it carries a heavy social stigma and caused a crisis in angelika's family. mother freaked out. >> basically, i got the "how dare you? how could you do this? you're passing yourself off as a man like you're a woman. you're not -- i mean, you have male organs and such. once my stepfather found out about that, he walked out of the house. >> angelika, now 21, says that to restore peace in the family, she was forced to cut her long hair, but relations are still so strained that her mother won't talk to us about it. >> that situation was hard for me. all very hard for me. and i haven't forgiven her yet. >> deasja has always known that she was female. but deasja says her mother was too overwhelmed by her own problems to be interested. >> my mom's like hey, so what, who cares? i don't care. >> hello, mother. you on your way home? all right. my mom's a little bit upset. but hey, that's what happens. i watched my mom, like, years ago, and the way that she cried and screamed when she would argue with my stepfather, the things that she had going on in her life made me f

. >>> my name is angelika christina torres, supposedly, as of today. >> angelika has been waiting for this moment for years. she's legally changing her name, from the one she was given at birth, which she prefers not to publicize, to angelika. a change of name doesn't mean a change of gender, but it's a step in the right direction. >> i'm actually headed to the village voice offices to go pick up the paper, because i was told that my name change would be in the paper today, which makes it legal. oh, my god. i see my name. i feel like framing it. i'm ecstatic. i don't really know what to say. >> a native new yorker, angelika is struggling to make a life for herself. she's been on hormones since she was 18. she has a family, but relations are strained. >> my life, in a nutshell, basically, i was born into the wrong body. i grew up not really knowing or understanding that. had to come to terms with that and learn that on my own. i went to a catholic, you know, school from first grade all the way to eighth grade, and i was hospitalized three times within those years for depression and sui