Tisya Cooke is a Jewish transgender woman and spoke about her experiences coming out and about how she personally defines gender affirmation.

Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.

Tisya Cooke: I think, for me, I knew very early on — when I was probably still in elementary school — that I was interested in men and women. I found everyone kind of attractive, but I also felt far more pulled to this feeling that I could be feminine and that I could express my femininity.

I have five sisters — or, I apologize — because a couple of my siblings have come out as non-binary, it kind of throws the math off a little bit, but pretty evenly split between feminine and masculine in the family.

And it was this nice feeling of any time that my mo

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