Best 86 quotes in «trans quotes» category

Falling in love with another human is terrifying. As our language insists, romantic love is always preceded by a fall, the necessity of losing control and potentially hurting yourself in the process of connecting with another

For every woman who burned a bra, there's a man burning to wear one.

Gender isn’t simply some faucet that we can turn on and off in order to appease other people, whether they be heterosexist bigots or queerer-than-thou hipsters. How about this: Let’s stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient.   Instead of trying to fictionalize gender, let’s talk about the moments in life when gender feels all too real. Because gender doesn’t feel like drag when you’re a young trans child begging your parents not to cut your hair or not to force you to wear that dress. And gender doesn’t feel like a performance when, for the first time in your life, you feel safe and empowered enough to express yourself in ways that resonate with you, rather than remaining closeted for the benefit of others. And gender doesn’t feel like a construct when you finally find that special person whose body, personality, identity, and energy feels like a perfect fit with yours. Let’s stop trying to deconstruct gender into nonexistence, and instead start celebrating it as inexplicable, varied, profound, and intricate.

I confess that I sometimes felt like I was being launched into the endless expanses of space alone...But from the moment I had voiced my trans identity that first night, every step I took felt like coming home. Every step felt like healing, aching and uncomfortable as it began, but slowly hinting at a kind of relief, a feeling of rightness I’d never known before. I was shedding my skin like a snake. I knew it as soon as the itch began. I can only describe how I knew it as the unyielding certainty of instinct.

Gender dysphoria is diagnosed where this incongruence between body and true gender and sex identity causes significant distress.

Girl problems?” Scott asked, his eyes focused on the television screen as the cloud creature announced the start of the next course. “No,” George said. She knew that wasn’t true. Being a secret girl was a giant problem.

Hombres y mujeres son hoy bio-productos de un sistema sexual esquizoide abocado a la autodestrucción. Los hombres y las mujeres son criaturas «deficientes, emocionalmente limitadas», «deficientes emocionales», criaturas «egocéntricas, encerradas en sí mismas, incapaces de empatía, identificación, amor, amistad, afección o ternura», son «unidades aisladas», criaturas a las que el rígido sistema clase-sexo-género-raza obliga a una autovigilancia y un autocontrol constantes, dedicando a este agenciamiento brutal de sus subjetividades un tiempo comparable a la extensión total de sus vidas; criaturas físicamente débiles una vez que toda su potencia vital ha sido utilizada en la contención de su propia multiplicidad corporal, incapaces de encontrar satisfacción en la vida, políticamente muertas antes de haber dejado de respirar. No quiero el género femenino que me fue asignado en el nacimiento. No quiero tampoco el género masculino que la medicina transexual me promete y que el Estado me acabará otorgando si me porto bien. No quiero.

How could I explain that it was not all playacting? That I felt more of the male spirit within me than the female - a fierceness that whittled me down to a sharpened spear of ambition. And as a boy, I was applauded, not punished, for such raw energy. It was not beaten out of me for my own good, or worn away by women's chores.

I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it’s hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine. To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write.

I can't help but marvel at the resiliency of trans people who sacrifice so much to be seen and accepted as they are. Despite those sacrifices, trans people are still wrongly viewed as being confused. It takes determination and clear, thought-out conviction, not confusion, to give up many of the privileges that Genie did to be visibly herself, though her experiences varied from my own.

I didn't just wake up one morning and think, "I'm a boy!" It sort of crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder a few times before I started to pay attention I began to think that the word "girl" didn't quite fit me. It was like a shoe that was too small -- it pinched me.

If all people were to be judged by 'right and wrong', nobody would be wholly right or wholly wrong - for have not all people 'sinned and fallen from the glory of God'? It seems more than a little unfair that some folks with at least as much 'sin' themselves as any gay or trans person, like to jump up and down and point fingers at other people.

I have heard an argument that transgender people oppress transsexual people because we are trying to tear down the categories of male and female. But isn't this the same reactionary argument used against transmen and transwomen by those who argue that any challenges to assigned birth sex threaten the categories of man and woman? Transgender people are not dismantling the categories of man and woman. We are opening up a world of possibilities in addition. Each of us has a right to our identities. To claim one group of downtrodden people is oppressing another by their self-identification is to swing your guns away from those who really do oppress us, and to aim them at those who are already under siege.

If one more person tells me that “all gender is performance,” I think I am going to strangle them. Perhaps most annoying about that sound-bite is the somewhat snooty “I-took-a-gender-studies-class-and-youdidn’t” sort of way in which it is most often recited, a magnificent irony given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification, as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization. In reality, gender is all of these things and more. In fact, if there’s one thing that all of us should be able to agree on, it’s that gender is a confusing and complicated mess. It’s like a junior high school mixer, where our bodies and our internal desires awkwardly dance with one another, and with all the external expectations that other people place on us. Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. But performance doesn’t explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesn’t capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen. Performance doesn’t even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same, wore the same T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers that I always had, yet once other people started reading me as female, they began treating me very differently. When we talk about my gender as though it were a performance, we let the audience—with all their expectations, prejudices, and presumptions—completely off the hook.

If there's one thing I know about women, it's that they have vaginas.

I guess I just thought that I was finally a real girl." "Hey! None of that!" She takes me by the shoulders. "You think it's a uterus that makes a woman? Bullshit. You feel like you're a girl, you live it, it's part of you? Then you're a girl. That's the end of it, no quibbling. You're as real a girl as anyone.

I hate labels, hate pronouns. They're so confining. They like some bird cage, y'know? Or prescription medicine. Some days I feel one ole way and some days another. Ain't that natural? Just call me they, them, whatever you need to make your ma happy.

I know what I am. I know that I've chosen to identify as a transgender woman, and that I am - by and large - happy with where I am in this world. I'm far from perfect, and I could give you a list as long as my arms of the things I'd love to change. Nevertheless, I am still here, and I am still me, and no one can change that without my permission. -Gwendolyn Ann Smith, "We're All Someone's Freak

I never realized how intimidating it could be to be authentic

I made a record called Island in the Sun about the planet Earth and invited David over to hear it at the house I had rented in Hawaii. We was not impressed with it and asked me to do something else. That was the first time that had ever happened to me. It was a good record, and I liked it. To accommodate David, I thought I would do a record that was a combination of that one and one that I was already hearing in my head to follow up. The second one, Trans , was inspired by my son Ben and his communication challenges. Because of Ben's quadriplegia, he couldn't talk or communicate in a way that most people could understand, so I made a record where I sang through a machine and most people couldn't understand what I was saying, either. I felt like it was art, an expression of something deeply personal. I called it Trans, meaning trying to get across from one world to another, being locked in a body without an intelligible voice, trying to communicate through the use of machines, computers, switches and other devices. It was a very deep and inaccessible concept

I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear the word girl by turning it into a weapon they used to hurt me. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to hate and eventually destroy my femininity. I’m afraid of men because it was men who taught me to fear the extraordinary parts of myself

I've never been interested in being invisible and erased.

It's actually a very old archetype that trans girl stories get put into: this sort of tragic, plucky-little-orphan character who is just supposed to suffer through everything and wait, and if you're good and brave and patient (and white and rich) enough, then you get the big reward...which is that you get to be just like everybody else who is white and rich and boring. And then you marry the prince or the football player and live boringly ever after.

Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender id that, let's recognize that the word gender has scores of meanings built into it. It's an amalgamation of bodies, identities, and life experiences, subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviours, some of which develop organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let's start describing it as a holistic experience.

...I really did "choose" to be Jim every single day, but that once I put my sword down I haven't chosen Jenny at all; I simply wake up and here I am.

Look," Aracely said. "I know what you're going through." "No you don't." Sam sat up. "I still have to live like this. Nothing is gonna fix me. There's no water that's gonna make me into something else." "And I'd start from where you are if it meant what happened that night didn't have to happen," Aracely said. "We don't get to become who we are for nothing. It costs something. You're fighting for every little piece of yourself. And maybe I got all of me at once but I lost everything else. Don't you dare think there's any water in the world that makes this easy.

Long after you go down and the vessel rusts apart your bones sunken buried in the ocean floor I wonder if you miss people?

Living with stress and secrets is both stressful and secretive.

One of the first significant, substantial purchases I made after starting testosterone, was a Compact Colt .45 1991 A1 automatic pistol. It's just about the best penis substitute I've ever waved at a sex partner. I love my gun. Can I get an a-a-ay-men? You better fucking believe I lo-o-ove my gun. I love to take it apart and put it back together and admire...oh,you sexy little death-machine...I suppose I oughta feel guilty or something, loving and fetishizing to the point of anthropomorphizing it it. But I don't. I won't either-don't matter to me whether or not I'm supposed to keep this a dirty little secret. I got a dick and I can kill you with it. Yeah, baby, trip my trigger, why dontcha. Heh.

My conversations with people who are just beginning to understand and include transsexual and transgender people in their plans or programs lean heavily on this. For them, the very fact of a transsexual who is a real student at their school or client of their agency can be new and surprising. But for queers and transfolk, who have institutionalized an additional set of queerly normative genders, it can sometimes be difficult to hear that we, too, must expand. If butch daddies want to crochet, if twinkly ladyboys are sometimes tops in bed, if burly bears can do BDSM play as little girls, if femme fatales build bookcases in their spare time, these things, too, are not just good but great. They bring us, I believe, wonderful news: news that gendered options can continue to explode, that the chefs in the kitchen of gender are creating new and imaginative specials every day. That we, all of us, are the chefs. Hi. Have a whisk.

No, no, not 'she,' he reminded himself. Cam lived as a boy, and though Merik wasn't used to that yet–to thinking of Cam as a 'he'–they had weeks of travel ahead, Plenty of time which Merik could retrain his mind.

Makeup can be used to express yourself as well. Those experiences should not be limited to women. Everyone should be free to be as colorful as they want to be.

Mientras espero en la cola del cine para ver King Kong con V. D., me divierto tomando cada una de las figuras humanas que están en mi campo visual, aumentando o disminuyendo de forma mental su nivel de testosterona. Los bio-hombres parecen simplemente mujeres más o menos testosteronadas a las que se les ha añadido una plusvalía política, a las que se les ha dicho desde pequeñas: «Tú vales más que ellas, el mundo es tuyo, ellas son tuyas, tu polla es dueña de todo». Las bio-mujeres resultan hombres quirúrgica y endocrinológicamente tratados; más o menos sofisticados entramados de colágeno sintético, silicona implantada, estrógeno activo y falta de reconocimiento político.

Monster” is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, “divine portent,” itself formed on the root of the verb monere, “to warn.” It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, “Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening.

My body is a political battlefield. It is a place of war, of death and suffering, of triumph and victory, of damage and repair, of blood and tears and sweat. It is a place where memories go to find purpose for their existence. It is a place where humans cast all inhibitions aside to discover what exists at their very core. It is a place of growth wearing a mask of destruction. It is a challenge, not for the faint of heart, beckoning us to face it with eyes wide open. The only war is within. When you are ready to fight it, the field awaits.

My family subscribed to this rigid belief system. They were unaware of the reality that gender, like sexuality, exists on a spectrum. By punishing me, they were performing the socially sanctioned practice of hammering the girl out of me, replacing her with tenets of gender-appropriate behavior. Though I would grow up to fit neatly into the binary, I believe in self-determination, autonomy, in people having the freedom to proclaim who they are and define gender for themselves. Our genders are as unique as we are. No one's definition is the same, and compartmentalizing a person as either a boy or a girl based entirely on the appearance of genitalia at birth undercuts our complex life experiences.

No hay dos sexos, sino una multiplicidad de configuraciones genéticas, hormonales, cromosómicas, genitales, sexuales y sensuales. No hay verdad del género, de lo masculino y de lo femenino, fuera de un conjunto de ficciones culturales normativas.

No one has the right to demand that your body be something other than what it is.

Not only did the angry villagers hound their monsters to the edge of town, they reproached her for being vulnerable to the torches.

One Saturday morning walking to the farmers' market with my lover she tells me she needs to look like a man on the street. She hates binding her breasts. Hates having breasts, hates not passing. I press her. I ask her, but what do you feel like when you're naked in bed with me? Do you like your body then? She is quiet. Later she tells me she had a dream. Her mother brought home a bottle of medicine from the hospital for her. The doctor says she has to take it. The medicine is testosterone. On Shabbat I remember to pray for enough space inside of me to hold all the darkness of the night and all the sunlight of the day. I pray for enough space for transformations as miraculous as the shift from day to night. Later when that lover has changed his name and an ex-boyfriend has come out to me as a lesbian I go to visit my best friend's sister-turned-brother-turned-sister-again and she tells me about the blessing of having many names and using them all at once.

Queremos apoderarnos del género, redefinir nuestros cuerpos y crear redes libres y abiertas donde poder desarrollarnos, donde cualquiera pueda construir sus mecanismos de seguridad contra las presiones de género. No somos víctimas, nuestras heridas de guerra nos sirven como escudo... Nos presentamos no como terroristas, sino como piratas, trapecistas, guerrilleros, RESISTENTES del género… Defendemos la duda, creemos en el «volver atrás» médico como un seguir hacia delante, pensamos que ningún proceso de construcción debe tacharse de IRREVERSIBLE. Queremos visibilizar la belleza de la androginia. Creemos en el derecho a quitarse las vendas para respirar y el de no quitárselas nunca, en el derecho a operarse con buenos cirujanos y no con CARNICEROS, en el libre acceso a los tratamientos hormonales sin necesidad de certificados psiquiátricos, en el derecho a auto-hormonarse. Reivindicamos el vivir sin pedir permiso... Ponemos en duda el protocolo médico español que desde hace años establece unas pautas absurdas y tránsfobas para cualquier ciudadano que desea tomar hormonas de su «sexo» contrario. No creemos en las disforias de género, ni en los trastornos de identidad, no creemos en la locura de la gente, sino en la locura del sistema. No nos clasificamos por sexos, nosotros somos todos diferentes independientemente de nuestros genitales, nuestras hormonas, nuestros labios, ojos, manos... No creemos en los papeles, en el sexo legal, no necesitamos papeles, ni menciones de sexo en el DNI, creemos en la libre circulación de hormonas (que, de hecho, ya existe..). No queremos más psiquiatras, ni libro de psiquiatras/ psicólogos, no queremos más «Test de la Vida Real»... No queremos que nos traten como enfermos mentales..., porque no lo somos... ¡y así es cómo nos llevan tratando desde hace mucho tiempo! Creemos en el activismo, en la constancia, en la visibilidad, en la libertad, en la resistencia... GUERRILLA TRAVOLAKA

She lives always dressed as a woman and she whores as a woman. I would never think she was a man. I can't really see the man in her. Most of the time I absolutely know but she has none of the qualities of female impersonators that I can recognize. have gone into restaurants with her and every man in the place has turned around to look at her and made all kinds of hoots and whistles. And it was her, it wasn't me.

Scott looked at George as if his sibling made sense to him for the first time. George had never been gladder to have an older brother.

Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.

She told Kelly about her bag of girls’ magazines, and about Mom taking it. “But that’s not fair!” Kelly was indignant. “You didn’t steal them! What right does she have to take them from you?” “Sometimes transgender people don’t get rights.” George had read on the Internet about transgender people being treated unfairly. “That’s awful.” “I know.

The people who claim that being transgender is a choice are right on one regard. Living freely as the person you were meant to be is, in fact, a choice. You can choose not to. The decision to transition reflect the time spent grappling with that difficult question: Are you going to give yourself a real chance to be happy?

So much time lost, so much of my childhood gone, because nobody every asked the right questions.

Terms such as "man bun," "man purse," "guyliner," "meggings," and the new "romp-him" (romper) have entered the American lexicon. These terms refer to new fashion trends involving men wearing garments or using grooming regiments once thought of as exclusive to women. The term metrosexual comes to mind. While they may be amusing to read, and certainly to say out loud, they are dangerous roadblocks preventing the collapse of the binary. That notion might also make you laugh. Think about it. What purpose do these unnecessary labels serve, other than to single out that these stylistic choices go against the grain? Eyeliner is applied to people's eyelids. Leggings are worn by people who have legs. The gendered associations exist solely as social constructs. Men used to wear leggings all the time in the middle ages. Probably would have shopped at Sephora too, if there had been one at the faire.

The conservative ideology sees LGBT rights as an affront to the traditional way of life, for some reason. We are attacked as phonies, pretenders, even perverts, just for being who we are. There are people who wish for us to go back into the shadows, the closet, never to return. Many of these people who wish to deny us our very legitimacy, who denounce us as mentally ill deviants, spend an hour each week paying homage to an ever-present, yet non-interventionist man in the sky. They go to courts across the land to defend their right to praise that uncorroborated deity at the expense of other people’s civil liberties. To them, we the living, the transgender people who walk the earth, are fake, but the man up there, He is real.

The first thing you're going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl?