian, and didn't realize that that wasn't the case. It was the fact that I was a man and a heterosexual man. The issue wasn't my sexual orientation, but rather my gender identity.

I wanted to show America a different kind of man. If there was someone like me when I was growing up, my whole life would have been different.

Deep down, my mom had long suspected I was gay... Much of her anger and hurt came from her sense of betrayal that she was the last to be told.

I had felt uncomfortable as a woman my whole life.

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.

A lot of parents never speak to their transgender kids again that's not the case in my family.