Bruce Jenner tells Diane Sawyer in tell-all interview: “I am a woman”

Bruce Jenner tells Diane Sawyer in tell-all interview: “I am a woman”

THE patriarch of the Keeping Up with the Kardashians TV series and 1976 Olympic gold medallist Bruce Jenner has publicly confirmed he is a trans woman.

The revelation came in a tell-all interview with popular TV journalist Diane Sawyer, which was aired in a special edition of ABC’s 20/20 in the US a few hours ago.

“My whole life has been getting me ready for this,” Jenner, 65, told Sawyer.

“It’s not just the last few years they’ve been treating me as a joke.”

He also said how he hated the notion of being a “girl stuck in a guy’s body”.

“I am a person and this is who I am, I’m not stuck in anyone’s body,” Jenner said.

“My brain is much more female than it is male.”

To which Sawyer asked: “Are you a woman?”

Jenner responded: “For all intents and purposes, I am a woman.” (Editor’s note: At the time of print, Bruce Jenner did not explicitly indicate that a new name or pronoun be used). 

Jenner went on to explain how he had been confused about his gender since a very young age and had a lonely childhood because of this.

“I’ve never fit in, when you’re dealing with this issue, you don’t fit in,” Jenner said.

“I look at men all the time and think how lucky are they that they can wake up every day and be themselves.”

When asked why he wanted to transition from male to female at 65, Jenner responded: “Bruce is a lie, ‘she’ is not a lie, I can’t do it anymore.”

At this point in the interview, Jenner untied his ponytail and let the hair fall on his shoulders.

Jenner went on to recall moments when his two youngest daughters, Kylie and Kendall, and oldest stepdaughter Kim Kardashian, had caught him cross-dressing on separate occasions.

“It was like a big secret in the family that we never talked about,” he said.

Nonetheless, when Jenner finally came out to Kardashian/Jenner clan, while it was not perfect the whole family was generally supportive. Jenner said Kanye West also helped his wife Kim come to terms with it.

In addition to the Kardashian stepdaughters and three children he has with ex-wife Kris, Jenner also has four other children from previous marriages: Burt, Casey, Sam and Brody.

Jenner also revealed that one of his divorces was partly because of his gender struggles, and that during the 1980s, he took hormones but did not transition.

When Sawyer asked what his new female name would be, Jenner declined to answer, citing how the media would not leave him alone about it if he did.

During the interview, TV network E! announced a documentary series about Jenner’s transition, which will premiere on July 26.

Meanwhile, Jenner’s interview with Sawyer was met with praise on Twitter:

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23 responses to “Bruce Jenner tells Diane Sawyer in tell-all interview: “I am a woman””

  1. A strangely moving article. It reminded me of my own struggle as an adolescent to be boyish, to be accepted as a boy. Though this was in a way “only” a game, it was a serious game. I hadn’t expected the totally hysterical reactions that some adults exposed me to. I was even sent to a psychotherapist to be “cured”. The first question she asked me concerned my hair . . . why was it so short? Lots of girls had short hair, but in my case it became a sign of “the worst”, which was homosexuality. Like Hamlet, I was “most dreadfully attended” for years. People were clearly dying to find signs of “the worst” . Of course I realize now that in one important sense, the problem was theirs, not mine. At the time, that would have been cold comfort, though.

  2. Such a strong and courageous person to talk about her transition in such a public domain. I hope her story can give support and courage to others. It’s such a shame that all media reports and articles that I have come across, including this one, have been using the wrong pronouns and incorrectly labelling Bruce as a HE. Hopefully the rest of the media can catch up.

  3. The United States of America is a land of extreme contradictions…how lucky we are here in Australia not to have their ugly media culture

    It’s a sad indictment of how nasty and intrusive their media really is…

    Paparazzi will never leave him alone

    I hope this will open up the minds of the conservatives all around the world! !