Name: I've lived as a man & a woman -- here's what I learned | Paula Stone Williams | TEDxMileHigh
Uploaded: 2018-05-21T14:58:11.000Z
Duration: 15 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Ellen Maloney

I was the CEO of a large religious nonprofit,

I was a successful, well-educated, white American male.

"It's a difficult thing to climb to the top of the ladder of success

that your ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall."

I knew from the time was three or four years of age I was transgender.

In my naivety, I thought I got to choose.

I thought a gender fairy would arrive and say,

I went to college, got married, had kids, built a career,

but the call toward authenticity has all the subtlety of a smoke alarm.

And eventually decisions have to be made.

So I came out as transgender and I lost all of my jobs.

In 21 states, you can't be fired for being transgender,

you can be fired if you're transgender and you work for a religious corporation.

People sometimes ask, "Do you feel 100% like a woman?"

And I say, "Well, if you've talked to one transgender person,

you've talked to exactly one transgender person.

There are things a cisgender woman knows I will never know.

That said, I am learning a lot about what it means to be a female,

and I am learning a lot about my former gender.

I have the unique experience of having lived life on both sides -

and I'm here to tell you: the differences are massive.

And ladies, I doubt you've thought about this,

but do you know there is never a time in the life of a male

that he has to worry about whether or not

an article of his clothing is accidentally going to drop into the toilet?

Now, I get my hair cut about half as often as I used to,

So, I can go on vacation or I can get my hair cut.

I keep bumping into gender differences everywhere I go!

I'm walking down the hallway and I just bump into it.

There's nothing in the way, and I just bump into it.

because now that my skin is thinner I have bruises absolutely everywhere.

How I experience my sexuality is profoundly different.

less of a body experience and more of a being experience.

I cannot count the number of times I've said to Cathy, my former wife,

There is no way a well-educated white male can understand

how much the culture is tilted in his favor.

There's no way he can understand it because it's all he's ever known,

there's no way that a woman can understand the full import of that

because being a female is all she's ever known.

She might have an inkling that she's working twice as hard for half as much,

how much harder it is for her than it is for the guy in the Brooks Brothers jacket

And I thought I was one of the good guys,

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I've lived as a man & a woman -- here's what I learned | Paula Stone Williams | TEDxMileHigh

stuff

absolutely

privilege

journey