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Against Me!'s Laura Jane Grace: Transgender Punk Rocker And Parent (VIDEO)

Laura Jane Grace: My Life As A Transgender Punk Rock Parent

UPDATE: We've added the brand-new trailer to "True Trans With Laura Jane Grace, an upcoming AOL Originals web series which tells Laura's story as well as those from the transgender community who she meets while on tour.

Against Me! have always been a political punk band, but railing against the system has morphed into railing against systemic prejudice since transgender lead singer Laura Jane Grace came out on a Rolling Stone cover in 2012.

Transitioning in public is daunting, of course, but the hardest part is still behind closed doors at home, especially when you're married and with a child.

Initially, Grace's wife stayed with her, but as she tells us in this exclusive interview in Toronto, where Against Me! was in town to perform at World Pride's Trans March, eventually the transition took its toll and the pair have been separated for about seven months.

"Every relationship goes through changes and they all have their complications," she said. "We both remain committed loving parents to our four-year-old, so that's kind of what's important."

"As a parent all the cliches are true," Grace adds. "Being a parent totally changes your life and it totally changes you as a person. I was experiencing extreme dysphoria around the time leading up to the birth of my daughter and trying come to terms with being a parent and what that means. The example you're going to be setting to your kid was something that pushed me to accepting what I was, I felt like it was something that needed to come to terms with while she was really young."

And that decision clearly paid off. "They process it very simply, all they need is an explanation and then it's like, 'Okay.' Moving right along, you know?"

Some might wonder why a person with transgender dysphoria would get married and have kids in the first place, but Grace says that being Trans now is kind of like being gay in the '50s or '60s, as far as people trying to convince themselves they aren't feeling the feelings they're feeling because it's not yet socially acceptable.

"For me, it was like this messed up 'if I fit this mould of what you're supposed to aspire to — like getting married, having a kid, buying a house, two cars and a garage, something like that — that it'll cure you and you can be happy like that and that'll be enough. But it isn't, you know?

"It's never enough."

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