Stacey Beasley

“I’d learned the lesson loud and clear, one that has been re-taught to me and so many other women and femmes who have been targets of harassment and abuse: The world owes you nothing. If you are so brave as to express your gender in public, you will be harassed, you will be hurt, you may even be assaulted, and no one will have to apologize for how they treated you. They will get away with it every single time. They will make you feel ashamed of feeling hurt. They will make you feel like you are just whining. And speaking up will only make it worse. Watching people who love you—who support you and want the best for you—try to take on the world and fight for you, only to lose, will only make it hurt more. So you stop talking about what you’re facing. You stop talking about how much you’re hurting. You stop telling people how shitty the world is to you because you are gender nonconforming. You end an email with a smile, take the abuse, and pretend it doesn’t hurt you. You learn you have no real power, that the only power you do have is the power not to flinch when you are punched, not to cry when you are stung, not to acknowledge that abuse leads to injury.”
― Jacob Tobia, Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story

“(In the Choctaw language, “Oklahoma” means “red people.”)”
― David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

“That’s exactly the point: when the playing field is uneven to begin with, you don’t have to be “a bad person” to benefit from nasty institutions or unwarranted privilege. You don’t have to be a bad person or even have bad intentions to personally profit from sexism, homophobia, or transphobia. You don’t have to do anything. As a heterosexual, cisgender masculine guy, you simply have to throw your name in the ring against someone like me and automatically you have those forces on your side. All you really have to do is say nothing against them. All you really have to do is keep quiet, remain “neutral” in the face of fucked up power structures, and those fucked up power structures will go on to do what they do best: walk all over people of difference. But just barely.”
― Jacob Tobia, Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story

“The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present