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.

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.

Being self-supporting is important to me.

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.

I want to create a place where trans people and our allies could come together to share experiences, information and ideas. Being transgender or loving someone who is transgender can be challenging in our society and I hope that members of this site will also use this space as a place to support and encourage each other. Together, we can strengthen our community and open the hearts and minds of others.

When I realised I was transgender I was so afraid of what my transition would do to everyone else in my life and how they would react to it and would I be rejected?

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.