This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
At some point in our lives, many of us realize that the way we hear our own voice isn't the way others hear our voice.
Shay had that realization as a child helping out at the family business, a Delhi in southwest Virginia.
We did a lot of business with the deli, a lot of call in orders, and I had to answer the phone with the name of the business.
Often when the phone rang, the same thing happened over and over again.
I vividly remember always being confused for my mother.
They would always say, oh, hey, Judy, you know, and either start into their questions or whatever they were looking to speak to my mother about.
This case of mistaken identity became a running joke.
You know, it was ha ha.
They thought that he was Judy.
Shay didn't correct the callers.
That's because Shay didn't mind being mistaken for Judy.
It was just comforting to me because it felt natural.
Shay was raised as a boy, but now, decades later, Shay identifies as a transgender woman.
We're not using her legal name at her request because it's a man's name.
Shay's experience at the Delhi became a template for the rest of her life.
She listened to her voice, and she listened to the way others heard her voice.
There was always a gap between the two.
She first tried to sound more masculine, to fit in with the way the world saw her.