During an appearance on The Late
Show, Chaz Bono and David Letterman discussed the differences
between gender and sexuality.
Bono, the daughter of gay idol Cher and
the late entertainer-politician Sonny Bono, announced last year that
he was eight months into gender reassignment.
Bono's transition is documented in the
film Becoming Chaz, which premiered Tuesday on nascent cabler
OWN. He's also written a memoir on the subject, Transition: The
Story of How I Became a Man.
“I confused my sexual orientation and
gender identity,” Bono told his host.
“You have encapsulated my confusion,”
Letterman replied.
“Sexuality is who you're attracted
to. It's about other people,” Bono explained. “Your gender
identity, I like to think of it as having really two components.
There's obviously your physical body – your sex – but there's
also how you feel inside, or the gender of your brain. And for
transgender people, those two things just don't match up. So, always
inside I felt male. From the time I was a little kid I felt like a
boy, but obviously had a female body.”
Confused, Letterman asked, “Is this
connected to homosexuality?”
But he then managed to confuse Bono by
asking, “I grow up and I'm a boy and I'm attracted to women, but is
it possible that I could feel like I was a woman trapped in a man's
body, and still attracted to women? So, I'm not homosexual at all?”
(The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)