Soumya

“If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction.That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality.”
― Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

“Kuwei turned to Jesper. “You should visit me in Ravka. We could learn to use our powers together.”
“How about I push you in the canal and we see if you know how to swim?” Wylan said with a very passable imitation of Kaz’s glare.
Jesper shrugged. “I’ve heard he’s one of the richest men in Ketterdam. I wouldn’t cross him.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“There are plenty of days when I don’t hear anything like that, but there aren’t too many days when I don’t feel as though . . . I don’t know. It always feels like other guys want me to disappear. Every day. I can tell they just wish I didn’t exist.”
― Kenneth Logan, True Letters from a Fictional Life

“I understood intersectionality—the way that white supremacy props up patriarchy props up poverty props up environmental destruction props up white supremacy again—on a gut level, even if I didn’t know to call it “intersectionality” yet. I understood that sex workers are often stigmatized, barred from claiming their full humanity, by sexist culture and feminist movements alike. I understood that the idea of “The Closet” applied to so much more than just queer people, that we are all in a closet of one kind or another. And, contrary to all of my actions since, I understood that high heels and back problems were, in fact, related. What stands out to me most is that, at the age of seventeen, I seem to have understood the full stakes of what I was doing. I understood that by challenging gender norms and conventional masculinity, I was challenging, well, everything. Through challenging the idea of manhood, of being “a good man,” of “manning up,” I was burrowing deep into the core of power, privilege, and hierarchy. On a gut level, I understood that my freedom and liberation were wrapped up with those of so many others who were facing oppression.”
― Jacob Tobia, Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story