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  • I don't even remember the day that I realized that I'm a girl, but rather remember today that I'd be like that.

  • Everyone else thinks that I'm aboard.

  • That was the first president of Cool Up Pacific to come on the trends.

  • I was born and raised in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, for all intensive purposes.

  • I grew up in 18th century Eastern Europe.

  • Plus we had lights.

  • He spoke only to shed home.

  • He didn't have access to anything off the outside world.

  • TV and radio.

  • It's like purely forbidden.

  • We have Yiddish community, newspapers and magazines, and all of them are out pictures of women.

  • Let's listen to communities, Deimos, gender segregated society.

  • Someone could show me a community that is more agenda segregated and consider community in North America.

  • I will buy you a drink.

  • I'm talking, for example.

  • First, cousins are not allowed to play with each other times.

  • Many families, including my own family, sometimes a Shabbat dinner Friday night dinner at a home where their in laws the man will sit in the dining room of the family room, and the woman will sit in the kitchen and separate rooms.

  • Not because there's not enough space, but simply because off the gender dynamics.

  • And that wasn't easy.

  • I knew I was a girl.

  • Since I remember myself, however, there was no way to explore that in any way for my family.

  • Personally, there was an added level to it's up to speed.

  • I'm a direct descendant of the ball shampoo, found their civic movement and five different ways.

  • And the grandkids have been held to some extend as royalty to my dad.

  • I was his first son.

  • I never waas.

  • But that was and he really wanted it because you had five girls, five older sisters and having a son of a big deal for all specific men and think for a lot of people in general, but specifically for someone who was gonna be a rabbi.

  • You have synagogue, and usually your son is the one who's gonna replace you.

  • And then you tell me my entire life like so like I was waiting for it, son, you can see like the signs on the streets, which are usually if their gear just for its man, they're written in Hebrew.

  • And if they're towards men and women, they usually Yiddish.

  • Why?

  • Because not all women's can read fluent Hebrew.

  • Oh, cool thing, though.

  • We're literally passing with that, that building over there.

  • Okay, this is also a synagogue on by my cousin, actually, but I think most in a guy, not everyone of my cousin, but most people were in synagogues.

  • I don't miss anything.

  • If I want something, I do it like I like to specific foods, but I don't miss it.

  • I just make them and buy them and eat them and moving on like it's not.

  • It's not about missing.

  • If I could just do it, I got a message from really engage Dad.

  • It's not something I can even talk about it.

  • It's not a normal thing to talk about.

  • I was convinced that I'm the only person the world that feels like I am, which is something that no one should ever experienced.

  • And interestingly enough, my parents did pick up on it for a while.

  • My dad was given that I was gay, which is not necessarily wrong, but it wasn't the thing that it was about, but he didn't know about trans people.

  • He did know about gay people because he has been working with teens at risk.

  • Which Nicholson?

  • The community doesn't mean drugs and usually means smartphones and talking to girls.

  • But he was a weird gay.

  • People exist.

  • They would always tell me.

  • I think you're hiding something.

  • You're hiding something big.

  • Do I look like a tourist to you?

  • I actually grew up here.

  • You know what gate?

  • What?

  • What gave me away?

  • You hear stuff you're born, you get your side curls on you with me.

  • You have your bar about Mitzi.

  • When you're 12 in church you're 17.

  • 18 you get engaged, get married.

  • It's what you do.

  • You don't think about it.

  • I wanted to get married because it also felt like it's gonna give me a bit more freedom.

  • There was a small part of me that was hoping that maybe everything that I'm feeling is not that I am a woman.

  • Maybe I just want to be with a woman.

  • They're not that It's not what it waas with a matchmaker way.

  • We're technically, I think Ford Cousins.

  • After that first meeting, we're engaged.

  • And then we didn't see each other for over a year, which was hauling engagement talk.

  • And then we got married and the night of the wedding.

  • You're supposed to do it, so to speak.

  • Part of my identity was religion, and part of me was, if the same people who were telling me about who I am gender wise could be so wrong about that there also the same people ever.

  • It's my parents or teachers were telling me all these things about God and religion and Judaism.

  • What makes me think they're right about that straw that broke the camel's back was, when it's are expecting my son or later my son spread because I'm feeling all of these things.

  • What if my child is gonna feel the same thing?

  • How do I know?

  • How can I deal with that?

  • And then I was like, Maybe there's something online that could help.

  • The Internet is about the moment.

  • It's about the instantaneous of the out, the artificial about the superficial.

  • It's about if you bought you click on to something else.

  • It's about being fleeting and empty.

  • Basically, from a specific point of view, it's a bad thing.

  • And then, after thought of realizing that it's become a fact of life in so many people needed for business, they started focusing more and more on kosher phones to like either block of the Internet or filtered and and different kinds of filters.

  • But I did know a friend who had a tablet, so I asked him if I could borrow it, and I figured that it was one place in the consider community.

  • We're just gonna be an open wife.

  • It's on a strip mall where their businesses they used the Internet in there, there was a uni sex bathroom.

  • You know, these are closed, fully close battle, which is a perfect place to just sit down, start browsing the Internet.

  • That is what I've been unlike with that were committed.

  • The first thing that I Googled in Hebrew with Reverend boyfriend.

  • From there I found a Wikipedia page Hebrew struck about trans people, that he directed me to online forms, and he broke the trans community.

  • How this morning about a journey.

  • I think that about two years from when deciding to leave until actually leaving, I was very much done.

  • The second I got divorced, I was not part of a community anymore.

  • All of my friends from my childhood stop talking to me when I left a community so I started taking for his night classes to finish my high school diploma.

  • Satellite English, totally on my own.

  • I was watching English lessons on YouTube, government for Hebrew speakers.

  • And then when I finished, my house could've blown that.

  • I started applying to several different colleges and had a few friends were pushing me to apply to Columbia.

  • Sure was not going to get in.

  • Ended up getting in.

  • And the fall of 2014 I started school.

  • I moved on campus, and it was my first time living outside of the community.

  • And it was really nice.

  • And I realized that I'm gonna have to transition at some point.

  • November 11 2015.

  • I came out publicly.

  • It wasn't a big deal.

  • I'm just gonna share unfaithful, can change my name and posted it like a picture.

  • When wearing makeup like that.

  • Call me Abby and whatever, like a TV thing and like, Okay, great.

  • Now I'm just gonna move on with my life continuing my education, opposed to Dad.

  • And under 11 at night, I wake up in the morning and that post alone had over 20,000 views overnight.

  • Well, I was just gonna say when you came out to your family.

  • What?

  • What was their reaction?

  • I only came out to my dad and I had a two hour conversation, which was the apple of the book, which didn't go with much as I was hoping.

  • I just the neighborhood I grew up in.

  • I don't have a lot of a few a bit like an aisle tighter.

  • I don't have a lot of emotion.

  • I think people expect something little or no.

  • I feel I think I've been out for so long.

  • A part of it almost feels like going to a museum and part of it, just like I know everything that's happening here because I grew up here and it's nice my family doesn't live here anymore.

  • I mean, they do, but not the family that I could talk with.

  • So I wrote this book becoming Eve and a big part to tell a story to tell a story.

  • It is not just my own story, but story.

  • Two people can relate you.

  • I can make sure that no other child has to go through what I go through.

  • We're thinking that the only person in the world that feels like that part about my family.

  • It bothers me sometimes that it doesn't bother me enough that I don't talk to me because my life is good.

  • I'm happy where I am in life, I have community.

  • I have friends, I have a chosen family and I even have biological family, both cousins and some more extended family that I'm really close with.

  • And if you can't accept me, I feel like it's your bat and and I wish that one day they will come around and maybe, and I think they will.

  • But for now, life continues, and it's very good.

I don't even remember the day that I realized that I'm a girl, but rather remember today that I'd be like that.

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