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Tisya Cooke: "I've never felt a pressure to, necessarily, perform my queerness for anyone, certainly not to prove my queerness to anyone."

KBIA | By Bailey Stover,

Rebecca Smith, Nick Sheaffer

Published December 1, 2025 at 6:16 AM CST

Tisya Cooke, who is a Jewish, bisexual, transgender woman, stands near the bimah on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, at Congregation Beth Shalom in Columbia. Cooke said she grew up Jewish attending Hebrew school and reading the Torah. Although she is still highly involved with her local synagogue, Cooke said she is agnostic and recognizes that community can be beautiful and doesn't need to be "driven by a god or a god-like figure."

"I feel confident wearing a dress whenever I want. I feel confident throwing lipstick on whenever I want. I feel loved by my friends, and I feel loved by my community. And I love that I can show up to synagogue one day wearing a jumpsuit that says "Gay All Day," and the next day showing up in just a T-shirt and jeans," Cooke said. "And really, for me, it's just about how I'm personally feeling. I've never felt a pressure to necessarily perform my queerness for anyone—certainly not to prove my queerness to anyone. And so I think taking that pressure off of myself has allowed me to feel again that queer joy just within my daily life, regardless of how I visually look on the outside." — Tisya Cooke, who is a Jewish, bisexual, transgender woman, stands near the bimah on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, at Congregation Beth Shalom in Columbia. Cooke said she grew up Jewish attending Hebrew school and reading the Torah. Although she is still highly involved with her local synagogue, Cooke said she is agnostic and recognizes that community can be beautiful and doesn't need to be "driven by a god or a god-like figure." "I feel confident wearing a dress whenever I want. I feel confident throwing lipstick on whenever I want. I feel loved by my friends, and I feel loved by my community. And I love that I can show up to synagogue one day wearing a jumpsuit that says "Gay All Day," and the next day showing up in just a T-shirt and jeans," Cooke said. "And really, for me, it's just about how I'm personally feeling. I've never felt a pressure to necessarily perform my queerness for anyone—certainly not to prove my queerness to anyone. And so I think taking that pressure off of myself has allowed me to feel again that queer joy just within my daily life, regardless of how I visually look on the outside."

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 mom would be like, "Oh, we're going to go out for a girls day to the mall," my brain said that was me, and that was from a very young age, and I didn't really get questioned on it.

And so, by the time that I did come out to my parents, my mom was just like, "Oh, yeah, I know," and even when I came out to my family as trans, the conversation wasn't, "Oh, are you trans? What's going on?" I was sitting down having a cup of coffee on my mom's porch, and she comes outside and she asks me my pronouns.

Which to me, I wasn't ready to have that conversation. I wasn't really mentally prepared to be in that space, but it felt right to be able to address it with her.

And I think that even though my mom and I don't live quite as close as we used to be, my mom has definitely been my anchor throughout my life — both in religion and in my queer life.

I am not on hormones. I've not gone under any sort of surgery, and that's largely due to personal medical issues. My family has Ehlers-Danlos, and I have very mild symptoms, but if I'm taking hormones, then it causes problems for my joints, for my connective tissues.

So, I did do hormones for a very brief amount of time, and just felt like shit all the time, and it wasn't the fault of the hormones, but just my bad luck with genetics.

And so, after getting off of hormones and trying to get out of that slump, that depression of "How do I affirm myself?" It was more so just about — I feel confident wearing a dress whenever I want. I feel confident throwing lipstick on whenever I want. I feel loved by my friends, and I feel loved by my community.

Really, for me, it's just about how I'm personally feeling. I've never felt a pressure to, necessarily, perform my queerness for anyone, certainly not to prove my queerness to anyone.

So, I think taking that pressure off of myself has allowed me to feel, again, that queer joy just within my daily life — regardless of how I visually look on the outside.