95 Quotes About Transgender

Transgender people are often misunderstood. One of the major misconceptions is that they are all women. This can be highly offensive to transgender men, who feel like the gender they were assigned at birth does not describe them. These trans men are often seen as victims or even “freaks” by society Read more

Luckily, there are some transgender quotes that will help to promote understanding and acceptance of trans people.

He who is jealous is better off not dating someone...
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He who is jealous is better off not dating someone who is bisexual. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
So when we say to ourselves, or to others, 'You...
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So when we say to ourselves, or to others, 'You should obey God, ' what we mean is 'We want what God deserves (your obedience) and we want what is best for you (your obedience). Andrew T. Walker
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Being creatures means that we cannot re-create ourselves in any fashion or form that we desire by a simple act of the will or the complex work of a surgeon. When we as creatures reject the Creator's blueprint, we are both rebelling against the natural order of how things objectively are, and (thought it may not seem like it) we are rejecting the life that is going to be the highest good for us. Andrew T. Walker
Caitlyn Jenner is not brave nor a hero
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Caitlyn Jenner is not brave nor a hero Kyle Broflovski
Because I am, just as you are you. We don’t...
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Because I am, just as you are you. We don’t always get to pick who we are, Shelly Wynn, but we can choose to celebrate it. Nathan Reese Maher
Fear is the intended result of codifying homophobia into law.
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Fear is the intended result of codifying homophobia into law. DaShanne Stokes
People think that LGBTs adopting children will hurt them, but...
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People think that LGBTs adopting children will hurt them, but it's not being in loving homes that hurts children most. DaShanne Stokes
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Kelly took a deep breath. "And I'm sorry I ignored you last week." She scratched her neck. "And you know what? If you think you're a girl..." George braced for Kelly's next words." Then I think you're a girl too! Alex Gino
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She scissored the curls away, and - toms, grow easily sentimental over their haircuts, but I remember this sensation very vividly - it was not like she was cutting hair, it was as if I had a pair of wings beneath my shoulder-blades, that the flesh had all grown over, and she was slicing free... Sarah Waters
Most people who are would each not be in love...
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Most people who are would each not be in love with their partner, if they did not have the kind of genitals they have. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If you voted for a man who said
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If you voted for a man who said "Grab em by the pussy, " you have zero room to claim to protect anyone in bathrooms. DaShanne Stokes
In 1969 America put the man on the moon. In...
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In 1969 America put the man on the moon. In 2016 America put the man in the women's bathroom. Celso Cukierkorn
If there's one thing I know about women, it's that...
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If there's one thing I know about women, it's that they have vaginas. J. Richard Singleton
You can change a body, but you can't change a...
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You can change a body, but you can't change a soul. The heart wants what it wants. Chris Colfer
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We assume that anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don’t see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long. C. N. Lester
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When we are surrounded by such diversity - in nature, in culture, in human spirit - how can we stand not to acknowledge it? C. N. Lester
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Anna's voice wasn't a beautiful voice - rough edged and sorrowful, a bit used, somehow male and female at once. Yet it had more vibrancy to it than most Danish voices, which were often thin and white and too pretty to trigger a shiver. Anna's voice had the heat of the south; it warmed Einar, as if her throat were red with coals. David Ebershoff
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THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE – PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES. Agnostic Zetetic
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Griffin Hansbury, who was born female but underwent a sex change after graduating from college, has another well-informed view of the powers of testosterone. “The world just changes, ” he said. “The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido and change in the way I perceived women.” Before the hormone treatments, Hansbury said, an attractive woman in the street would provoke an internal narrative: “She’s attractive. I’d like to meet her.” But after the injections, no more narrative. Any attractive quality in a woman, “nice ankles or something, ” was enough to “flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another… Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex.” He concluded, “I felt like a monster a lot of the time. It made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. . Christopher Ryan
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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
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I met people on college campuses who were defining themselves as genderqueer to express revolutionary feelings, or to communicate their individuality; they were gender fluid without being gender dysphoric. This phenomenon may be culturally significant, but it has only a little bit in common with the people who feel they can have no authentic self in their birth gender. Andrew Solomon
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It's a tough world to find yourself in, but an even tougher one to be yourself in Chris Colfer
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In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes fro unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world. Julia Serano
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If we start preemptively cutting out parts of who we are because they’re ‘not feminist enough’, then we’ve failed before we’ve begun. C. N. Lester
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For every woman who burned a bra, there's a man burning to wear one. Miss Vera
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The camera only documented what had been there all along, a marriage whose foundations, constructed from the cheap materials of convention and fear, had been buckling for years. Susan Faludi
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At a crucial point in my early twenties, being able to end a pregnancy had restored to me what I regarded as a normal life. I remember that it saved me. Susan Faludi
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Here was a Jewish man-turned-woman making fun of Jewish men for not being manly enough. Susan Faludi
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If the goal of feminism is to end patriarchy and gender-based oppression, then transgender politics supplies us one of the most important perspectives from which to view - and challenge - binary gender and gender-based oppression. As mentioned in previous chapters, if no clear distinction exists between "male" and "female, " it becomes impossible to oppress people according to their gender. If we have no sole criterion for determining who is "man" and who is "woman, " we can't know whose role it is to be oppressor, and whose to be oppressed. Shiri Eisner
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While mass-media images of biological "males" feminizing themselves have the subversive potential to highlight ways conventionally defined femininity is artificial (a point feminists make all the time), the images rarely function this way. Trans women are both asked to prove their femaleness through superficial means and denied the status of "real" women because fo the artifice involved. After all, masculinity is generally defined by how a man behaves, while femininity is judged by how a woman presents herself. Thus, the media is able to depict trans women donning feminine attire and accessories without ever allowing them to achieve "true" femininity or femaleness. Further, by focusing on the most feminine of artifices, the media encourages the audience to see trans women as living out a sexual fetish. But sexualizing their motives for transitioning not only belittles trans women's female identities; it also encourages the objectification of women as a group.. Thus..[this type of message] sexualizes the very concept of female identity and reduces all women (trans or otherwise) to mere feminine artifacts [ex. applying make-up, perfume, putting on jewelry]. Unknown
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Some critics of trans people have told us that we shouldn’t feel this pain of being denied the legitimacy of our own selves; gender is, of course, just a social construct. I wonder if these people also tell widows not to bother grieving their husbands, because marriage is also just another social construct. C. N. Lester
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The culture were live in ripples through our daily lives, sending messages about what is considered "normal" and healthy by society. Lee Harrington
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By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that WE are too hard to understand, and suggests that there’s no point in trying. C. N. Lester
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Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors. Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Jesus Christ did not perform any transgender miracles and no disciple was gay. Felix Wantang
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It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it's lonely, because you feel you can't talk about it. You feel it's something between you and the body. You feel it's a battle you will never win .. . and yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you. David Levithan
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My body is a political battlefield. It is a place of war, of death and suffering, of triumph and victory, of damage and repair, of blood and tears and sweat. It is a place where memories go to find purpose for their existence. It is a place where humans cast all inhibitions aside to discover what exists at their very core. It is a place of growth wearing a mask of destruction. It is a challenge, not for the faint of heart, beckoning us to face it with eyes wide open. The only war is within. When you are ready to fight it, the field awaits. Agnostic Zetetic
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Three: You don't know what it's like Seven: To do a cartwheel followed by a somersault followed by wishing so hard you could fold your hands into a pistol and no longer exist. Various
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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
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Real life nightmares kills me as an old man trying to escape from bad guilty memories who basically lives in the present. Sil Vereecken
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It's time to undo Rahim. Nadia Hashimi
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It wasn’t just heartbreaking but it broke my identity! All that anguish that was deep hidden in me because rejections from family and friends started to pour out like a current in the sea that would seem destructive. Santosh Avvannavar
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When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic's parents couldn't help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn't help seeing who he didn't want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn't see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person. David Levithan
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It is offensive that so many people feel that it is okay to publicly refer to transsexuals as being “pre-op” or “post-op” when it would so clearly be degrading and demeaning to regularly describe all boys and men as being either “circumcised” or “uncircumcised. Julia Serano
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I am rather disturbed by the fact that so many people–who are neither medical professionals nor trans themselves–would want to hear all of the gory details regarding transsexual physical transformations, or would feel that they have any right to ask us about the state of our genitals. Julia Serano
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I find myself making excuses for this kind of bullying behavior. Not everyone has been to college, learned trans 101, studied queer theory.. But this is unfair to myself and other trans people. I've come to realize that understanding me isn't a matter of being an intellectual. Likewise, one doesn't have to be a radical to respect my feelings. Decent people consider how their comments affect others. Elliot Deline
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What was the point of being himself if he had to be alone? Austin Chant
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We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We don't choose the experience but we do choose how we react to the experience we have. Choose to be positive, choose to be helpful, choose to be happy. Paula Coffer
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Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry against transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies. Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other's differences and are willing to fight their enemy together. We are the class that does the work of the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation. Leslie Feinberg
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The whole point of my gender transition was to free myself up. If something feels good, I'm not going to stop doing it because it doesn't fit someone else's notion of what a man is. -David Harrison Carol Queen
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It’s not easy for a young gay fabulous boy in Japan, I should know, that’s why I became a woman.” Momma Nakama Rochelle H. Ragnarok
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I know what I am. I know that I've chosen to identify as a transgender woman, and that I am - by and large - happy with where I am in this world. I'm far from perfect, and I could give you a list as long as my arms of the things I'd love to change. Nevertheless, I am still here, and I am still me, and no one can change that without my permission.- Gwendolyn Ann Smith, "We're All Someone's Freak Unknown
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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
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Sorry to disappoint you, parents - but when your kids come out as gay, bi or transgender, it is not about you. Christina Engela
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No one has the right to demand that your body be something other than what it is. Agnostic Zetetic
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Monster” is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, “divine portent, ” itself formed on the root of the verb monere, “to warn.” It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, “Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening. Susan Stryker
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You pass as a guy; I, as pregnant. Our waiter cheerfully tells us about his family, expresses delight in ours. On the surface, it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more “male, ” mine, more and more “female.” But that’s not how it felt on the inside. On the inside, we were two human animals undergoing transformations beside each other, bearing each other loose witness. In other words, we were aging. Maggie Nelson
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A single change can sometimes change your entire life Rahul Rampal
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When the Majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on "men wearing dresses" or "men who want their penises cut off" that is not transphobia- it is trans-misogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults omitted against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia- it is trans-misogyny. Julia Serano
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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
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Even when we are confused about someone’s gender, and don’t have a greater awareness of what it means to be trans, we have a choice to respond with kindness rather than cruelty. C. N. Lester
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The first thing you're going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl? Jeff Garvin
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When did you know you were a girl? When did I know I was a boy?" he said. "I knew my whole life. I can't tell you exactly when, but it wasn't like I was ten and realized, 'Oh gee, I must be a boy! ' What people fail to realize is they made that decision way earlier than that. It just happened that their gender identity and their anatomy matched. Jaime A. Seba
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Being transgender guarantees you will upset someone. People get upset with transgender people who choose to inhabit a third gender space rather than “pick a side.” Some get upset at transgender people who do not eschew their birth histories. Others get up in arms with those who opted out of surgical options, instead living with their original equipment. Ire is raised at those who transition, then transition again when they decide that their initial change was not the right answer for them. Heck, some get their dander up simply because this or that transgender person simply is not “trying hard enough” to be a particular gender, whatever that means. Some are irked that the Logo program  Ru Paul’s Drag Race shows a version of transgender life different from their own. Meanwhile, all around are those who have decided they aren’t comfortable with the lot of us, because we dared to change from one gender expression or identity to some other. . Kate Bornstein
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Let us not make a procrustean bed of trans issues and force deities of the past onto it, let us instead awaken trans and other gender-variant deities from their own beds! There is no possibility of blasphemy against existing powers and their human followers if the deities in question are our own, and we never have to "take them back, " because they have always been ours to begin with! Unknown
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We make assumptions every day about other people's genders without ever seeing their birth certificates, their chromosomes, their genitals, their reproductive systems, their childhood socialization, or their legal sex. There is no such thing as a "real" gender - there is only the gender we experience ourselves as and the gender we perceive other to be. Julia Serano
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I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it’s hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine. To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write. . Leslie Feinberg
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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
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The scope of the transgender empire may be reaching its peak, as transcriticism is increasing at a fast pace both within activist feminism and from wives and regretters. There is an increasing groundswell of criticism of the concept and practice of transgenderism from a newly invigorated radical feminist movement. Moreover, the idea of transgenderism has become so vague and general that the category is in danger of being exploded. Sheila Jeffreys
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Male domination, and the low and stigmatised status of women, cause teenage girls to engage in punishment of their bodies through eating disorders and self-mutilation. There is increasing evidence that woman-hating Western cultures are toxic to girls and very harmful to their mental health. It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, that there seem to be some girls baling out and seeking to upgrade their status. Sheila Jeffreys
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All surgery and no makeup make Jack a dull girl. Brian Spellman
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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
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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
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Let's stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient. Kate Bornstein
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While railing against the manufactured prerequisites of womanhood or manhood, we need to avoid manufacturing our own prerequisites. The non-operative journey and the objection to it illustrate just one area in which we need to open our thinking to other journeys while expecting that others respect our own. - Mercedes Allen Kate Bornstein
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The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity Julia Serano
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To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender-let me say- you are not alone. You're struggle, for the end to violence and discrimination, is a shared struggle. Today, I stand with you. And I call upon all countries and people, to stand with you too. A historic shift is underway. We must tackle the violence, decriminalize consensual same sex relationships and end discrimination. We must educate the public. I call on this council and people of conscience to make this happen. The time has come. Ban KiMoon
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There's something very... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You've never changed sex, have you?' He shook his head. 'Or slept with a man?' Another shake. 'I thought so, ' Yay said. 'You're strange, Gurgeh.' She drained her glass. Iain Banks
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If your organization is not formally committed to a policy of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression or gender presentation in its employment practices, you should not expect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender-nonconforming, queer, and/or questioning patients and families to feel safe seeking out your services. Kimberly D. Acquaviva
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Rejecting your gay or transgender child won't make them straight. It will only mean you will lose them. Christina Engela
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While there is no shame in being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex - or even straight (but not narrow) - there is most certainly shame and dishonor in being a homophobe, a transphobe and a bigot. Christina Engela
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In the property division splitting couples go through, the allocation of friends must surely be the most painful. Christine Benvenuto
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The best way to avoid being confused about Bruce Jenner is get your head out of his bedroom and closet, and then think about all of the things you've been hiding and been miserable about. So what he made his announcement via media. Books, music, movies, business launches are announced in the same manner. Just focus on the feeling of finally disclosing something that enables you to be free and to live as authentically as possible. And then imagine what it's like to own your truth, tell it your way, thus taking away anyone else's ability to spin it their way or use it against you. If you can do any of the above, you will no longer be confused. Robin Caldwell
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If you are an LGBT+ person and you come out, you have to go through your knight’s quest to create ground for yourself, to create a space for yourself, to stand there and say, “I exist. I have no reason to feel guilt or shame. I am proud to exist, and while I’m not perfect, I deserve to exist in society just like anyone else.” This became my first big fight. While I consider myself to be fantastically boring, I realized that if I took on my own sexual identity and came out and just told people about it and tried to have a chat with them–tried to be offhand and casual about it–and tried to build our place in society and humanity, then that would be a good mission. This is where I exist in society. I am just this guy. I am transgender, and I exist. But that is just my sexuality. More important than that is that I perform comedy, I perform drama, I run marathons, and I’m an activist in politics. These are the things I do. How you self-identify with your sexuality matters not one wit. What you do in life–what you do to add to the human existence–that is what matters. That is the beautiful thing. . Eddie Izzard
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The most radical thing that any of us can do is to stop projecting our beliefs about gender onto other people's behaviors and bodies Julia Serano
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Consider that people will talk about the fact that I now "pass" as a woman, but nobody ever asks about how difficult it must have been for me to "pass" as a man before. Julia Serano
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Imagine learning at such a young age that your very appearance–your very identity–is enough to trigger such confusion and animosity. Imagine knowing that people will hate you for no reason other than you are who you are Thomas Beatie
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After accepting the bitter truth of society, I set myself out to lead a life for myself entirely. I realized that the poisonous tentacles of society does not spare anyone, especially people like us. Once I realized that, I became strong from within. Santosh Avvannavar
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I have heard an argument that transgender people oppress transsexual people because we are trying to tear down the categories of male and female. But isn't this the same reactionary argument used against transmen and transwomen by those who argue that any challenges to assigned birth sex threaten the categories of man and woman? Transgender people are not dismantling the categories of man and woman. We are opening up a world of possibilities in addition. Each of us has a right to our identities. To claim one group of downtrodden people is oppressing another by their self-identification is to swing your guns away from those who really do oppress us, and to aim them at those who are already under siege. Leslie Feinberg
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What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other's oppression. As our activist network grows into marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, we will hammer out language that demonstrates the sum total of our movement as well as its component communities. Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. This is a very early stage for trans peoples with such diverse histories and blends of cultures to form community. Perhaps we don't have to strive to be one community. In reality, there isn't one women's, or lesbian, gay, bi community. What is realistic is the goal to build a coalition between our many strong communities in order to form a movement capable of defending all our lives. . Leslie Feinberg
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Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, madam. And one can't be stingy with these things, because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed you are. - Agrado from "Todo Sobre Mi Madre Unknown
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Trauma or no, I would have been trans no matter what body I'd been born with. Tell the doctors that we exist for the health of humanity, which needs to find wholeness and belief in complexity. Girl in boy's body or boy inside a girl; call it fate or biology, will, or spiritual choice. But I was not born in the wrong body.- Scott Turner Schofield, "The Wrong Body Unknown
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Me? I had no dreams. No longings. Dreams only set you up for disappointment. Plus, you had to have a life to have dreams of a better life. Julie Anne Peters
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Nature chooses who will be transgender individuals don't choose this. Mercedes Ruehl