Former American Olympic track and field star, Bruce Jenner has come out as transgender.
The 65-year-old made the revelation during a special with television host, Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “20/20” on Friday night.
“I’m me. I’m a person. This is who I am. I’m not stuck in anybody’s body. My brain is much more female than male,” Jenner said. “For all intents and purposes, I am a woman. People look at me differently. They see you as this macho male, but my heart and my soul and everything that I do in life it is part of me, that female side is part of me. That’s who I am. I was not genetically born that way. … As of now I have all the male parts and all that kind of stuff so in a lot of ways we’re different, but we still identify as female. And that’s very hard for Bruce Jenner today. Why? I don’t want to disappoint people.”
Jenner said he is sexually attracted to women. He was careful to emphasize the difference between gender and sexuality. As a child, he dressed in women’s clothing. He also revealed that he has gone out in public dressed as a woman for years.
“It was that important to you that you’d take that kind of risk?” Sawyer asked.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
Speaking on the red carpet at Variety’s Power of Women luncheon on Friday, Jenner’s stepdaughter Kim Kardashian said her family members planned to watch the program together.
“I think everybody can learn from his story and I’m excited for him to be able to share that,” Kardashian said when asked what her daughter, North, can eventually learn from Jenner.
Jenner said being on a show like “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is not a hindrance; It gives him a platform to be able to have real impact.
“We’re going to change the world,” he said. “I really firmly believe that we’re going to make a difference in the world.”
Though Jenner has come out as “for all intents and purposes a woman,” he has not yet indicated that he would like to be known by a new name or female pronouns. Some on social media are referring to Jenner as “Jennifer” and using the pronoun “her” when referring to him.
