Olympian Bruce Jenner said Friday that
he identifies as a woman.
“For all intents and purposes, I am a
woman,” Jenner said during a two-hour long sit down interview with
ABC News' Diane Sawyer.
“People look at me differently. They
see you as this macho male, but my heart and soul, and what I do in
life … it is a part of me – that female side is a part of me. I
was not genetically born that way. As of now, I have all the male
parts, and all that kind of stuff, and in a lot of ways we're
different, but we still identify as female … And that's very hard
for Bruce Jenner to say, because I don't want to disappoint people.”
“My brain is more female than it is
male,” he added. “I see women and think how lucky they are that
they can wake up in the morning and be themselves.”
Jenner said that he identifies as “her”
but feels comfortable using male pronouns such as “he” and “him.”
He also pointed out to viewers that gender identity and sexual
orientation are not the same.
“I am not gay,” he said. “I am,
as far as I know, heterosexual. I've always been with a woman,
raising kids.”
The 65-year-old Jenner won the gold
medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and
subsequently found success in television. The long-running reality
series Keeping Up with the Kardashians focuses
on the lives of the Kardashian-Jenner family.