page_title: Chaz Bono
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Chaz Bono / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Chastity Bono with dad, Sonny, on the set of The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.
context_page_description: Chaz Salvatore Bono is an American writer, musician and actor. His parents are entertainers Sonny Bono and Cher.
  Bono is a trans man. In 1995, while then identifying as a woman, and several years after being outed as lesbian by the tabloid press, Bono publicly self-identified as a lesbian in a cover story in a leading American gay monthly magazine, The Advocate. Bono eventually went on to discuss the process of coming out to oneself and others in two books. Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families includes his coming-out account. The memoir The End of Innocence discusses his outing, music career, and partner Joan's death from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
  Between 2008 and 2010, Bono underwent female-to-male gender transition. A two-part Entertainment Tonight feature in June 2009 explained that his transition had started a year before. In May 2010, he legally changed his gender and name. A documentary on Bono's experience, Becoming Chaz, was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and later made its television debut on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
context_section_description: Bono was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Cher and Sonny Bono of the pop duo Sonny & Cher, stars of a TV variety show on which the young child often appeared. Bono was named after the film Chastity, which was produced by Sonny and in which Cher (in her first solo role in a feature film) played a bisexual woman.
  Bono came out to both parents as a lesbian at age 18. In Family Outing, Bono wrote that, "as a child, I always felt there was something different about me. I'd look at other girls my age and feel perplexed by their obvious interest in the latest fashion, which boy in class was the cutest, and who looked the most like cover girl Christie Brinkley. When I was 13, I finally found a name for exactly how I was different. I realized I was gay."
caption: Chaz Bono[a] with Sonny Bono in 1974
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