Chaz Bono Gender is Between Your Ears

Chaz Bono sat down Thursday with Good Morning America's Chris Cuomo for his first live interview since announcing he is a transgender man eight months ago.

"To me, gender is between your ears, not between your legs," he tells Cuomo. "I've felt male as far back as I can remember. As a child, it was really clear. I felt like a boy."

He went on to explain that declaiming himself a lesbian was the easy answer.

"A lot of female-to-male transgender people end up doing a stint in the lesbian community because it just kind of makes sense," he says. "At 13, 14, I was real clear at that point that I was attracted to women. So I was like, 'I'm attracted to women, I am a woman, I guess I'm a lesbian.'"

The son of Cher and Sonny Bono says the decision to transition from Chastity to Chaz was not an easy one, and that gender-reassignment surgery is especially difficult when you're in the spotlight.

"Just an incredible hurdle was the idea that I wasn't going to be able to do this privately like most people can. That took me a really long time to get over. And then, it was about dealing with the people in my life and how it was going to affect them. And finally, it came down to realizing that I've got to live my life for myself and life is short and life is precious."

Read the full story here.