Quotes & Sayings About Transgender

Congressional Republicans refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act because they objected to the protection it gave immigrants, transgender women, and Native American women. (Speaking of epidemics, one of three Native American women will be raped, and on the reservations 88 percent of those rapes are by non-Native men who know tribal governments can't prosecute them. — Rebecca Solnit

It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you're not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it. — Kate Bornstein

At the State of the Union address last night, President Obama made history by using the words transgender, lesbian, and bisexual in that speech. It was the part of the speech where he was just reading Craigslist personals. — Conan O'Brien

The Washington Post speaking out against state legislation that he believed would let businesses deny services to gay, lesbian and transgender people. [Tim] Cook himself came out as gay in the pages of Bloomberg Businessweek. — Laura Sydell

Let us not make a procrustean bed of trans issues and force deities of the past onto it, let us instead awaken trans and other gender-variant deities from their own beds! There is no possibility of blasphemy against existing powers and their human followers if the deities in question are our own, and we never have to "take them back," because they have always been ours to begin with! — P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

I thought of going the rest of my life pretending I sprang to life from nothing at sixteen years old and felt my cheeks flush with shame and anger. I was so tired of cowering. I was so tired of hiding. I wanted to tell the truth, to say it out loud. — Meredith Russo

Accepted social gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way. As a result, individuals fitting neatly into these expectations rarely if ever question what gender really means. They have never had to, because the system has worked for them. — Nicki Petrikowski

When and where there is repression, what a woman does when she gets dressed in the morning may be considered political. Wearing or not wearing a veil, disobeying laws that prohibit transgender dressing, or wearing a large Afro in an institution that seeks to diminish the formation of racial alliances are all actions that can serve as challenges to domination — Maxine Leeds Craig

Everybody deserves a shot at playing sports. It shouldn't matter in the least if that person is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Building community through healthy and inclusive activities should be one of the main focuses behind athletics, and that isn't possible if you exclude LGBT individuals, especially our youth. — Mardy Fish

Kelly took a deep breath. "And I'm sorry I ignored you last week." She scratched her neck. "And you know what? If you think you're a girl..."

George braced for Kelly's next words.

"Then I think you're a girl too! — Alex Gino

The children I describe here have horizontal conditions that are alien to their parents. They are deaf or dwarfs; they have Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; they are prodigies; they are people conceived in rape or who commit crimes; they are transgender. The timeworn adage says that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, meaning that a child resembles his or her parents; these children are apples that have fallen elsewhere - some a couple of orchards away, some on the other side of the world. Yet myriad families learn to tolerate, accept, and finally celebrate children who are not what they originally had in mind. — Andrew Solomon

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. — Alex Gino

The term "queer" is not simply a 1990s recoding of a pre-Stonewall epithet but here refers to a myriad forms of same-sex and other non-normative kinds of desire that have come to inform certain specific identity groups such as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender individuals, transsexuals, transvestites, cross dressers, drag queens, drag kings, alternative straights and anyone in between. — Chantal Zabus

When my friend told her drug dealer that she was transgender, he immediately started using the correct pronouns for her and her parents don't so there's an issue there. — Unknown

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. — Allen James

A lot of parents never speak to their transgender kids again; that's not the case in my family. — Chaz Bono

It's hard to separate art from artists so transgender musicians will never be mainstream until transpeople are looked at as notable as maybe redheads. — Willam Belli

Consider that people will talk about the fact that I now "pass" as a woman, but nobody ever asks about how difficult it must have been for me to "pass" as a man before. — Julia Serano

SK: What causes a person to be transgender?

MS: I think the question should be flipped around: What's the cause for assuming that one's gender identity has to be the one that you are born with? When I first came into this job, I was much more comfortable about people's sexuality than I was with people's gender identity. But when you hear the same stories over and over again, from people from all over the world, you start realizing that transgender is not an anomaly. It's a part of the spectrum of people's realities. Then you stop wondering about the cause and you start realizing it's a part of reality. — Susan Kuklin

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. — Sheila Jeffreys

John [the father] kept saying, "You have a penis. That means you're a boy." One day, Shannon noticed that her son had been in the bathroom an awfully long time and pushed the door open. "He had a pair of my best, sharpest sewing scissors poised, ready to cut. Penis in the scissors. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'This doesn't belong here. So I'm going to cut it off.' I said, 'You can't do that.' He said, 'Why not?' I said, 'Because if you ever want to have girl parts, they need that to make them.' I pulled that one right out of my ass. He handed me the scissors and said, 'Okay. — Andrew Solomon

I am a huge fan of the transgender community. — Kesha

I'm conflicted. On one hand, I don't want to say that because you were a man and now you're a woman, you can't be in a women's fashion show. But I feel it's a dicey issue. The fact of the matter is, when you are transgender - if you go, say, male to female - you're not having your pelvis broken and having it expanded surgically. You still have the anatomical bone structure of a man. — Tim Gunn

Sorry to disappoint you, parents - but when your kids come out as gay, bi or transgender, it is not about you. — Christina Engela

Here was a Jewish man-turned-woman making fun of Jewish men for not being manly enough. — Susan Faludi

I never would have been able to tell!" I was finally able to put my finger on it, and it's something that anyone who is meeting a transgender person for the first time should keep in mind. Saying you "never would have known" is actually very rude. Being surprised that a person looks like the gender they are just reinforces a stereotype that transgender people aren't usually attractive or able to pass, and worse, the stereotype that physical appearances even matter. A person's true essence comes from within! I — Jazz Jennings

It's a tough world to find yourself in, but an even tougher one to be yourself in — Chris Colfer

Both bisexuality and transgender are fluid notions of identity, while lesbian and gay are fixed identities. Some people believe that means there should be two movements: LG and BT. But then what're ya gonna do about SM players? And intersexed folks who want their own I in the alphabet soup of sex and gender related politics? — Kate Bornstein

The transgender community deserves the dignity and respect that most people take for granted. — Ed Murray

This is the thing I learned from loving a transgender boy who took years to say his own name: that waiting with someone, existing in that quiet, wondering space with them when they need it, is worth all the words we have in us. — Anna-Marie McLemore

Clad not exactly as a boy but, rather confusingly, as the boy I would have been, had I been more of a girl — Sarah Waters

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. — Tahar Ben Jelloun

Transgender discrimination is the civil rights issue of our time — Joe Biden

I am rather disturbed by the fact that so many people - who are neither medical professionals nor trans themselves - would want to hear all of the gory details regarding transsexual physical transformations, or would feel that they have any right to ask us about the state of our genitals. — Julia Serano

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

Being transgender and in need of surgery is a bit like wearing a tattoo advertising something that you have no intention of selling, and constantly being asked to represent what you are not selling. — Merlyn Gabriel Miller

I, faggot Wenqing Kang, Ph. D. in History from UC Santa Cruz, do solemnly swear that homosexual relationships between men are more enjoyable and more harmonious than heterosexual relationships. — Bill Gaede

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. — Various

Nature chooses who will be transgender; individuals don't choose this. — Mercedes Ruehl

I followed the trail out of the room, invigorated by the possibility of reinventing my own body. The meaning was mine, as long as I was with those who had the vision and vocabulary to understand my creation. — Nick Krieger

There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they're mismatched. That's all it is. It's not complicated, it's not a neurosis. It's a mix-up. It's a birth defect, like a cleft palate. — Chaz Bono

After accepting the bitter truth of society, I set myself out to lead a life for myself entirely. I realized that the poisonous tentacles of society does not spare anyone, especially people like us. Once I realized that, I became strong from within. — Santosh Avvannavar

I think when you fall in love, whether you're heterosexual, transgender, gay, lesbian, whatever, straight, you feel like it's happening to you for the first time. — Cate Blanchett

People changed lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast implants and nose jobs so they'd resemble their favorite movie stars. They changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world - even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren't supposed to change? Who made that rule? — Ellen Wittlinger

Before any American points a finger at President Putin and calls him nasty names, they should recognize that a lot of Americans agree with Putin on his stance against homosexual and transgender people. — Henry Rollins

Yet the transgender lobby aggressively attacks any critical voice as transphobic and tries to censor us from speaking. There is a big difference between criticism and transphobia. The transgender lobby knows that censoring criticism allows the accusation of transphobia to prevail and appears willing to distort the words of those they disagree with. — Janice Raymond

Yes, but if I were to look down there what would I see?"
"Don't think about it like that," Greta said. "That's not the only thing that makes you Lili. — David Ebershoff

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teens are bullied and ostracized in epidemic proportions. It's disgusting, and it must change. — Monica Raymund

When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic's parents couldn't help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn't help seeing who he didn't want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn't see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person. — David Levithan

SUPPORT SAFE SPACES FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH. Reading — Alex Gino

Obviously the transgender movement has not progressed in the way that the gay and lesbian movement has. But I'm an activist - that's just the kind of person I am. — Chaz Bono

President Obama has appointed a transgender woman to a position in the Department of Commerce. You know, in this era of partisan bickering, President Obama deserves a lot of credit for taking a chance on Ann Coulter, I think. — Conan O'Brien

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? — Mitch Kellaway

New Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that he is open to letting transgender people serve in the military. He said there's no reason to prevent people from being generals just because of their privates. — Jimmy Fallon

No men ever, you said." Verlaine leaned across the table, peering at him. "Mateo, are you maybe-well-transgender? Intersex? No prejudice here. Just support."
Mateo would have started thudding his face against the table in frustration if his pizza hadn't been in the way. "I'm a guy."
"We'll take your word for it. — Claudia Gray

If you are a woman, if you are a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. — Margaret Cho

Obviously, there is much similarity among the challenges of transgender people and all women - from health care to harassment to discrimination in the workplace. — Gloria Steinem

All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man. — John Irving

Still, as a straight person, you might say, "This just isn't my fight." No, it isn't. Unless you care about the kind of society we have. Unless you want the society of which you are a part to be a just one. Unless you believe that a free society, not to mention a godly religion, should fight injustice wherever it is found. Unless your religion tells you -- as our entire Judeo-Christian heritage does -- that any society will be judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable. Unless you care about our children. Unless fairness matters to you. Unless violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people concerns you. Unless "liberty and justice for all" is something you believe applies to all our citizens. — Gene Robinson

Our colleague Ellen West related a story to us that was told to her by a member of the Gayglers (Google's diversity group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees). He told Ellen that the Gayglers had discussed whether or not Google could be considered the first "post-gay" company at which they had worked. The consensus was that it was close, since at Google "it doesn't matter who you are, just what you do." Bingo. — Eric Schmidt

The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity — Julia Serano

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. — Jaime A. Seba

I explained that when our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren't welcome at the table, then we don't feel welcome either, and that not every young adult gets married or has children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people. — Rachel Held Evans

It wasn't just heartbreaking but it broke my identity! All that anguish that was deep hidden in me because rejections from family and friends started to pour out like a current in the sea that would seem destructive. — Santosh Avvannavar

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. — Paula Coffer

Being transgender guarantees you will upset someone. People get upset with transgender people who choose to inhabit a third gender space rather than "pick a side." Some get upset at transgender people who do not eschew their birth histories. Others get up in arms with those who opted out of surgical options, instead living with their original equipment. Ire is raised at those who transition, then transition again when they decide that their initial change was not the right answer for them. Heck, some get their dander up simply because this or that transgender person simply is not "trying hard enough" to be a particular gender, whatever that means. Some are irked that the Logo program RuPaul's Drag Race shows a version of transgender life different from their own. Meanwhile, all around are those who have decided they aren't comfortable with the lot of us, because we dared to change from one gender expression or identity to some other. — Kate Bornstein

At a crucial point in my early twenties, being able to end a pregnancy had restored to me what I regarded as a normal life. I remember that it saved me. — Susan Faludi

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

This chapter reviews the knowledge and practice that social workers need to establish beginning competency in working with transgender and gender nonconforming persons. — Gerald P. Mallon

I think what you're seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they've got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out. — Barack Obama

The politics of transgender identity are really complicated. And the debate over how much of gender is biological and how much of it is socially constructed is a very complex debate. — Jess Row

I get a singular comment that's very revealing: "I didn't know what to expect." Every time I hear that I think it's really just code for, "I wasn't sure I'd be comfortable with you in this role," which I understand coming from Oscar Bluth and Hank Kingsley and whatever. But I think there's a degree of, "Oh, okay, this is how it is." Then almost always people tell me that they love it and then people start talking to me about their families, whether it's transgender issues or not. — Jeffrey Tambor

But you can only lie about who you are for so long without going crazy. — Ellen Wittlinger

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 — Julia Serano

In fact, the word transition seems to me to be used incorrectly. Most people use it to mean going from one identity to another, such as with surgery or the use of hormones. I understand it to mean that the person has the other identity already and the transition involves the perceptions of society aligning with that identity. In this "word flip" it is not the person who is transitioning but society, which is transitioning its perceptions of that person. — Lori B. Girshick

Male domination, and the low and stigmatised status of women, cause teenage girls to engage in punishment of their bodies through eating disorders and self-mutilation. There is increasing evidence that woman-hating Western cultures are toxic to girls and very harmful to their mental health. It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, that there seem to be some girls baling out and seeking to upgrade their status. — Sheila Jeffreys

["Manning Up"'s] essays definitely nuance the idea of transitioning into a "shared manhood" (much like feminists of color have complicated the idea of "shared womanhood"). Trans men don't all transition to just become "men," which was one of the projects' cornerstone concepts. They become black men, white men, queer men, straight men, working class men, affluent men, fatherly men, single men, spiritual men, etc. etc. All of these mean different things when filtered through social and intimate, familial lenses.

One major boon of the growth in transgender literature ... is that we get to tease out these complexities in lives that will be popularly portrayed as monolithic unless we provide counter-scripts."

- from a National Book Critics Circle interview with writer Rigoberto Gonzalez — Mitch Kellaway

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment. — Barney Frank

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. — Christina Engela

I'm not generalizing anymore about men and women, because I think these old terms of "masculine" and "feminine" are going very fast with the rise of transgender rights that are questioning what all these categories are. — Kim Longinotto

I was in a conversation and someone said: "You know, we were talking about the whole issue of transgender and how it has become so accepted now, and somebody said, 'You know the Oprah show, I think has had a big impact.'" I said, I don't think so. We did several transgender [shows], but we didn't do as much for transgender as I did for, say, abused kids or battered women. And they said, "But no, you started the conversation. You started the conversation and the conversation has led us to here." — Oprah Winfrey

I thought, transgender people are much worse off than I am. That's why they're willing to risk everything to be who they are. But the older I got, the harder it got to stay in my body. — Chaz Bono

Here we go again. Pandering to the .3 percent of the American population that consider themselves transgender. Now I get to explain this to my 8-year-old, if I just wanted to watch a nice family show with some nice music. — Gretchen Carlson

Rejecting your gay or transgender child won't make them straight. It will only mean you will lose them. — Christina Engela

In the property division splitting couples go through, the allocation of friends must surely be the most painful. — Christine Benvenuto

If one does not make an ego out of gender, one would still know whether one is a man or a woman, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender - whatever else we may think of. But those identities need to fit very loosely and be worn very lightly. All sense of privilege or deprivation that has developed around one's gender identity, all rigidity regarding proper roles and behaviors for the various genders, must be cut through. — Rita M. Gross

I am back in London in a couple of days and looking forward to Sunday. Here is what we are doing. 1. Going to see my favourite mad transgender folk singer at the Roundhouse. 2. Then I am going to feed you tapas in a little place by Mornington Crescent. 3. Then we will go home in opposite directions and I will stare at my silent phone for weeks, wondering what happened. Or we will go for a dirty hump on Primrose Hill. Or maybe we will just have an awkward kiss/hug loaded with the promise of more next time. — Lucy Robinson

Parsons argued that medicine was a social institution that regulated social deviance through the provision of medical diagnoses for nonconforming behavior. Medicine was, in this understanding, engaged in social control. — Sheila Jeffreys

Seeing a black transgender woman embracing and loving everything about herself might be inspiring to some other folks. — Laverne Cox

...the weeping, the tears of the hosts, whose sympathy underscores the inherent tragedy of my life as a transgender person, and this moment fulfilling the cathartic arc of rejection to acceptance, without ever interrogating the pathology of a society that refuses to acknowledge the spectrum of gender in the exact same blind way they refuse to see a spectrum of race or sexuality. — Lana Wachowski

For me, it was never a question of whether or not I was transgender. It was a question of what I'd be able to handle transitioning and having to do it in the public eye. One of the issues that was hard for me to overcome was the fear of that. — Chaz Bono

A single change can sometimes change your entire life — Rahul Rampal

Because most people have great difficulty recognizing the humanity of another person if they can't recognize that person's gender, the gender-changing person can evoke in others a primordial fear of monstrosity, or loss of humanness. — Susan Stryker

Everyone gets cards at the beginning of life. I am transgender, I decided to be honest and tell everyone about it, and that's it. — Eddie Izzard

I'm not sure how paying for transgender surgery [in the military] makes our country safer. — Mike Huckabee

So it's actually way easier just to humor these men who grew up watching movies where the girl doesn't like the hero until he's been persistent enough to make her like him. This is the grease that keeps the gears of the heteronormativity machine spinning, obviously, but it's just easier to slip out of an awkward situation with an awkward guy than it is to call out the misogyny inherent in what he's doing. It's a tough spot to be in, but also this is coming from an angry dyke who's also trans and who, at one point, had society try to use her as a vessel for that kinda of misogyny. — Imogen Binnie

So I am deeply saddened and shocked over the current legislation that is now in place against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community here in Russia. In my opinion, it is inhumane and it is isolating. — Elton John

Out & Equal is about work. It's about authenticity. It's also about justice. Essentially it's about love, because when you get right down to it, the civil rights movement for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community is really about having the freedom to be who we are, and to love who we love. — Selisse Berry

Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it. — Mercedes Ruehl

We have the history of slavery or inequality to women, and now the civil rights movement of the 21st century is the struggle for equality for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. And I think it's important for Americans to know about the times that we failed. — George Takei