Trans Quotes

“I'm not ashamed to dress "like a woman" because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman.”
― Iggy Pop, Dum Dum Boys: Iggy Pop by Mikael Jansson

“So here it is. My friends call me he, or they. The government and most of my family call me she. The media calls me she, because I don’t trust them enough to request that they do anything else. My lovers call me sweetheart. Or baby. Somewhere in all of that I find myself.”
― ivan coyote

“If you’re in doubt as to whether or not a question is inappropriate, here’s a helpful tip. Ask yourself if you would feel comfortable asking that question to a cisgender person. Generally speaking we as a society don’t around asking people about their private parts. They’re called private for a reason.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be a truth that others can accept, but I cannot live any other way. How would it be to live a lie every minute of your life?”
― Alison Goodman, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

“The eye of youth is very observant. Youth has its moments of keen intuition, even normal youth -- but the intuition of those who stand mi-way between the sexes is so ruthless, so poignant, so deadly, as to be in the nature of an added scourge...”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“...I really did "choose" to be Jim every single day, but that once I put my sword down I haven't chosen Jenny at all; I simply wake up and here I am.”
― Jennifer Finney Boylan, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders

“Do not stare at me unless you are willing to see me.' ...'Look at me,” he says. “Look at this body. My body. Or stop looking. Deny it, and deny me.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Dark and Deepest Red

“Look," Aracely said. "I know what you're going through."

"No you don't." Sam sat up. "I still have to live like this. Nothing is gonna fix me. There's no water that's gonna make me into something else."

"And I'd start from where you are if it meant what happened that night didn't have to happen," Aracely said. "We don't get to become who we are for nothing. It costs something. You're fighting for every little piece of yourself. And maybe I got all of me at once but I lost everything else. Don't you dare think there's any water in the world that makes this easy.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours

“She had genuinely started to believe that if people could see her onstage as Charlotte, maybe they would see that she was a girl offstage too.”
― Alex Gino, Melissa

“It's actually a very old archetype that trans girl stories get put into: this sort of tragic, plucky-little-orphan character who is just supposed to suffer through everything and wait, and if you're good and brave and patient (and white and rich) enough, then you get the big reward...which is that you get to be just like everybody else who is white and rich and boring. And then you marry the prince or the football player and live boringly ever after.”
― Kai Cheng Thom, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars

“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, Beyond Magenta: Transgender and Nonbinary Teens Speak Out

“Gifts Iphis promised when she was a maid
transformed into a boy he gladly paid.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

“Actually," she says, releasing his hand, "you do. I think you want to be you more than anything. You want to be the person you could have been without all the bullshit, yes?" He's frowning but he's receptive. "That's what I wanted, too. And that's what I eventually became. But it takes time, and it takes work - even the 'drag them into girlhood kicking and screaming' method requires something of you eventually - and more than anything else it takes understanding yourself. Picking out the parts of yourself that are real and not just more of the bullshit. Think of this as another shot at adolescence. It actually is, in many ways, since the basement can be a lot like a very small residential school and your body really is going through a whole lot of changes. Your first adolescence wasn't quick, was it? And was it easy? No. You're growing up all over again, as someone kinda new and kinda not, and you can't rush these things.”
― Alyson Greaves

“Queremos apoderarnos del género, redefinir nuestros cuerpos y crear redes libres y abiertas donde poder desarrollarnos, donde cualquiera pueda construir sus mecanismos de seguridad contra las presiones de género. No somos víctimas, nuestras heridas de guerra nos sirven como escudo... Nos presentamos no como terroristas, sino como piratas, trapecistas, guerrilleros, RESISTENTES del género… Defendemos la duda, creemos en el «volver atrás» médico como un seguir hacia delante, pensamos que ningún proceso de construcción debe tacharse de IRREVERSIBLE. Queremos visibilizar la belleza de la androginia. Creemos en el derecho a quitarse las vendas para respirar y el de no quitárselas nunca, en el derecho a operarse con buenos cirujanos y no con CARNICEROS, en el libre acceso a los tratamientos hormonales sin necesidad de certificados psiquiátricos, en el derecho a auto-hormonarse.
Reivindicamos el vivir sin pedir permiso... Ponemos en duda el protocolo médico español que desde hace años establece unas pautas absurdas y tránsfobas para cualquier ciudadano que desea tomar hormonas de su «sexo» contrario. No creemos en las disforias de género, ni en los trastornos de identidad, no creemos en la locura de la gente, sino en la locura del sistema. No nos clasificamos por sexos, nosotros somos todos diferentes independientemente de nuestros genitales, nuestras hormonas, nuestros labios, ojos, manos... No creemos en los papeles, en el sexo legal, no necesitamos papeles, ni menciones de sexo en el DNI, creemos en la libre circulación de hormonas (que, de hecho, ya existe..). No queremos más psiquiatras, ni libro de psiquiatras/ psicólogos, no queremos más «Test de la Vida Real»... No queremos que nos traten como enfermos mentales..., porque no lo somos... ¡y así es cómo nos llevan tratando desde hace mucho tiempo! Creemos en el activismo, en la constancia, en la visibilidad, en la libertad, en la resistencia...
GUERRILLA TRAVOLAKA”
― Beatriz Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era

“every time you laugh at the idea of a man dressed as a woman, a trans girl gets more scared to come out”
― Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender

“I can’t be remembered as an awful thing.”
― Caroline Sophia Hamel, A Maroon Star & A Silver Thread

“Actually," she says, releasing his hand, "you do. I think you want to be you more than anything. You want to be the person you could have been without all the bullshit, yes?" He's frowning but he's receptive. "That's what I wanted, too. And that's what I eventually became. But it takes time, and it takes work - even the 'drag them into girlhood kicking and screaming' method requires something of you eventually - and more than anything else it takes understanding yourself. Picking out the parts of yourself that are real and not just more of the bullshit. Think of this as another shot at adolescence. It actually is, in many ways, since the basement can be a lot like a very small residential school and your body really is going through a whole lot of
changes. Your first adolescence wasn't quick, was it? And was it easy? No. You're growing up all over again, as someone kinda
new and kinda not, and you can't rush these things.”
― Alyson Greaves

“Max refused to be detransitioned by death. Not matter what it took, even if it meant dying, he was going to do it as Max.”
― Logan-Ashley Kisner, Old Wounds

“Did you know that female hyenas have dicks too?" I asked.

"Oh no, not the hyenas again."

In the gloom, I heard his curiosity in spite of the complaint, and I kept going.

"Well, they have a penis-shaped clitoris that mimics a dick. They even have a false scrotum."

"Balls?"

"Yep."

"Hyenas are trans."

"Don't even think about saying that outside this room.”
― Mariana Enríquez, A Sunny Place for Shady People

“Here's the thing about being raised an Angel: You don't process grief.
Grief is a sin. Loss is God's design, and to mourn the dead is to insult His vision.”
― Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us

“So the image of Dad's body burns into the folds of my brain, writes itself between the grooves of my fingerprints, and I swallow it down until I choke. Angels cut out the parts of us that remember how to cry until we can'y. We learn to mask the grief, to pack it away for later, later, later, until eventually we just die.”
― Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us

“He's--he's cute. His dark eyes, sharp brows, the distant but curious tilt of his head...

I dig my thumbnail into the my finger, where my engagement ring used to be. I am still betrothed to Theo. I held his hand in front of the church and prayed for the world we were going to build together in Jesus' name. I promised to being glory as God's fiery sword; Theo promised to fight beside me. We were perfect together.”
― Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us

“Like the monster, the longer I live in these conditions, the more rage I harbor. Rage colors me as it
presses in through the pores of my skin, soaking in until it becomes the blood that courses through
my beating heart. It is a rage bred by the necessity of existing in external circumstances that work
against my survival.”
― Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage

“Like the monster, the longer I live in these conditions, the more rage I harbor. Rage colors me as it presses in through the pores of my skin, soaking in until it becomes the blood that courses through my beating heart. It is a rage bred by the necessity of existing in external circumstances that work against my survival.”
― Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage

“In the body I was born with, I had been invisible as the person I considered myself to be; I had been invisible as a queer while the form of my body made my desires look
straight. Now, as a dyke I am invisible among women; as a transsexual, I am invisible among dykes. As the partner of a new mother, I am oft en invisible as a transsexual, a woman, and a lesbian. I’ve lost track of the friends and acquaintances these past nine months who’ve asked me if I was the father. It shows so dramatically how much they simply don’t get what I’m doing with my body. The high price of whatever visible, intelligible, self-representation I have achieved makes the continuing experience
of invisibility maddeningly diffi cult to bear.”
― Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage

“In the body I was born with, I had been invisible as the person I considered myself to be; I had been invisible as a queer while the form of my body made my desires look straight. Now, as a dyke I am invisible among women; as a transsexual, I am invisible among dykes. As the partner of a new mother, I am often invisible as a transsexual, a woman, and a lesbian. I’ve lost track of the friends and acquaintances these past nine months who’ve asked me if I was the father. It shows so dramatically how much they simply don’t get what I’m doing with my body. The high price of whatever visible, intelligible, self-representation I have achieved makes the continuing experience of invisibility maddeningly difficult to bear.”
― Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage

“But she can’t remember why she couldn’t have that dream. Why she wasn’t privy to all the things little girls were told they could have. All the things little girls were told they should want. Isn’t that unfair? That girl was locked behind a cage, watching this dream play out like a movie she couldn’t star in, because she was never offered the role …”
― Caroline Sophia Hamel, A Maroon Star & A Silver Thread

“According to the Bible, Eve was the first trans woman.

She transitioned from a male rib to a female.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Atheist Guide: Atheism in a Nutshell

“It's harder for someone to pin you down as a girl when they need a moment to pin you down as human.”
― Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us

“ Oh child. Our cherished one, hello, hello, hello. You've made it. You are safe. You are home. ”
― Andrew Joseph White, You Weren't Meant to Be Human