45 Quotes About Gender Identity

Gender is a complex topic. It’s also one of the most misunderstood, and therefore one of the most polarizing topics. What does it mean to be male or female? Is there only male or only female? If there are both, who gets to choose which gender you identify with? And if it’s your choice, what does that mean for your future? While it may seem like an easy question, the answer is actually quite complicated. And that’s why we’ve put together this collection of gender-identity quotes.

In the unification of two minds, orientation of sexuality is...
1
In the unification of two minds, orientation of sexuality is irrelevant. Abhijit Naskar
2
Love has no gender - compassion has no religion - character has no race. Abhijit Naskar
3
Either you are homophobic or you are a human - you cannot be both. Abhijit Naskar
4
Homosexuals are not made, they are born. Abhijit Naskar
5
Discriminations are never a sign of a civilized society. What makes us civilized is our act of liberated kindness with other people beyond the man-made primitive citadels of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. Abhijit Naskar
6
Discriminations suit animals, not humans. And yet, the unfortunate reality is, it is the humans that discriminate each other on the grounds of imaginary labels, not the animals. This way, animals are more civilized than humans. Abhijit Naskar
7
Homosexuality is immutable, irreversible and nonpathological. Abhijit Naskar
8
Being homosexual is no more abnormal than being lefthanded. Abhijit Naskar
9
Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist ape - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, that somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect. Abhijit Naskar
10
If there's a place you should be able to put yourself first, it's in your own sexual fantasies. Alyssa Brugman
11
John [the father] kept saying, "You have a penis. That means you’re a boy." One day, Shannon noticed that her son had been in the bathroom an awfully long time and pushed the door open. "He had a pair of my best, sharpest sewing scissors poised, ready to cut. Penis in the scissors. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'This doesn’t belong here. So I’m going to cut it off.' I said, 'You can’t do that.' He said, 'Why not?' I said, 'Because if you ever want to have girl parts, they need that to make them.' I pulled that one right out of my ass. He handed me the scissors and said, 'Okay. . Andrew Solomon
12
It is not possible to preserve one's identity by adjusting for any length of time to a frame of reference that is in itself destructive to it. It is very hard indeed for a human being to sustain such an 'inner' split - conforming outwardly to one reality, while trying to maintain inwardly the value it denies. Betty Friedan
13
Gender is like a Rubik’s Cube with one hundred squares per side, and every time you twist it to take a look at another angle, you make it that much harder a puzzle to solve. Sam Killermann
14
Gender identity is our internal response to a social construction that attempts to make a connection between a person’s biological makeup and their eventual role in society. Sam Killermann
15
One day stores will no longer have gender classifications. Instead the consumer decides how and what they want, rather than the social engineering of corporations. The concept of gender will be extinct. Lorin MorganRichards
16
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the only thing that stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see relationships between objects. Whether the objects need each other, love each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women - and absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. John Fowles
17
I'm never going to be happy, but I could get close now, I think. I could be almost normal. I could have a friend. Alyssa Brugman
18
Accepted social gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way. As a result, individuals fitting neatly into these expectations rarely if ever question what gender really means. They have never had to, because the system has worked for them. Nicki Petrikowski
19
Identity is one of those absurd synthetic terms that if you ask someone about it, they can’t give you a proper definition of it without recapping what they’ve learned in school. Identity supposedly is a state or a condition of being oneself or itself, and not another. At least, this is what dictionary.com explains to us. They always say that you need to define who you are and this definition is always labeled by gender role and preference, political views, religious beliefs, nationality, family bonds, age, jobs and education titles.” Lucera looked at the doctor and shrugged her shoulders. “This might be only MY perception. Neda Aria
20
What matters most is not 'what' you are, but 'who' you are. DaShanne Stokes
21
Even at such a tender age, I knew that life is lived in leftovers, account ledgers, and timetables rather than in the Platonic sphere of perfect theory. I couldn't float sylphlike around Love Hall in the flowing robes of indeterminacy for the rest of my life, however much I wished there to be no change. I had to accept my responsibilities and, at least in the eyes of the world and at least for the time being, nail my colors to a mast. Unless I wished to appear a strange wonder for the rest of time, caked in circus makeup covering the truth inches beneath, the mast would be male. . Wesley Stace
22
Women are extraordinary creatures! Roman Payne
23
Some day, my son, you are going to learn that the two greatest joys of being a man are beating the hell out of someone and getting the hell beaten out of you, good night. Richard Price
24
How you identify or what you prefer in the bedroom does not define your goals, dreams or interests, and has no baring on who you are as a human being, You don’t need to dress or behave a certain way because of your sexual orientation if you don’t want to. Trust that there are groups and resources out there that will support you no matter what. I know that I certainly appreciate all of my fans equally! . Natasha Negovanlis
25
I can see where this is going, too. Of course, I can, because I am Alex as well. But I want to dress up in gorgeous clothes and strut up and down the runway like they do in the magazines, swishing my tail. I want to dress up with Amina and Julia and giggle and be girlfriends, arm in arm. I want to be beautiful. I want other people to think I am beautiful. Alyssa Brugman
26
I can understand why you would want to be literally out of your own heard, because being inside your own head is unbearable. Alyssa Brugman
27
Do you want me to lick you again? Alyssa Brugman
28
Sometimes I don't know what I am. But what I would like to be on the outside -- what I want other people to see -- is a girl. Alyssa Brugman
29
Honey, there is no one right way to eat cannelloni. Alyssa Brugman
30
Gender is not only women and sexual orientation has multiple choices. Gloria D. Gonsalves
31
Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight -acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates “whiteness.” These folks left the film saying it was “amazing, ” “marvellous, ” incredibly funny, ” worthy of statements like, “Didn’t you just love it?” And no, I didn’t love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. The "we" evoked here is all of us, black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that there is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is not imitation whiteness. Bell Hooks
32
Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender id that, let's recognize that the word gender has scores of meanings built into it. It's an amalgamation of bodies, identities, and life experiences, subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviours, some of which develop organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let's start describing it as a holistic experience. Unknown
33
The voices belonged to dragons. Five of them lay on or sprawled over or curled around the various rocks and columns that filled the huge cave where Cimorene stood. Each of the males (there were three) had two short, stubby, sharp-looking horns on either side of their heads; the female dragon had three, one on each side and one in the center of her forehead. The last dragon was apparently still too young to have made up its mind which sex it wanted to be; it didn't have any horns at all. . Patricia C. Wrede
34
I followed the trail out of the room, invigorated by the possibility of reinventing my own body. The meaning was mine, as long as I was with those who had the vision and vocabulary to understand my creation. Nick Krieger
35
The first thing you're going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl? Jeff Garvin
36
That’s the vicious truth doctor. For me and persons like me, we are experiencing a divorce from our own individual self by sensing our sensations, emotions, behaviors as not belonging to the same person or identity. That’s how you psychiatrists could explain it. That’s how society would like to codify its population. Such a ludicrous model we’ve been creating calling it civilization Neda Aria
37
She follows her nose and stands once more before the doors of a quintessential dilemma. Male or Female. Here is her paradox. A staccato voice seems to challenge her, berate her. Hombre or Mujer. Mann or Frau. Homme or Femme. Gentleman or Lady. Com on, decide. She knows them all. She is them all. Not fluid or all-encompassing, gathering the harvest of the reaping fields, but fractured and split and bleeding. Her inner core weeping out of itself. There is nothing for hermaphrodites. It's too confusing. The words rattle around in her earbones, androgynous and humming. How can she choose? She cannot choose. To choose is to sunder. Mark OFlynn
38
At some point during my research, I came across the term "gender fluid." Reading those words was a revelation. It was like someone tore a layer of gauze off the mirror, and I could see myself clearly for the first time. There was a name for what I was. It was a thing. Gender fluid. Sitting there in front of my computer--like I am right now-- I knew I would never be the same. I could never go back to seeing it the old way; I could never go back to not knowing what I was. But did that glorious moment of revelation really change anything? I don't know. Sometimes, I don't think so. I may have a name for what I am now--but I'm just as confused and out of place as I was before. And if today is any indication, I'm still playing out that scene in the toy store--trying to pick the thing that will cause the least amount of drama. And not having much success. Jeff Garvin
39
One Saturday morning walking to the farmers' market with my lover she tells me she needs to look like a man on the street. She hates binding her breasts. Hates having breasts, hates not passing. I press her. I ask her, but what do you feel like when you're naked in bed with me? Do you like your body then? She is quiet. Later she tells me she had a dream. Her mother brought home a bottle of medicine from the hospital for her. The doctor says she has to take it. The medicine is testosterone. On Shabbat I remember to pray for enough space inside of me to hold all the darkness of the night and all the sunlight of the day. I pray for enough space for transformations as miraculous as the shift from day to night. Later when that lover has changed his name and an ex-boyfriend has come out to me as a lesbian I go to visit my best friend's sister-turned-brother-turned-sister-again and she tells me about the blessing of having many names and using them all at once. M.J. Kaufman
40
It reached a point where the paranoia was getting to me. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like people were hanging out, wanting to date, hooking up, wanting to hook up–it was relationships, relationships, relationships everywhere. Guys checking out girls, girls checking out guys. Dudes checking out dudes, chicks checking out chicks. Fuck! That’s what being a teenager was all about. Jess C. Scott
41
Bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space. Katrina Karkazis
42
It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you're not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it. Kate Bornstein
43
Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender is that, let's recognize that the word gender has scores of meaning built into it. It's an amalgamation of bodies, identities, and life experiences, subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviors, some of which develop organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let's start describing it as a holistic experience. Kate Bornstein
44
Let's stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient. Kate Bornstein