Best 175 quotes in «transgender quotes» category

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 Midwife talked to herself now, rather than God, as she walked the road past the Big Bog, wondering if a child born female could truly live her whole life as a male. And if this were possible and offended no god, then perhaps the world had no order other than what was arbitrarily imposed by humans.

The most radical thing that any of us can do is to stop projecting our beliefs about gender onto other people's behaviors and bodies

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?

The play passed by quickly, and yet it seemed to George as though she had been onstage since the beginning of time, as if she were born there and had only now found herself where she had always been.

the real problem is dogs can take a piss in public but human beings are still fighting to

There appeared to be an abnormally large number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people working in high altitude astronomy, which was consistent with high altitude induced sex hormone damage.

There are few things more dangerous to a transgender woman than the risk of a straight man not totally comfortable in his sexuality or masculinity realizing he is attracted to her.

There are two main reasons why trans people enter or remain stealth, about being trans overall or some key aspect: (a) to be the needed goal, and (b) to avoid repercussion. In earlier years of stealth living, the former may seem like the main reason, but the balance between the two will likely change through decades.

The culture were live in ripples through our daily lives, sending messages about what is considered "normal" and healthy by society.

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

The newly out boy, Amber says, went back to school on Monday with new pronouns and a new name and a new bathroom and he lost zero friends because kids don’t give a fuck. Amber - Max’s Mum Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States

...there are lesbian sex parties that happen in the city and how they will often have No Bio-Cock Policies, meaning, No Trans Women. Or, optimistically, Trans Women: Keep Your Pants On. Meanwhile trans guys are welcome to brandish whatever cocks they want. Kind of frustrating, kind of problematic... The term bio-cock has become shorthand for the fact that trans women aren't sexually welcome in any communities anywhere.

The scope of the transgender empire may be reaching its peak, as transcriticism is increasing at a fast pace both within activist feminism and from wives and regretters. There is an increasing groundswell of criticism of the concept and practice of transgenderism from a newly invigorated radical feminist movement. Moreover, the idea of transgenderism has become so vague and general that the category is in danger of being exploded.

There's a pause in the conversation when I really want to ask Matt what he's thinking despite it being probably the most cliché thing to ask a guy. When Matt still doesn't take his eyes off the names, I open my mouth to ask if he has any questions. He beats me to it. "Where's Megan?" he asks. "Oh, she was Marcus Pitts then," I say. "She was born a boy. He dad took the accident as an opportunity to leave them, mostly because he couldn't take the transgender thing. After they moved, Megan's mom let her wear whatever- be whoever- she wanted. She dressed in girl clothes from then on out." "But she was only, what, like five?" "I guess when you know, you know," I say with a shrug.

The trousers were miles too long, even when Peter cuffed the legs. The socks bagged in the ankles, and the shirt and sweater were equally large. But when Peter finally managed to get the collars to lie right and glanced at the reflection he'd carved out of the dust on James's mirror, a shock went through him. This was the face which had haunted him all his life, the one he had looked in the eye on the day he left the Darling house for the last time. The hair, messy and short, enthusiastically curling without the weight of his old braid to drag it down. The stubborn chin. The clear, sharp, sullen eyes full of everything he had never been allowed to be. Peter ran his hands over himself slowly, breathing tentatively, feeling the weight of his chest under his shirt. He had given this body up. He had thought it belonged to Wendy, to the girl he wasn't. He had let his family make him believe that the only way he would ever be a boy was to be born again in a different shape, leaving everything of his body and history behind. He breathed out and settled in the feeling of being himself, of being something whole.

The whole point of my gender transition was to free myself up. If something feels good, I'm not going to stop doing it because it doesn't fit someone else's notion of what a man is. -David Harrison

The term “FTM-Butch Border War” just sounds like an alien land of yore. How is it that the gravitational pull of my beard and low-voice should hold [my lesbian friend's] masculinity in deferential orbit? That when standing side-by-side we are supposedly read in comparison, rendering her unalterably more feminine—shorthand, in patriarchal societies, for “lesser than”? Masculinity has more than enough space to spare. But sometimes its flesh-and-blood vessels act as if we have to wound each other for it, like dogs fighting over too few scraps. Anyway, [she] and I know without speaking that in reality, right here and right now in our present moment, that she and I are two different sides of the same coin; two keys sung for the same tune." - from "Snapshots: "Sharing Space with Women," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014

The thing is, we can't be in right relationship to each other if we can't see each other. We can't be fully present in any relationship if we're walling off part of ourselves or hiding beneath a mask.

Three: You don't know what it's like Seven: To do a cartwheel followed by a somersault followed by wishing so hard you could fold your hands into a pistol and no longer exist.

Tonio Treschi was that half man, that less than man that arouses the contempt of every whole man who looks upon it. Tonio Treschi was that thing which women cannot leave alone and men find infinitely disturbing, frightening, pathetic, the butt of jokes and endless bullying, the necessary evil of the church choirs and the opera stage which is, outside that artifice and grace and soaring music, very simply monstrous.

THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.

Veronyka didn't feel like a boy on the inside—she wasn't like some of the children she'd known growing up who might be born as boys or girls but didn't feel like they fit that category, and so they dressed in a way that felt right to them. That was their truth, no matter what the world saw.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We don't choose the experience but we do choose how we react to the experience we have. Choose to be positive, choose to be helpful, choose to be happy.

The work begins by each of us recognizing that cis people are not more valuable or legitimate and that trans people who blend as cis are not more valuable or legitimate. We must recognize, discuss, and dismantle this hierarchy that polices bodies and values certain ones over others.

To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual,or transgender-let me say- you are not alone. You're struggle, for the end to violence and discrimination, is a shared struggle. Today, I stand with you. And I call upon all countries and people, to stand with you too. A historic shift is underway. We must tackle the violence, decriminalize consensual same sex relationships and end discrimination. We must educate the public. I call on this council and people of conscience to make this happen. The time has come.

Transpeople lose a number of things when we transition. We can lose family, friends, jobs, children, lovers, and money. But the most difficult thing for me to lose has been veracity. I was already used to not being real, but now I don’t even seem to be trustworthy. I’m not a reliable reporter about my sex or my gender or even my own name; I cannot be trusted to be my own expert. In each of those querying moments, what I am being asked for are details so someone else can make the final decision—am I real yet?

Trauma or no, I would have been trans no matter what body I'd been born with. Tell the doctors that we exist for the health of humanity, which needs to find wholeness and belief in complexity. Girl in boy's body or boy inside a girl; call it fate or biology, will, or spiritual choice. But I was not born in the wrong body. -Scott Turner Schofield, "The Wrong Body

Venus to Tig: "I'm afraid, Alexander, that I may have fallen in love with you." Tig doesn't know what to say, so Venus says it for him: "I'm a man. I am a man who knows she's a woman. And that's exactly where I'm supposed to be. It's the criss-cross that I've come to love. I don't want the surgery. I don't want to undo what God has given me. I know how beautiful I am.

We assume that anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don’t see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long.

We dance. Sweet, downcast, through-the-lashes-glances bely every beating she got at thirteen, every lash of the tongue from her dad at fourteen, every heroin high that let her out for awhile, every hour and day she had to be tough. She is so natural and soft. Her shoulders are down, hips loose and swinging as we close together. I swear I'm growing chest hair just looking at her. I've been a boy in public before, but I've never seen her like this. That's it exactly; I haven't seen her at all, except in glimpses, in half-confessional role-play sex. And here she is - pressed tight against my chest, hips grinding against my crotch to the bass bump of the music. Her thigh along mine is electric heaven. Two drag queens cannot decide whether we are breeders or in drag. I stroke my mascara-made mustache at them - but none of it matters with hands in suede and the way she smiles.

We make assumptions every day about other people's genders without ever seeing their birth certificates, their chromosomes, their genitals, their reproductive systems, their childhood socialization, or their legal sex. There is no such thing as a "real" gender - there is only the gender we experience ourselves as and the gender we perceive other to be.

We're all something we're not,' he said. 'Every one of us is stuck between the person we want to be and the person we can be. And there doesn't have to be a why. All things have to do is feel right.

What God was giving the eunuchs, through Isaiah's proclamation, was not just a place in society, and not just hope for a future. By giving the eunuchs the same kinds of gifts given to Abraham and Sarah--a name, legacy, family, acceptance, and blessing--God was consciously associating the two stories in the minds of the people. God was giving the eunuchs a story to connect to--a story that set a president, grounded in divine grace. That was the story I needed to hear. I needed to know that my problems were like the eunuch's problems, which were like Abraham and Sarah's problems, and that all of these complications were overcome by God's great love.

We’re at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we’re aware that they’ve dominated “trans” stories for years and years. And we’re now finally at a place where we’re seeing some really positive representations of trans folks in pop culture, and there’s this new pressure -- at least, I feel it, within trans and trans-ally communities -- to only focus on the positive. Because we’re trying, in some sense, to overcompensate for the years and years of too much negativity. As a writer, you might feel a pressure to push the negative stuff away. But there are consequences for that too. Anyone who’s working with trans characters right now is going to have to reconcile that tension.

What does it mean?” “You don’t have a word. It means man-girl. Or she-he. It means one who’s neither. Or it can be one who’s both. Or one who’s in between. It is one who’s other than leh or lah.” Cami turned to Dante, looking for an explanation, but he had none to give. All he could do was shrug. “Olsa?” she said, turning back to the old woman. Her voice shook. “There’s truly a word for what I am? “Between man and woman is you, Scia’loh. You are what you were meant to be.

Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, madam. And one can't be stingy with these things, because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed you are. - Agrado from "Todo Sobre Mi Madre

What is faith, if not an acceptance that there are things out there that cannot be explained? You know what you know, because you've never lived a life without that truth. That you are different, that your gender did not compute with that label assigned at birth. It does not matter how large a percentage of the general population is perfectly fine with their identity. That does not change you, how you responded to the mechanisms that made you who you are.

What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other's oppression. As our activist network grows into marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, we will hammer out language that demonstrates the sum total of our movement as well as its component communities. Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. This is a very early stage for trans peoples with such diverse histories and blends of cultures to form community. Perhaps we don't have to strive to be one community. In reality, there isn't one women's, or lesbian, gay, bi community. What is realistic is the goal to build a coalition between our many strong communities in order to form a movement capable of defending all our lives.

What was the point of being himself if he had to be alone?

When trying to comprehend what is happening to, and through, oneself, why not question the narratives one has been handed to make sense with? This is an approach increasingly utilized within transgender knowledge production, one spearheaded by transgender people themselves. It brings to light questions about previous entries into the trans nonfiction canon, asking: Is it necessary, when writing a trans protagonist, to describe in detail a medical transition, to 'confess' conflicted feelings of body confusion? Has it even been internalized into a communal consciousness, into something resembling a trans storytelling requirement?

When did you know you were a girl? When did I know I was a boy?" he said. "I knew my whole life. I can't tell you exactly when, but it wasn't like I was ten and realized, 'Oh gee, I must be a boy!' What people fail to realize is they made that decision way earlier than that. It just happened that their gender identity and their anatomy matched.

When disclosure occurs for a trans woman, whether by choice or by another person, she is often accused of deception because, as the widely accepted misconception goes, trans women are not 'real' women (meaning cis women); therefore, the behavior (whether rejection, verbal abuse, or sever violence) is warranted. The violence that trans women face at the hands of heterosexual cis men can go unchecked and uncharted because society blames trans women for the brutality they face. Similar to arguments around rape, the argument goes that 'she brought it upon herself.

When we got to the house he opened the trash-can lid and tossed the baseball mitts inside. "Bye, Andrew," I said softly. "Bye, son," Dad agreed, as we went inside.

When we are surrounded by such diversity - in nature, in culture, in human spirit - how can we stand not to acknowledge it?

When we look at stories of renaming in the Bible, we often find that a character is handed a new name they never asked for. While I'm sure Abraham treasured the new name and promise God gave him, and while Peter probably felt honored in the moment Jesus proclaimed him the bedrock of the church, not everybody comes by their new name so easily. Some people have to fight for it.

While railing against the manufactured prerequisites of womanhood or manhood, we need to avoid manufacturing our own prerequisites. The non-operative journey and the objection to it illustrate just one area in which we need to open our thinking to other journeys while expecting that others respect our own. - Mercedes Allen

While there is no shame in being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex - or even straight (but not narrow) - there is most certainly shame and dishonor in being a homophobe, a transphobe and a bigot.

When her breast grew, Teena hated how they hurt. When someone stared at her chest, it would make her feel sick. She liked her body before puberty and despised it when it started to develop. She wasn't feminine she wasn't graceful and she didn't want to be [page 47]

you’re such a pretty girl” they say but they don’t see the way she recoils back from the world as if it’s coming for her like fire, as if it burns and it does it burns like a flame that no one can see so white hot and intense that it rivals the sun it melts her skin and eats away at her flesh until she is nothing nothing but a skeleton that no one can call a girl