Toshio Meronek > Quotes

“It's not wrong to feel like the world is fucked up being repair, but...you can try to repair what you can, using whatever skills you might have.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“You have to give people who are new to this movement and to activism in general some way in.” For some people, that’s going to a protest, or seeing a documentary, or reading a book, that gets them thinking, “Maybe I can do something.” And so no, I don’t believe one person’s vote amounts to shit. But it can get people in the mindset of recognizing they can fight back against the Powers That Be in some way. Maybe next time, that leads them down the path of, they’ll join an organization or they’ll talk to their friends about the murders, or that George Washington had slaves, and how this country only exists because of slavery.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“Why only spend money on our protection when it’s a cage?”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“Why would someone want to assimilate into being something that was so hateful? Into this society that couldn’t care less if we went extinct? The hurt and horror that people were going through. I’m not ready to go back and hide inside a closet, and just get erased like that.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“most people don’t know what Pride is about. The anguish, and the hurt, and the reason why Pride started in the first place—it was an anti-cop event. Look, yes—I know there are trans police officers. You have Black people who are police officers, and women police officers. All that’s cute, but guess what: It’s blue first, your other allegiances second. Once you get on that blue, child, it goes straight through to your brain, dyes your brain blue, and you’re no longer whoever the fuck you were before. So no, they don’t need to be there. That’s where their loyalty lies. So stay the fuck away from me.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“You can kill a person, but you can’t kill an idea, and you can’t kill love or hurt.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“We weren’t considered important enough to count before.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“If self-hatred was hammered into you when you were young, Major wants you to know that you're important - that being an outsider helps you develop skin that's both tough and pliable in social situations. You are a stronger person because of the shit you've gone through.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“And if you pay attention, most monuments are for one person, or one thing that some person did in their life. I wouldn’t be here if not for my community, my friends, my comrades. And so to me, the ninety-nine percent of statues that celebrate one person, it’s bullshit. Regardless of whether they deserve a statue or not, those people didn’t get to do anything great without a damn crowd of people they worked with to get there.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

“The Powers That Be: the corporate, government, and nonprofit actors who work to preserve the status quo, and the forces in the world who want us all to fit into our proper places in an established social hierarchy, from which they can look down on us and make sure we don't fuck with the money and privilege they hoard.”
― Toshio Meronek, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary