"Today is about clarity: I am a trans woman. My pronouns are she/her. My name is Tommy."
The Love, Victor star didn't feel "safe" to share the news at first - but she said she realised the process of transitioning was "beautiful" and wanted to be able to tell her own story.
"Why not let the world see what that looks like? So I kept, on Instagram, a diaristic time capsule instead — one that shows a body living in a more fluid space," she shared, revealing that the "discourse" about her body after her transition was overwhelming.
"There's the version I couldn't really afford to do, which is to disappear for two years and come back with a new name, new face and new body," she explained. "But that's not what I wanted."
And Dorfman, 29, said she won't be changing her name, since she was named for her mother's brother who passed away a month after she was born.
"I feel very connected to that name, to an uncle who held me as he was dying," she shared. "This is an evolution of Tommy. I'm becoming more Tommy."
Dorfman said transitioning was a "liberating and clarifying" experience but acknowledged there were elements of grief to it.
"I'm aligning my body with my soul. Yet as a result of that, I am losing some things," she said. "I have to reckon with the fact that I brought along a lot of people and things who might not end up being there for this part of my journey.
"All I can do now is look to a future where I am, hopefully, just radically honest."
She is known for starring as Ryan Shaver in the popular Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.
Dorfman came out as non-binary in 2017, changing her pronouns to they/them before updating them to she/her following her transition.
