Transphobia Quotes

Even if, personally, I'm in a place of contentment or solidity, I feel like it's hard not to look out into American culture and see vast inequity, widespread institutionalized violence and racism and transphobia and environmental destruction. It's hard to be in this world and feel a sense of innate satisfaction at all. There's plenty of things to feel unsettled about. ~ Carrie Brownstein

I couldn't blame him for not believing me because it wasn't exactly true. The truth is that you /do/ care. Of course you do. And it hurts to hear people say those things about you. But the hurt changes, over time. At first, it's sharp and hot, like a fiery dagger stabbing you in the heart, but when you've heard the same insults over and over and over, the pain changes. It becomes a dull, throbbing ache -- like a toothache. A sort of background pain that you can ignore for a few minutes at a time, except when you're lying in bed at night, trying to sleep. That's when it really gets to you. ~ Cat Clarke

Facing sexism and racism and classism and transphobia, there are ways to choose to act in those situations, and there shouldn't be a prescriptive list of things that you have to say. ~ Kathleen Hanna

I think there are so many children being brought up in some form of violence, be it violence of poverty or sexism or racism or homophobia or transphobia. That violence takes a life to transform or overcome. I don't think people should be spending their lives dealing with that. I think people should be thriving, playing, creating, evolving. ~ Eve Ensler

I watched those women get eaten alive. And as a result of my witnessing that at a super fucking vulnerable moment for me, I internalized the message that a trans lesbian is just not an okay thing to be if you wanna be tolerated or respected by anybody other than a handful of communists. So I began my transition with essentially no role model of a widely respected and admired trans lesbian. And it doesn't help that most forms of transphobia are harsher on gay trans women than they are on straight trans women. Like take this trope that trans women are men who transition to creep on women in bathrooms. In response to that, it feels really good to be able to say, I'm not even attracted to women. I'm just a petite heterosexual biogirl. I'm surely not some kind of six foot monster who likes women. Ugh, shame! Shame! It does make me feel like a monster sometimes, like a mutant that has no place in society. And this shame has actually made it more difficult for me to accept that I'm a gay woman, than it was for me to come out as trans in the first place. It's like I made a kind of subconscious bargain where I traded my sexual orientation for my gender identity. So I finally transitioned only to spend the next couple years living with a different kind of denial. And that denial got pretty deep and pretty dark.

This is painful and incriminating to admit, but not all of my shame came from external bigotry. Some of it came from my own judgment and disgust toward things I saw ~ Natalie Wynn

Hate was such a waste of human resources. So little was accomplished with hate, so much more with love. ~ Haley Walsh

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

Zoologists have reckoned there are up to at least 750 species of animal that have been observed exhibiting same-sex behaviour, or gender role transformation (which is very common in a wide range of fauna). There is only one species on earth, however, which has exhibited homophobia or transphobia. And that is the species homo sapiens sapiens. Us. So let's not allow the foolish, ignorant or bigoted ever to use words like "natural." ~ Stephen Fry

Internet trolling wasn't just a symptom, it was a canary. Trolls tested the boundaries of how far society would allow racism, misogyny, and transphobia to be normalized. Would anyone do anything? Would anyone take action? Would anyone powerful take this seriously? The answer turned out to be no. Those of us on the receiving end begged for help, and were told to grow a thicker skin, because the Internet "isn't real life." Until, surprise, the Internet became president, and we as a society were so inured to hate speech - our boundaries had been so thoroughly obliterated and "political correctness" so stigmatized - that we had no defense. There ~ Lindy West

The culture were live in ripples through our daily lives, sending messages about what is considered "normal" and healthy by society. ~ Lee Harrington

If we want masculinity to be different, we must confront and tackle the baseline instead of longing for exceptions. Loving your mother, holding a door open for a woman, being a good listener, or even being a feminist doesn't make a man an exception. Experiencing oppression - including racism, homophobia, and transphobia - doesn't make a man an exception. If we are invested in perpetuating and glorifying the myth of the "good man," we are also complicit in overlooking, if not permitting, the reprehensible behaviour of the "typical man. ~ Vivek Shraya

Claiming to be silenced amplifies and circulates reactionary forms of speech by generating outrage. And this manoeuvre works not because reactionary feminists are speaking truth to power and being accused of transphobia, but because they are speaking for power by expressing transphobia. ~ Alison Phipps

The Olympics are too powerful. I hate sports - they generate so much nationalism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, economic exploitation, displacement of communities to build worthless bankrupt stadiums. ~ Terre Thaemlitz

Trans-exclusionary and anti-sex-work feminism amplify the mainstream movement's desire for power and authority, and pursue it by policing the borders of feminism and womanhood. The mainstream preoccupation with threat becomes an overt 'us and them' mentality, and the necropolitical desire for annihilation is deliberately turned on more marginalised people. ~ Alison Phipps

Until I really accepted this about myself and got over any of my own transphobia that I had, I really felt like I wouldn't be accepted. I thought I would ruin my life. ~ Chaz Bono