Ronald Lett

“...Barack had told me, he'd contended most often with a deep weariness in people--especially black people---a cynicism bred from a thousand small disappointments over time. I understood it. I'd seen it in my own neighborhood, in my own family. A bitterness, a lapse in faith. It lived in both of my grandfathers, spawned by every goal they'd abandoned and every compromise they'd had to make. It was inside the harried second-grade teacher who'd basically given up trying to teach us at Bryn Mawr. It was inside the neighbor who'd stopped mowing her lawn or keeping track of where her kids went after school. It lived in every piece of trash tossed carelessly in the grass at our local park and every ounce of malt liquor drained before dark. It lived in every last thing we deemed unfixable, including ourselves.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“It will likely take the rest of my life to return to a gender that is free of shame. I will spend the rest of my life trying to resurrect who I was when I was four. But perhaps this is what we all do? Or at least, this is what we all should do.”
― Jacob Tobia, Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story

“I’m sharing this with you because I want the world to understand that depriving a child of the ability to express their gender authentically is life threatening. I’m sharing this with you because I want you to understand that gender policing is not some abstract, intellectual concept; it is a pattern of emotional abuse that came from every direction and singularly robbed me of my childhood. I’m sharing this with you because I want you to understand that telling a boy not to wear a dress is an act of spiritual murder.”
― Jacob Tobia, Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story

“I sighed sometimes, watching Barack pull the same dark suit out of his closet and head off to work without even needing a comb. ... I quickly found out a truth that no one talks about: Today, virtually every woman in public life--politicians, celebrities, you name it--has some version of Meredith, Johnny, and Carl. It's all but a requirement, a built-in fee for our societal double standard.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming