C.N. Lester > Quotes

“Even when we are confused about someone’s gender, and don’t have a greater awareness of what it means to be trans, we have a choice to respond with kindness rather than cruelty.”
― C. N. Lester

“Part of being trans, of being queer—not all of it, not for all people, but part—is in the re-imagining of what it is to be human. These are categories forged from the failure or refusal to acquiesce to majority rule.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that WE are too hard to understand, and suggests that there’s no point in trying.”
― C. N. Lester

“When we are surrounded by such diversity - in nature, in culture, in human spirit - how can we stand not to acknowledge it?”
― C. N. Lester

“Gender is who you are, and sexuality is who you want; sexual orientation is who you go to bed with and gender identity is who you go to bed as.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“Those looking to know how it feels, to have a chance at life in a congruent body, free of dysphoria? Just listen to trans people and what we know of our own lives. We have been speaking this truth for a long time.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“We cannot afford to be seduced by the sophistry of single-issue movements. As Audre Lorde so rightly said, we do not live single-issue lives.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“Some critics of trans people have told us that we shouldn’t feel this pain of being denied the legitimacy of our own selves; gender is, of course, just a social construct. I wonder if these people also tell widows not to bother grieving their husbands, because marriage is also just another social construct.”
― C. N. Lester

“Trying to take away someone’s language is usually the first step in trying to change them.”
― C. N. Lester

“This is the reason why it's insufficient to respond with accusations of being 'offended,' to say that anyone who disagrees with these pieces is not obliged to read them and can take their support elsewhere. Trans people may choose not to consume transphobic media; we have no choice about living in a world shaped by the misinformation.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“A vital point, when considering sex, is one that has been made over and over again by scientists, by philosophers of science, by sociologists and historians of science: that we cannot divorce a singular, unified “Science” from the broader cultures that create and sustain it. What we observe, what we think about what we observe, how we analyze our thoughts, what we pass on to others are all shaped by cultural forces beyond our personal control.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me: Conversations for All of Us

“The hypocrisy in telling young people who are genuinely desperate for treatment that it’s too risky for them to have it—even after they have jumped through so many safeguarding hoops—while sanctioning, encouraging, other kinds of risk distresses me. It has everything to do with cultural norms, and nothing to do with keeping children safe while still allowing them their autonomy. We have to move forward from the idea that it is somehow a shame, a failure, for a child to grow up to be trans. We have to start approaching this subject with young people’s best interests at heart, not our own concerns and judgments about how we would want our children to conform. Being trans is not a fate anyone needs saving from. But everyone, every child, needs to be loved for who they truly are, without conditions.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me: Conversations for All of Us

“What I am sure of, though, is that accepting people outside the gender binary has less to do with the idea of specific non-binary genders, and a lot more to do with working away from the binary thinking in general. That we get better at seeing beyond us and them, valid and invalid, natural and unnatural, good and bad, and instead communicate the fullness of who we are to each other, respectfully, with compassion.”
― C.N. Lester

“If we start preemptively cutting out parts of who we are because they’re ‘not feminist enough’, then we’ve failed before we’ve begun.”
― C. N. Lester

“Even when a word has been in usage for a long time, those whop are suspicious of what that means in terms of gender are quick to claim the change is too fast. 'They' has been used as a singular pronoun in English for hundreds of years; we find examples of the singular 'they' in the works of Shakespeare, Austen, and Swift. But trans people like me, who use the pronoun 'they' as a gender-neutral alternative to 'he' or 'she,' are often mislabeled in the media by editors who struggle with its usage. By implying that trans people are faddish and difficult about words, writers can cast aspersions on the validity of our language - and our selves. By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that we are too hard to understand, and suggests that there's no point in trying.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“Focusing on the needs of those with a lighter burden to bear is not "objective" or "pragmatic", but it is a confirmation of historic societal prejudices that say that some lives matter more than others, some lives are too "complicated" to be worth caring for, some oppression are just too entrenched to change.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“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.”
― C. N. Lester

“Some of our modern history is extraordinary in what it shows us of cooperation and compassion, and some of it is a master class in excluding the most marginalized "for the greater good" of the most privileged.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“I don't have to know every why of who I am to know the truth of my existence, and know that I can only find happiness by embracing that truth. It doesn't make sense to me to try to reduce an enormous spectrum of human experiences to an on/off diagnostic, rather than following the more complicated and rewarding journey of investigating the totality of the human animal.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“If we were to take another example, and apply the same rules, it becomes obvious just how inappropriate and harmful this trope is. For some (not all) trans people, one element of being trans is the physical process of transition. It can be joyful, it can be painful, it can be messy, and it can involve surgery. The same could be said of parenthood. Conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are necessary parts of making a family for the majority of people. Like medical transition, it is vital that we're educated about these processes if there's a chance we'll find ourselves personally affected. And luckily, in both of these cases, the medical information is freely and easily available online, through public health initiatives, in libraries, and from the relevant medical authorities.
But it would never be appropriate to approach a new mother in a cafe and say, 'so, did you rip your vagina giving birth to that one?' When greeting a colleague returning to the office after maternity leave, we don't ask if we can examine the stretch marks and possible scars, or ask about hemorrhaging and post-natal incontinence. If we're close friends or family, we might well talk about the most personal physical aspects of creating and delivering a baby - the same is true of transition. But the need to be honest and close with our loved ones doesn't make the intrusion of strangers okay.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“Life is seldom perfect, and everyone knows the sometime necessity of a compromise. But if we accept the necessity—the desirability—of offering up the lives of others to improve our own, then we have already lost.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me: Conversations for All of Us

“This is not about only wanting 'respectable' trans people to be portrayed.

This is about asking why these facts - that many trans people are sex workers, that many trans people turn to drugs and alcohol, that many trans people suffer violence both at the hands of those they know and at the hands of stranger, and that trans people who suffer from the effects of racism are more likely to suffer further from violence and abuse - are suitable fodder for light entertainment, but not for an urgent and sincere investigation into the oppression which are killing the most marginalized members of the trans community.

Instead of reporting on the whys of all this - the scandals that are endemic racism, endemic transphobia, the particular hatred of trans femininity and womanhood that is transmisogyny, the daily ways in which it is decided that some people are not as worthy of protection, of life, as others - instead, the lives of marginalized trans women are used as fodder for schlocky drama series, the background hum of an oversaturated media machine.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“Listening taught me that the labels that confined me could liberate others. That the right answer for one person could become the wrong answer for another, and that all we could do was lend support in our shared individuality.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“Learning how to talk about trans people is not difficult, and doesn't require any specialist knowledge. Just as you would in any other situation, you have to reflect back on the words a person uses about themselves. Wanting to be referred to in an accurate and respectful way isn't a trans-specific thing, but a cornerstone of polite society. I don't call my Jewish friends Buddhist. It's the same with trans people. Use the right names, use the right pronouns, and don't fall for the line that we're too difficult for our own good.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“And I will say that to my precious Shine, or Malik, or Nisa, or Nina or any of the children and young people we cherish and lift up, that you are brilliant beings of light. You have the power to shape-shift not only yourselves but the whole world. You, each one, are endowed with gifts you don't even yet know, and you, each one, are what love and the possibility of a world in which our lives truly matter looks like.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“It has to be our choice to talk or not talk about being trans, and - whether we talk about it or not - we still need to be recognized as whole, complex people. Our lives are truncated when we are seen only through the stereotypes of others, and we waste so much time struggling against those constraints. Whether it's on the front pages of in the workplace 'being trans' is never the most interesting thing about us. Accept it as one crucial part and then, please, keep listening.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“Gender and sex can, and do, mean different things in different contexts. More than that, they interact. Why is it that we classify bodies into "male" and "female" first, rather than through any other categorization? Why do so many ideas about sex cleave so strongly to gender stereotypes? Is it possible to consider the body as something neutral that exists apart from the sexed and gendered terms we use to describe it?

Some trans people would prefer to avoid this argument altogether; others to others to bring it to a head. I stand with the latter option. Not because trans people are a problem to be explained away - validated or refuted by a singular notion of scientific truth - but because, when the facts of our supposed sexes are used to invalidate and endanger us, it is too dangerous not to. Not only that: the possibilities as to what trans people can teach us all about the science of sex and gender are too precious to dismiss.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me

“We can be misinterpreted through lack of representation - but also through the particular prejudices of popular writers. The denial of reality, the cutting of a story to fit a particular narrative, and presenting uninformed opinion as fact: on a weekly basis, these are the ways in which trans people are represented to the wider world by those who know nothing about our lives.”
― C.N. Lester, Trans Like Me