‘The Pitt’ Star Recalls Painful Moment When She Was Asked If She Was A Man Or A Woman At A New York Bar

With her role as the beloved Dr. Samira Mohan on “The Pitt,” all eyes are on Supriya Ganesh in a big way lately.

Just the news of her departure from the hit medical drama at the end of Season 2 led to outcries and discourse all over social media.

But in her Vulture essay, Ganesh reflected on a very different period of her life. She wrote about the gender dysphoria she experienced when she moved from India to the US as an 18- year-old to attend Columbia University. In the essay, she details a specific moment at a New York bar when someone directly asked her if she was a man or a woman.

“It also wasn’t lost on me that the man was white, and at this table of nine, I was the only non-white woman,” Ganesh wrote. “I studied my peers, looking for clues about what I didn’t do ‘right.’”

“I’d never questioned my gender before I came to America; growing up in India, I’d always identified as a girl,” Ganesh wrote. “I grew up among Sikh women who didn’t tame their body hair, men who would hold hands platonically with their male friends, and children who cross-dressed for play (almost every boy had a photo of himself dressed up as a girl by his mother for fun).”