Chaz Bono says he wasn’t born female: ‘I lived my life as a male inside a female body for a long time’

Chaz Bono grew up before the eyes of the American public appearing with his parents in the 1970’s on TV’s popular The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.

He had long blond hair, wore female clothing and went by the name Chastity.

But if you say Bono was born a girl, the actor and activist would correct you.

‘It’s not offensive, but it would be wrong,’ Bono tells Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview. ‘I didn’t live my life as a girl. I lived my life as a male inside a female body for a long time.’

Bono, the only child of Cher and the late US Congressman Sonny Bono, first came out as a lesbian in the 1990s and wrote the books Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families and The End of Innocence.

He began his gender transition in 2008 and it was chronicled in the documentary Becoming Chaz. Bono also authored the book Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man.

Says Bono: ‘At this point, I really feel just like a 46-year-old man who got here in a slightly different way than most men do.’