"Coming Out As Transgender - The Final Frontier..."

Transexual Actress Laverne Cox
Netflix Original Series "Orange Is The New Black"

At a recent dinner function with my team from work, I shared with my colleagues that I once seriously considered sex reassignment surgery.  And while I look back on that time in my life with amazed incredulity, I nevertheless have a great deal of empathy for those who actually are trapped in a body of the wrong sex.  I didn't feel that way and I never have.  I am a man and I want to be a man.  But in the confusing time of my early out-of-the-closet life, I was so in love with someone whom I thought wanted for me to want that, I was prepared and willing to make that extreme change in myself for "his" happiness.

Thankfully, I was mistaken about what I thought he wanted me to be for him and I discovered that before it was too late.  But ever since that time, I've realized that I have the ability to understand and champion the cause of those among us for whom the reality of being born in the wrong body is their truth.  In my own way, I can understand the desire to be as you are, the way that you feel

Chelsea Manning, is a case in point. in her own unintentional and unconventional way she has done more to bring the plight of transgendered people to the forefront of our collective conscience than perhaps anyone ever has.  Her courage in standing up to tell the world the truth of her heart is a powerfully moving act of bravery and intrepidity.

I've made it clear in the past that I feel her actions as the person who exposed our government's immoral actions and crimes in the Middle East wars make her a hero... But moreover, Chelsea is a hero for standing up for the truth of her heart and her experience and for telling the world who she really is.  As she now embarks on her next heroic battle, to live her life even while imprisoned with truth, valor and courage, I applaud her and declare her to be a real American hero.

"Fear Eats the Soul"