Gender Binary Quotes

“I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it’s hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine.

To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write.”
― Leslie Feinberg

“Bye Bye Binary!”
― Miss Vera

“For every woman who burned a bra, there's a man burning to wear one.”
― Miss Vera

“Living authentically in a world that takes every opportunity to squeeze you uncomfortably into a box of someone else's design...that is the most radical act of self love. Blossoming in an environment where the odds are stacked immeasurably against you is a beautiful act of defiance.”
― Theo Parish, Homebody: A Graphic Memoir of Gender Identity Exploration

“The playground was a war of girls versus boys and now I feel shame cuz some kids must have wanted to stand with the other team, and some must have wanted new teams entirely, but the world was drawn for us binary in clumsy chalk lines, and we'd try to do better when we were in charge.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Shout

“I knew there was something wrong when I couldn't say he or she in my own language.”
― Malebo Sephodi, Miss Behave

“No one trans story is better or inherently more “radical” than another, but that hasn’t stopped cisgender media culture from deeming certain trans stories to be more valuable than others. Those of us who don’t fit the classical narrative end up either having our stories edited and reedited until they fit, or end up having our voices silenced. And that’s fucked. At its best, this narrative is just an oversimplification of the trans community. At its worst, this narrative is used as a tool—reinforced by cisgender editors, curators, movement leaders, and gatekeepers—that continues to pressure trans people into fitting into one of two binary genders. By showing how desirable it is to be gender conforming and “pass” as a man or as a woman, this narrative reiterates the idea that gender nonconforming trans people are less-than and should be lucky to be treated as the gender with which we identify.”
― Jacob Tobia, Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story

“When it comes to monosexual identities, gender-based discrimination not only is encouraged but also constitutes the basis on which monosexual identities are created and withheld. In this way bisexuality exposes inconsistencies within the system”
― Shiri Eisner, Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution

“Often, the moon in witchcraft is equated to the divine feminine, but in a Queer Craft we might step outside of the gender binary and remind ourselves that the moon itself has no gender. It need not always be considered a goddess and contrary to some people's assertions, the moon has sometimes even been seen as a god.”
― Storm Faerywolf, The Satyr's Kiss: Queer Men, Sex Magic & Modern Witchcraft

“Trans folks are often expected to embrace a narrative that makes cis people comfortable--something simple and linear that upholds their binary understanding of gender transition.”
― Zena Sharman, The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care

“Traversing borders is a threat – and in the colonial mindset, the borders of class and nationality are at one with the borders of gender. Binary gender is a colonial and capitalist project, what feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa called the ‘absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other’.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism