"So going back to the question of trans women are women or a woman trapped inside a man’s body, these statements from a transgender perspective very clearly are attempts to explain something really complicated in a very simple way to people who might not get it. I came up against the whole thing when I was first transitioning. What does it mean to be a woman trapped inside a man’s body?—which is never how I saw myself, but it was what I had to answer for the statement that other people would make. Growing up, I had no idea what other girls felt or what other boys felt. I had no idea; I only knew what I was experiencing. And so when I say I’m a trans woman, it’s not because I aspire to be a woman or have stereotyped notions of being a woman or that I’m making a crass assumption about what women really feel. I’ve no idea what anybody feels on the inside except me. There are some people who have really strong feelings. And you can say feelings—I would say it’s a little more complicated than that. I often describe it as being similar to cognitive dissonance, a kind of understanding that your body should be a particular way that it isn’t, and trying to sort that out."