00:00The first time I ever said anything was to my therapist.
00:03I stuttered because I was so excited but so nervous at the same time, but it's almost
00:08like coming to the top of a hill and seeing that there's another four hills behind that
00:12one.
00:13You didn't know were there.
00:16My name is Sarah Oliver White.
00:18I identify as a gender-fluid demi-girl.
00:24It was the summer before going into my senior year at college.
00:27I wasn't really able to engage with anything without thinking about my gender, my gender
00:33identity.
00:34I do identify as non-binary.
00:37I think the best way to explain non-binary is to explain what binary is and it's the
00:42idea of the gender binary, which is there is man and there is woman and they exist on opposite
00:48sides and that's it, that's all that there is.
00:51But to say you're non-binary is to say gender exists on a spectrum.
00:56There is no opposite of male and female, it's all kind of performative.
01:01I did come across as a very straight guy.
01:04I knew what key points I had to hit in order to come across in the character of a straight
01:11guy and kind of what I needed to say and it dictated my vocabulary, it dictated my actions.
01:17Some of my closest friends knew that something was going on with me, although they didn't
01:20know what.
01:23I came up to my parents at dinner, I'm pretty sure the first thing either of them said was
01:27my mom screamed, I thought we didn't have to worry about you.
01:35I think at the time I thought it was funny looking back, why are you worrying about that?
01:42It's almost saying this isn't something good, it's not going to be something we can handle.
01:47It makes you feel like something else than human.
01:54Coming out of the closet is something I do pretty much any time I'm meeting someone new.
02:00It's something that I am expecting to do for the rest of my life, it's not something I was expecting
02:05to do for the rest of my life.
02:06When I started coming out of the closet, I think the fear is almost letting go of the rest of
02:13the world
02:14and saying I'm not going to be afraid to be myself anymore.
02:19I've been doing hormones for 11 months and that's been coupled with laser hair removal and vocal
02:27feminization.
02:29I very much remember just taking the first pill, sitting on my couch for about half an hour and
02:33not feeling any different and just kind of being like this is bull, like I was expecting the world
02:39kind of from one pill and I did no better than to really say to myself this is going to
02:46be
02:46the life-changing moment.
02:48I absolutely had a different conception of myself when I started coming out of the closet when I was
02:53saying I was a trans woman.
02:55It took me a few months on hormones to kind of feel comfortable in the way that I was expressing
03:00myself
03:00enough to say this isn't necessarily what I'm doing here, I'm not just a woman.
03:10There's this question of whether or not trans identities are natural and as someone who's been
03:14living the whole experience for the past two years all I can say is I feel more natural now than
03:20I
03:20ever did before. I feel a lot more like myself.
