Best 19 quotes of Abigail Tarttelin on MyQuotes

A lot of people characterize women as more cautious. I don't think that's an inappropriate characterization, but that's not a natural thing we're born with, it's something that comes about.

Even though I grew up in an area of England that was more conservative than my personal politics and my family's personal politics, I grew up with a lot of guy friends. There was no real difference between us. When I moved to London, it really became apparent that gender was going to make a mark. I started experiencing sexual intimidation and aggression. People coming up to women on the streets and telling them how hot they are and what they wanted to do to them. For me, that was shocking coming from a village. I thought intersexuality was a great way of exploring that shock.

I have a guy friend who said to me, "Hey, you know it's strange, feminism is cool now." I think now people understand that being a feminist means everyone should be equal. What really shocked me was being in America during the Republican primaries. I haven't been exposed to that kind of thinking. I was so shocked that that kind of thinking exists in a modern world, and in a first-world country.

I started thinking about gender and how it's an arbitrary thing if you're born with an XX or XY chromosome, but it can determine your experience of the world. It's about whether you are physically intimidating vs. being physically intimidated. It determines whether you are the one to take an active role in sex and society.

I would say that it's very difficult to personally construct your gender. I think a lot of it is socially constructed. If you look at The New York Times' coverage of trans children, some of them were as young as four years old. One said, "I see my daddy in the woodshed, and that's where I'd rather be than in the kitchen." That to me doesn't ring as somebody who is trans, it rings as someone who has grown up with a narrow view.

Pregnancy takes a huge physical toll on your body. I have many friends who have had babies and many of them require medical help and attention, emergency Cesarean sections and forceps. If you think that people just have a kid and it's no big deal, that's not true. It's one of the most dangerous things for a woman to do. If you take away access to accessible medical women in America, you're going to bump up the death rate.

What you're born with dictates your life. Do you run home after dark? Do you choose an apartment in a questionable neighborhood? I dated a guy a few years ago in California, actually who was, as we say in England, "built like a brick shithouse." He was a lovely guy, but I thought, his arms are as big as my head, he could kill me. I don't think that men would predict the kinds of things that women think about when you are contemplating having a relationship.

Being a full-time feminist means that every day I make a choice to make equality a part of my life, mind, and behavior. I set out purposefully to support women, to create a dialogue with men, and to interject when I see ignorance and misunderstanding. For me this has meant that in my work I often choose to share my financial gains with women (although I do also employ men regularly, to film my music videos or produce my songs with my band Girlboy), and when I see a woman working, or reaching for her ambitions, I like to show my support. In my romantic relationships with men, this has meant when there is misunderstanding, I take the time to think about why that could be, and to discuss whatever problems we face. Thinking about the influence of the gender concept on our behavior and decisions is now ingrained in my subconscious.

Doctors know nothing. Well. That's kind of unfair. Let's just say the world is unpredictable. Science is unreliable. It can't tell you who you are or what you'll want or how you'll feel. All these researchers are going crazy in their labs, trying to fit us into these little boxes so they can justify their jobs, or their government funding, or their life's work. They can theorize and they can give you a mean, median and mode but it's all standardized guesswork, made official by arrogance. You have to be pretty into yourself to think you can play a part in defining the identity of a bunch of people you don't know, of human beings with complicated shit going on in their bodies. They still don't know what certain parts of our brains do, they still don't know how to cure a common cold, and they say they know about sexuality, about gender. Well, you're not a man because you like football and you're not a woman because you're attracted to men and you're not a chick because you like to be the one who gives and you're not a dude because you like to receive or because sometimes you cry at dumb movies.

I'm starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in this pretty, inoffensive little town. What was so bad about that goal after all? Only that I couldn't do it. That I let everybody down. I've been so down about it, so depressed thinking about all the balls I was trying to juggle that I've dropped, and now the cogs are turning toward total apathy toward it all, everything and all I can think about is that I am a shell of a human being. I'm a pushover. I'm to blame.

In the end, how [is] anyone any different from a 'normal' person? If you love someone, you love them. It doesn't matter where they came from or if they're a boy or a girl, or if you fight, or if they're weird, or if they find it difficult to communicate with you; you just fucking love them.

I personally believe that gender equality underlines every other equality, and certainly the issue of sexuality. For instance, if we didn’t distinguish between gender, in terms of giving different genders disparate values and attributes, what problem would we have with two men loving each other?

It doesn't matter if I think like a boy or a girl. It doesn't matter anymore if I'm either or both or neither. All that shit seems so petty and immaterial now. There's so little difference between one human being and the next, it's just hypotheses, human ideas about life and the world and words that mean nothing, about definitions that mean nothing to Earth, to nature, to the universe. Boys and girls and intersex people and me--we're just ideas, and when we're dead, the ideas will go with us. It all means nothing.

I think the HeforShe campaign is a fantastic initiative, and of course men and boys should be involved in seeking equality for women, because we are people, and you are people, and people should help out other people. I think more engagement too could be found from addressing the problems males face from gender inequality, because while the problems girls and women face from sexism are much more violent, I sometimes think the pressures on boys and men are more poisonous. If we think about it clearly, we see that the gender inequalities men face often lead to the gender inequalities women face. For instance, domestic abuse is often about a man’s assertion of power and control, but if he didn’t think he needed those things in the first place, would the abuse ever happen? Similarly, rape culture is often about male entitlement, but that sense of entitlement comes from what we as a society tell men about their gender, and what it means.

It's an arbitrary thing if you're born with an XX or XY chromosome, but it can determine your experience of the world. It's about whether you are physically intimidating vs. being physically intimidated. It determines whether you are the one to take an active role in sex and society.

Someone dehumanises you by violating your child and every human thought you had for them is broken, undermined, then gone.

Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend, the other who has privately lost something to do with innocence and gained something to do with knowledge and adulthood that can never be undone. I feel sometimes there are things that tear me in two directions, that there are two sets of thoughts that grow side by side. But then I realize that I am whole, whatever that means and does not mean; I am complete without the need for additions or alteration.

Think of that person you knew when you were a kid, who you always thought you could have loved completely and forever.Well, you could have. It’s the truth, and it’s the saddest and simplest thing. There isn’t just one person for each of us in the world. There aren’t many, but there are always a few people we could have made it with, that maybe we still want to make it with, that press themselves so close to our hearts they leave scars, and then slip through our fingers and disappear from our lives. And it doesn’t make a difference if you’re thirteen or ninety- eight because some things you feel are real, no matter when.

#ToTheGirls2016 Value yourself, your voice, your body, your opinions, your dreams, your pride, your ego. You have a RIGHT to take up space.