Name: 【TED】Geena Rocero: Why I must come out (Why I must come out | Geena Rocero)
Uploaded: 2014-07-17T17:09:07.000Z
Duration: 10 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The world makes you something that you're not,

I felt that I'd finally achieved the dream

that I'd always wanted since I was a young child.

My outside self finally matched my inner truth,

For complicated reasons which I'll get to later,

at that time I felt like, Geena, you've done it,

All of us are put in boxes by our family,

Some people have the courage to break free,

or by the beliefs of those that surround them.

some of my friends, colleagues, even my agent,

I think, in mystery, this is called the reveal.

in the Philippines walking around our house,

I would always wear this t-shirt on my head.

"How come you always wear that t-shirt on your head?"

I said, "Mom, this is my hair. I'm a girl."

Gender has always been considered a fact,

but we now know it's actually more fluid,

Because of my success, I never had the courage to share my story,

not because I thought what I am is wrong,

but because of how the world treats those of us

There's a long tradition in Asian culture

that celebrates the fluid mystery of gender.

There is a Buddhist goddess of compassion.

I was at a fiesta in the Philippines celebrating these mysteries.

and I remember, out comes this beautiful woman

and I remember that moment something hit me:

That is the kind of woman I would like to be.

She is a transgender beauty pageant manager.

"How come you are not joining the beauty pageant?"

that she would take care of the registration fee

Not a lot of people could say that your first job

is a pageant queen for transgender women,

to the pageant where it's at the back of the truck, literally,

or sometimes it would be a pavement next to a rice field,

I also experienced the goodness of strangers,