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Transgender Quotes

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Transgender Quotes

“Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors.”

PoetrySelf EsteemDepressionMirrorsSexualityTransgenderEating DisordersEating DisorderSelf Esteem Or Lack Thereof
Book:The sand child
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“Griffin Hansbury, who was born female but underwent a sex change after graduating from college, has another well-informed view of the powers of testosterone. “The world just changes,” he said. “The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido and change in the way I perceived women.” Before the hormone treatments, Hansbury said, an attractive woman in the street would provoke an internal narrative: “She’s attractive. I’d like to meet her.” But after the injections, no more narrative. Any attractive quality in a woman, “nice ankles or something,” was enough to “flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another…Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex.” He concluded, “I felt like a monster a lot of the time. It made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot.”

SexGenderTransgenderTestosteroneLibido
Author:Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha
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“Sometimes I worry (and I know I worry too much, too seriously) that I will have the same self-doubts and uneasiness as a man as I have a woman. I worry that I will fail to find the happiness I think I will. But as I wash myself and prepare for this surgery, when I buy my new shirts and look at my breasts and think they are sexy (!), I know I'll come out of this a better person.”

TransgenderTransTrans ManFtmGender Affirmation SurgeryTop Surgery
Book:We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan
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“I've been sexually assaulted, physically attacked, felt unsafe in my own house, and nearly killed myself because I'm transgender. Now I'm not saying that its the same struggle as racism. But what I will say is that if people are intentionally ignorant you can't fight them with words. Sometims you have to fight back. Or scream. And you know what. That's life. Despite the lies you may have been told no one won their rights by asking for them nicely. People fought for them. So ya I'm sorry if what I said may "offend" a few white people, but I'm going to fuking say it anyways.”

TransgenderTrans RightsLgt
Author:Adam Snowflake
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“The only reason they tolerated the transgender community in some of these movements was because we were gung-ho, we were front liners. We didn’t take no shit from nobody. We had nothing to lose. You all had rights. We had nothing to lose. I’ll be the first one to step on any organization, any politician’s toes if I have to, to get the rights for my community.”

LgbtLgbtqTransgenderTransTrans RightsLgbt HistoryTrans History
Book:Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR): Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle
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“If you are an LGBT+ person and you come out, you have to go through your knight’s quest to create ground for yourself, to create a space for yourself, to stand there and say, “I exist. I have no reason to feel guilt or shame. I am proud to exist, and while I’m not perfect, I deserve to exist in society just like anyone else.” This became my first big fight. While I consider myself to be fantastically boring, I realized that if I took on my own sexual identity and came out and just told people about it and tried to have a chat with them—tried to be offhand and casual about it—and tried to build our place in society and humanity, then that would be a good mission. This is where I exist in society. I am just this guy. I am transgender, and I exist. But that is just my sexuality. More important than that is that I perform comedy, I perform drama, I run marathons, and I’m an activist in politics. These are the things I do. How you self-identify with your sexuality matters not one wit. What you do in life—what you do to add to the human existence—that is what matters. That is the beautiful thing.”

Human RightsLgbtTransgenderSexual Identity
Book:Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens
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“The main reason why trans-woman-exclusion evokes such passion and frustration in me is precisely because it is both anti-trans and antifeminist. And as a feminist, it gravely disturbs me that other self-described feminists are so willing to overlook or purposefully ignore how inherently sexist trans-woman-exclusion policies and politics are: they favor trans men over trans women, they rampantly objectify trans female bodies, and they privilege trans women's appearances, socialization, and the sex others assigned to us at birth over our persons, our minds, and our identities.”

FeminismIdentitySexismQueerTransgenderLgbtqiaTransphobiaTransexualCissexismSexual Assignment
Book:Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity
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“This…exemplifies how trans-exclusionary feminism uses the experience of rape. Drawing on the radical feminist idea of the penis as a weapon, it ‘sticks’ this organ to trans women through an obsession with their surgical status. The ‘threat’ posed by the trans woman is then juxtaposed with the threatened (white) femininity of the abuse survivor. Cue outrage.”

FeminismRapeTransgenderSexual ViolenceTransphobia
Book:Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
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“The more she thought about it, imagining those soft lips opening around her tongue, those long lashes fluttering in dreamy anticipation, the more she realized that no specific moment, no single touch, was to blame. What mattered was that she’d broken the silent rule. She’d touched a girl before the girl touched her, had laid her violent hands on tender skin. She should have known better. Self-pity pressed against her mouth and nostrils like a sodden rag. I’m a girl until a real one decides I’m not.”

TransgenderTransphobia
Book:Manhunt
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“At the first trans health conference I ever attended, a parent asked about long-term health risks for people taking hormones. The doctor gave a full assessment of issues that trans men face; many of them mimic the risks that would be inherited from father to son if they'd been born male, now that testosterone is a factor. "What about trans women?" another parent asked. The doctor took a deep breath. "Those outcomes are murkier. Because trans women are so discriminated against, they're at far greater risk for issues like alcoholism, poverty, homelessness, and lack of access to good healthcare. All of these issues impact their overall health so much that it's hard to gather data on what their health outcomes would be if these issues weren't present." This was stunning-a group of people is treated so badly by our culture that we can't clearly study their health. The burden of this abuse is that substantial and pervasive. Your generation will be healthier. The signs are already there.”

TransgenderTransphobia
Book:A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter
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“Despite the ubiquity of government-organized trans pageants in the Philippines, trans people themselves are not politically recognized. We are culturally visible but legally erased. To this day, trans Filipinas have M gender markers on their documents and cannot change their names in court. We don't have robust antidiscrimination protections. No amount of pageant glory can make up for the fact that our government still doesn't see and treat trans people as full citizens able to participate in society as we truly are. In a country of over 100 million people, only a few dozen certified endocrinologists offer gender-affirming care. Growing up, I relied on other trans people to find hormones, figuring out the right dosages through hearsay, transitioning entirely without proper medical supervision. There was no other choice back then - and for many today, DIY is still the only option. My community is littered with stories of injections gone horribly wrong. Even worse, when someone dies from an overdose or an unsupervised medical treatment, it's shrugged off as a sad fact of life. 'That's what happens,' the emergency techs will say, our lives stripped of value by the very institutions that ought to care for us. I will never forget when one of my Garcia clan sisters succumbed to death from a botched medical procedure, a victim of all the intersecting forces trans Filipinas have to navigate to get treatment.”

TransgenderLgbtqiaTransgender IssuesTransphobia
Book:Horse Barbie
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“I think it's hard for people to understand what I mean when I say "I'm a guy's guy." I am in one way "becoming" a man and in another way I have always been one and I'm trying out all the ways to understand how I want to live that out, good and bad. Becoming a white man visibly is like a newly found superpower-like when Spider-Man suddenly realizes he can scale the sides of buildings but doesn't quite know how to control his own power and smashes up against a concrete wall on his first several attempts. He flails until he eventually knows how to use his power for good.”

AuthenticityComing OutTransgenderSpider ManSuperheroesTrans ManTransitioningGender TransitionSocial Privilege
Book:Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition
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“Ryan le pregunta a Avery acerca del pelo rosa. ㅡSí, es un color raro, ¿verdad? Para un chico que nació con aspecto de mujer y que quiere que lo vean como a un varón. Pero piénsalo un momento, solo muestra lo arbitrario que es el género. El rosa es femenino... pero ¿por qué? ¿Acaso las chicas son más rosas que los chicos? ¿Los chicos son más azules que las chicas? Es algo que nos enseñaron, principalmente para poder enseñarnos también otras cosas. Mi pelo puede ser rosa porque soy un chico. El tuyo puede ser azul porque eres una chica. Si te desprendes de toda esa mierda arbitraria con que nos controla la sociedad, te sientes más libre y, si te sientes más libre, puedes ser más feliz. ㅡMi pelo es azul porque me gusta el azul ㅡseñala Ryan. ㅡY el mío es rosa porque me gusta el rosa.”

LoveGayTransgenderLgtb
Book:Two Boys Kissing
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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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“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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“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.”

TransgenderRevivedCat Patrick
Book:Revived
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“ہیجڑے کی سرگوشی ( ہیجڑے کا رجز" کے طنز کے جواب میں ") ! میں اور میرا رجز کیا صدیوں تلک شمشیر تھامے ہاتھ میں ، پہرہ دیا ہے روز و شب محلوں کا تھا میں پاسباں چڑیا نہ مارے پر جہاں ایک وقت تھا یہ دیس تھا جب خوش ادا میں شادمانی کا نقیبِ خاص تھا بے شک ہے مِرے اب و جد کی نسل مجھ میں منقطع بے تخم جیسے اِک شجر معدوم جو ہو جاۓ گا میں " تا قیامت " کے مقابل " مختصر " کی داستاں بس اس لیے سب کی نظر میں ، میں رہا رحمت کے ساۓ میں سدا بھولے سے میری بد دعا لیتا نہ تھا چھوٹا بڑا بدلا جہاں اب یاں فقط اِک شور ہے جن کے دماغ و قلب کی افسردگی ان پر عیاں سنتا ہوں ان کی گالیاں اس دور میں اس شور میں !کیا کر سکوں گا میں بھلا اس سوچ میں تکنے لگا سوےَ فلک میں ناگہاں مجھ کو نظر آنے لگے کڑیل جواں ، کھولے ہوۓ چھاتے ، فضا میں دور سے آتے ہوۓ سوےَ زمیں اور ان میں تھیں دو لڑکیاں آتی ہوئیں ؟آتے ہوۓ ؟ یہ فرق غائب ہو گیا کچھ لوگ تو کرنے لگے آہ و بکا ! ہے ہے غضب ! اندھیر ہے مردوں کے جیسے کام جب کرنے لگیں گی عورتیں یہ ریش ، یہ سبلت بھلا کس کام کی رہ جائے گی کیا مرد ہی اب حاملہ ہو جائیں گے اب ہم مذکر اور مؤنث کس طرح کہہ پائیں گے !ملعون کیا اب مومنوں سے فارسی بلوائیں گے ایسے خیال آنے لگے اور دل کو دہلانے لگے تانیث اور تذکیر میں الجھاؤ پھیلانے لگے مجنوں نظر آنے لگیں لیلیٰ نظر آنے لگے ،پھر مارنے دوڑے مجھے کہتے ہوۓ " بدبخت ! یہ سب ہے فقط تیری خطا " میں ہنس پڑا تالی بجا کر خوش کروں دل آپ کا چُپکے سے پھر اِتنا کہوں ہستی نہیں بس خواب گاہ نظریں اُٹھا کر دیکھ لو نیلا ہے کتنا آسماں میں بھی اُتر سکتا ہوں چھاتا کھول کر دُہراتے رہتے ہو جنہیں شام و سحر الفاظ معنی سے تہی کیا ہو گئے ؟ گردان ہی میں کھو گئے کچھ حافظے پر زور دیں شاید دکھائی دے سکے اِک ذی نفس میں آپ کو نورِ خدا”

LgbtqTransgenderUrdu PoetryLgbtq Community
Book:Tum Kabeer / تم کبیر
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“What have I ever done that God should make me suffer so? I feel that my abnormality bars me out of the ministry, the profession of my choice, and most likely out of all other professions. I feel that this passion is going to wreck my life, and never permit me to make any return to my parents for all they have done for me. I have no hope for the future. In the convention, while I would be singing, I was in thought hacking my body to pieces with a sword, or piercing my breast with a dagger. My continuous prayer was : ‘ Father, Father, hear my humble cry. While on others thou art smiling, Do not pass me by !”

PrayerMinistryJoblessTransgenderComplaintTransgender IssuesTransgenderismTransgender WomenTrans PeopleCalling To Ministry
Book:Autobiography of an Androgyne
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“How are you supposed to be believed about the harm that you experience when people don't even believe that you exist? The assumption is that being a masculine man or a feminine woman is normal, and that being "us" is an accessory. Like if you remove our clothing, our makeup, and our pronouns, underneath the surface we are just men and women playing dress-up.”

TransgenderGender EqualityLgbtqiaNon BinaryGender Non Conformity
Book:Beyond the Gender Binary
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“The truth is, that we are in a state of emergency. In the past few years, we have seen an onslaught of legislation... targeting gender non-conforming people... Our communities are under attack. Regardless of whether these pieces of legislation pass, the fact that they're even being considered suggests just how disposable we are considered to be.”

TransgenderGender EqualityLgbtqiaNon BinaryGender Non Conformity
Book:Beyond the Gender Binary
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