Former Olympian talks about revealing his secret to the world after 5 decades of uncertainty, doubts and shame

Apr 25, 2015 06:56 GMT  ·  By
Bruce Jenner comes out as trans-woman on Diane Sawyer special, writes history
   Bruce Jenner comes out as trans-woman on Diane Sawyer special, writes history

After months of very intense speculation and being bullied in the tabloid press, Bruce Jenner, famous former Olympian and reality star, is coming clean in a history-making interview with Diane Sawyer for ABC: he is, “for all intents and purposes,” a woman.

The 2-hour special aired last night, and marked the first time Bruce opened on the topic: he identifies by the female gender. Videos of highlights from the chat are included below. At one point, Diane noted that, for the time being and until Bruce asked otherwise, we should still refer to him with the pronouns “he” and “him.”

Bruce always had “the soul of a woman”

Bruce knew something was different for him when he was just a little boy who wandered into his mother’s closet and tried on her clothes. However, for years, though consumed with guilt and shame, he never thought to do something about it or even to make further inquiries.

He just assumed it was something he had to deal with.

In the ‘80s, he says, he started taking hormones. Also then, he began to question his identity, having finally understood that he had “the soul of a woman.” Bruce admits that he hates the cliché of being trapped in another person’s body: he says he is who he is and this is his journey.

“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,” he says. “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.”

He plans to continue taking hormones and to have a sex change.

Coming out to the family and what Kris knew

Bruce was married for 23 years to Kris Jenner, so the question of how much she knew about his transition and his real identity was bound to come up.

Kris knew, he says, but not because he told her. She caught him wearing women’s clothes and she noticed that his breasts had grown, from the hormone therapy. It “rocked” her world, he says, making her question everything they had had experienced together up until that point.

Had she been more understanding, they would probably still be together, Bruce says. However, he doesn’t blame her: he really loved her and they had a wonderful life together and a beautiful family. She is a “good person” who did the best she could with what life threw at her.

Oppositely, the children were far more supportive, Bruce says, getting emotional. His boys from his previous marriage were exceptional, as also were the Kardashian girls, Kris’ daughters from her previous marriage. The one who struggled the most was Khloe, but she too came around eventually.

Kim has always been “the most supportive”

Perhaps the most surprising part of the interview was hearing Bruce praise Kim Kardashian, who has been “by far” the most accepting and supportive of him. Prior to this interview, rumors had it that Kim had turned her back completely on the man she’d called a father for decades, because she believed his transition did damage to her “brand.”

That never happened, Bruce explains. She was actually the one who approached him on the subject, after she walked in on him in women’s clothes. She and Kanye were there for him when no one else from the family knew, offering him support and unconditional love.

That must have come at the best of time when Bruce contemplated suicide, he says. When he was photographed going into a doctor’s office and rumors began making the rounds that he wanted to have his Adam’s apple surgically flattened, he lived in such fear that his secret would be exposed that he thought death would be an easier and less painful option.

This is not a publicity stunt

Today, Bruce has come to terms with what is happening in his life and he’s speaking out because he believes he can make a difference, that he can change the world: he wants other transgender people to know that what they’re going through is common, that they’re not alone.

The thought that some might think his transition could be a publicity stunt amuses him: he’d never go through a sex change just to boost ratings for a show, that’s stupid! However, he will use the platform offered by the show to speak out on transgender issues, he says.

As you can see in the videos below, Bruce is only beginning his journey. Asked by Diane about his sexual orientation, he says he loves women, as he has all his life. He stops short of identifying as a lesbian, saying gender and sex are “apples and oranges” and that he will have more clarity on this by the end of the year, when he will have presumably gotten the gender reassignment surgery. He goes by “asexual” for the time being.

Despite rumors to the contrary, ex Kris Jenner is by Bruce’s side through all this.