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Gender Identity Quotes

Browse 114 quotes about Gender Identity.

Gender Identity Quotes

“Kids today are born into an era where gender identity ideology threatens to take away their right to mature naturally through puberty and into adulthood without damaging and altering their healthy bodies.”

MaturityPubertyGender IdentityHealthy BodyGender IdeologyProtecting ChildrenTransgender IssuesDo No HarmKids Development
Book:The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology
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“When I was pushed to the brink of loneliness and gender agony as a third grader, when I didn’t know how to communicate with the adults in my life about what was going on, I channeled my anger at my own body, my own existence. When the world made who I was feel impossible, I began to see my own body as an impossibility. For years of my life, I told myself this was normal. That kids just thought about killing themselves sometimes. That every third grader had experienced that. In order to move on with my life, I had to normalize it.”

SuicideSuicidal ThoughtsGender IdentityGender DysphoriaGender Norms
Book:Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
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“Why is there a perseveration on gender instead of expanding inquiry and addressing all dimensions of a being in distress? Why are we enabling kids to possibly run from something such as past trauma or encouraging distraction from emotional pain by quickly writing a prescription for puberty blockers or a cross-sex hormone on the first or second visit to a clinic?”

Emotional PainEnablingGender IdentityGender IdeologyGender CriticalTraumatic StressDo No HarmQuick FixEmotional Distress
Book:The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology
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“I am not aware of any other mental or medical condition in which a kid or young adult self-diagnoses themselves after social media and internet engagement, undergoes no objective testing, and then receives irreversible medication and surgery upon demand”

Gender IdentityGender IdeologyGender CriticalProtecting ChildrenDo No HarmIrreversible DamageSocial Media InfluencersGender Affirmation Surgery
Book:The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology
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“To be queer, then, is to marginalize oneself, to rebel against the existing order, even if that order benefits the many over the few. To be queer is to revel in victimhood. It is to reject Western epistemology. It is to act on one's base instincts and desires. It is to fail, even when success is within reach, if only to prove that failure is inevitable in the current system for anyone who is not cisheteronormative and white.”

GenderLgbtqQueerGender IdentityGender IdeologyMarginalizationLgbtq LiteratureQueer TheoryGender StudiesGay Authors
Book:Cis White Gay: The Making of a Gender Heretic
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“[John] Money spent the rest of his childhood in a predominantly female household in consistent poverty. His childhood instilled in him a dislike of religious dogma and sexual prudery as well as a deep class-consciousness alongside his ambition to transcend his meager beginning, Science would become his religion.”

MedicineLgbtQueerGender IdentityLiberalIntersexSexologyHistory Of MedicineJohn Money
Book:How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea
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“She follows her nose and stands once more before the doors of a quintessential dilemma. Male or Female. Here is her paradox. A staccato voice seems to challenge her, berate her. Hombre or Mujer. Mann or Frau. Homme or Femme. Gentleman or Lady. Com on, decide. She knows them all. She is them all. Not fluid or all-encompassing, gathering the harvest of the reaping fields, but fractured and split and bleeding. Her inner core weeping out of itself. There is nothing for hermaphrodites. It's too confusing. The words rattle around in her earbones, androgynous and humming. How can she choose? She cannot choose. To choose is to sunder.”

GenderQueerGender IdentityLgtbq
Book:The Last Days of Ava Langdon
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“She was running for all those ordinary, fragile souls whose bodies had been shamed like hers. In them, she had found herself. And so she ran for them, for those who, like her, had found comfort only in cut-out posters of clownfish. Now they had a different poster they could dream about: an athlete, an international star, her body neither fully boy nor fully girl, but simply the body of Johanna Venter, Girl Wonder.”

GenderGender RolesGender IdentityBody ShameBody Differences
Book:The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories
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“Even at such a tender age, I knew that life is lived in leftovers, account ledgers, and timetables rather than in the Platonic sphere of perfect theory. I couldn't float sylphlike around Love Hall in the flowing robes of indeterminacy for the rest of my life, however much I wished there to be no change. I had to accept my responsibilities and, at least in the eyes of the world and at least for the time being, nail my colors to a mast. Unless I wished to appear a strange wonder for the rest of time, caked in circus makeup covering the truth inches beneath, the mast would be male.”

IdentityGender IdentityMisfortuneGenderfluidWesley StaceBody Dismorphia
Book:Misfortune
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“At some point during my research, I came across the term "gender fluid." Reading those words was a revelation. It was like someone tore a layer of gauze off the mirror, and I could see myself clearly for the first time. There was a name for what I was. It was a thing. Gender fluid. Sitting there in front of my computer--like I am right now--I knew I would never be the same. I could never go back to seeing it the old way; I could never go back to not knowing what I was. But did that glorious moment of revelation really change anything? I don't know. Sometimes, I don't think so. I may have a name for what I am now--but I'm just as confused and out of place as I was before. And if today is any indication, I'm still playing out that scene in the toy store--trying to pick the thing that will cause the least amount of drama. And not having much success.”

GenderLgbtGender IdentityNonbinaryNon BinaryGender FluidSymptoms Of Being Human
Book:Symptoms of Being Human
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“Discriminations are never a sign of a civilized society. What makes us civilized is our act of liberated kindness with other people beyond the man-made primitive citadels of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation.”

PhilosophyTruthHumanitySexInspiringWords Of WisdomBrainy QuotesSexualityDiscriminationFundamentalismReligious ExtremismReligious FundamentalismGender IdentityGender StereotypesOne Human RaceSexual OrientationGender Based ViolenceSexual IdentityGender Based Discrimination
Book:Either Civilized or Phobic: A Treatise on Homosexuality
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“Go to a chamber and learn to sew! That's what Nature's usage wants of you! You are not Silentius!" and he replied, "I never heard that before! Not Silentius? Who am I then? Silentius is my name, I think, or I am other than who I was. But this I know well, upon my oath, that I cannot be anybody else! Therefore, I am Silentius, as I see it, or I am no one.”

TransgenderGender IdentityMedieval RomanceFrench LiteratureTransmascTransgender Man
Book:Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance
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“It reached a point where the paranoia was getting to me. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like people were hanging out, wanting to date, hooking up, wanting to hook up—it was relationships, relationships, relationships everywhere. Guys checking out girls, girls checking out guys. Dudes checking out dudes, chicks checking out chicks. Fuck! That’s what being a teenager was all about.”

LifeRelationshipsGenderTeenagerTeenGender IdentityHook UpTeenage AngstHooking Up
Book:Bedmates
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“The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman’s grace. As he stood there, silver trumpets prolonged their note, as if reluctant to leave the lovely sight which their blast had called forth; and Chastity, Purity, and Modesty, inspired, no doubt, by Curiosity, peeped in at the door and threw a garment like a towel at the naked form which, unfortunately, fell short by several inches. Orlando looked at himself up and down in a long looking-glass, without showing any signs of discompose, and went presumably, to his bath. We many take advantage of this pause in the narrative to make certain statements. Orlando had become a woman - there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change in sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same. His memory - but in the future we must, for convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his’, and ‘she’ for ‘he’ - her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle. Some slight haziness there may have been, as if a few dark spots had fallen into the clear pool of memory; certain things had become a little dimmed; but that was all. The change seemed to have been accomplished painlessly and completely and in such a way that Orlando herself showed no surprise at it. Many people, taking this into account, and holding that such a change in sex is against nature, have been at great pains to prove (1) that Orlando has always been a woman, (2) that Orlando is at this moment a man. Let biologists and psychologists determine. It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was a man till the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has remained so ever since.”

FantasyTransgenderMagical RealismGender IdentityVirginia WoolfOrlandoLgbtqia CharactersBeautiful Prose
Book:Orlando
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“The words are ludicrous, but not if it's you they're talking about, not if it's you they're locking up. Not ludicrous at all for the ones who continue to be diagnosed as mentally ill. A mouthy girl in cow boy boots or a boy who drapes a scarf on his head to pretend his hair is long like a princess – well, they are targets for the Dr. Madisons of the world.”

GenderMental IllnessGender IdentityInstitutionalizationConversion Therapy
Book:The Last Time I Wore a Dress
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“... it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized. Brilliant and effective, powerful and masterly, as it may appear for a day or two, it must wither at nightfall; it cannot grow in the minds of others. Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness.”

WritingGenderGender IdentityAndrogyny
Book:A Room of One’s Own
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“Its never too early to give children the guidance and to create or make your relationship with them a safer space. When your child has questions or in some cases can articulate their sexuality/gender experiences, handle them with respect and affirmations.”

YouthSexualityHealthy LivingParents And ChildrenGender IdentityHealthy RelationshipsHealthy ConversationSexual Orientation
Book:Dr T: A Guide to Sexual Health and Pleasure
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“How can one explain why a six-year-old boy (the author) should class himself as a girl, give himself a girl’s name, fight against his parents’ course of bringing him up as a boy, and grieve because he could not be brought up as a girl, except on the assumption that the cells of his brain were identical with the cells of a girl’s brain and fundamentally different from those of a normal boy?”

FemininityTransgenderTransGender IdentityTransgender IssuesTransgenderismTransgender WomenBiological SexTrans WomanPsychical
Book:Autobiography of an Androgyne
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“What same-sex marriage, women's franchise and the end of segregation all have in common is that they extend the rights of a privileged group to everyone. And when people hear the phrase 'trans rights', they assume something similar is being demanded - that trans people be enabled to live without discrimination, harassment and violence, and to express themselves as they wish. Such goals are worthy ones, but they are not what mainstream transactivism is about. What campaigners mean by 'trans rights' is gender self-identification: that trans people be treated in every circumstance as members of the sex they identify with, rather than the sex they actually are. This is not a human right at all. It is a demand that everyone else lose their rights to single-sex spaces, services and activities. And in its requirement that everyone else accept trans peoples' subjective beliefs as objective reality, it is akin to a new state religion, complete with blasphemy laws. All this explains the speed. When you want new laws, you can focus on lobbying, rather than the painstaking business of building broad-based coalitions. And when those laws will take away other people's rights, it is not only unnecessary to build public awareness - it is imperative to keep the public in the dark.”

Human RightsWomens RightsTransgenderTransGender IdentityTransexual
Book:Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality
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“Papers that use queer Theory usually begin by examining an idea, problematizing it in queer (or "queering" or "genderfucking") ways, and eventually concluding that there can be no conclusions.”

Political CorrectnessGender IdentityGender StudiesActivist ScholarshipGender Bending
Book:Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody
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“Practically it is all right, but medico-legally it is wrong, to make the genitals the universal criterion in the determination of sex. Medico-legally, sex should be determined by the psychical constitution rather than by the physical form. There are thousands of physical females who feel themselves to be men and have the mental traits of men, and there are thousands of physical males who feel themselves to be women and have the mental traits of a woman. Should any blame be attached to such individuals when they conduct themselves according to their psychical sex?”

IdentityGenderTransgenderTransGender IdentityDualismTranssexualBiological SexPsychical
Book:Autobiography of an Androgyne
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“I am like someone who is building a bridge. But it is no ordinary bridge. On one bank I stand ...... That is the present and there I have already driven in the first poles. And from this bank I am going to build my bridge, floating in space toward the other bank that I often see not at all and otherwise only see as in a fog. Only now and then I see it quite clearly in my dreams. And then I do not know if this bank means the past or the future. This question then awakes in me: Have I only had a past or have I not had any past at all, or do I only have a future and no past?”

PastDreamsIdentityFutureQuestionsOntologyGender IdentityPast And FutureAnalogy
Book:Lili: A Portrait of the First Sex Change
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“Most people are in the dark about what is being demanded by transactivists. They understand the call for ‘trans rights’ to mean compassionate concessions that enable a suffering minority to live full lives, in safety and dignity. I, alongside every critic of gender-identity ideology I have spoken to for this book, am right behind this. Most, including me, also favour bodily autonomy for adults. A liberal, secular society can accommodate many subjective belief systems, even mutually contradictory ones. What it must never do is impose one group’s beliefs on everyone else.”

GenderActivismLiberalismSecularismTransgenderGender IdentityGender IdeologyIlliberalism
Book:Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality
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“Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”

IfsDoeSaidCharacterTurnsSexResultsBehindsIdentityExpressionConsequenceGenderDistinctionConstructsBeing ThereGender IdentitySex And Gender
Author:Judith Butler
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