Quotes from Julia Serano

The idea that "femininity is artificial" is also blatantly misogynistic. Just as woman is man's "other", so too is femininity masculinity's "other". Under such circumstances, negative connotations like "artificial", "contrived", and "frivolous" become built into our understanding of femininity - indeed, this is precisely what allows masculinity to always come off as "natural", "practical" and "uncomplicated".

And trans women and femmes share another important attribute: We are survivors. The rest of the world may assume we are weak and fragile because of our feminine inclinations, but in reality, living with other people's relentless misogynistic bullshit has made us tenacious bad-asses.

People often squabble over what defines a person as a woman or a man—whether it should be based on their chromosomes, assigned sex, genitals, or other factors—but such reductionist views deny our indisputably holistic gendered realities. For all of us, gender is first and foremost an individual experience, an amalgamation of our own unique combinations of gender inclinations, social interactions, body feelings, and lived experiences.

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It's telling that TV, film, and news producers tend not to be satisfied with merely showing trans women wearing feminine clothes and makeup. Rather, it is their intent to capture trans women in the act of putting on lipstick, dresses, and high heels, thereby giving the audience the impression that the trans woman's femaleness is an artificial mask or costume.

LAe ciscexuelLE projète sans distinction sa cissexualité sur les autres personnes, ce qui transforme la cissexualité en attribut humain considéré comme acquis. Il y a là une analogie évidente avec l'évidence hétérosexuelle.

En réalité, puisque si peu de personnes font examiner leurs chromosomes, on pourrait défendre l'idée que dans la grande majorité des cas, les genTEs ont un sexe génétique qui reste encore à déterminer.

I used to fear that embracing that identity [woman] would be tantamount to cramming myself into some predetermined box. Restricting my possibilities and potential. But now I realize that no matter who I act or what I do or say, I remain a woman-both in the eyes of the world and, more importantly, in the way that I experience myself. While I used to view the "woman" as limiting, I now find it both empowering and limitless.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." —Audre Lorde

However, the answer "Some people simply are transgender" doesn't seem to satisfy certain people, so they may feel compelled to seek out some kind of alternative explanation. Once again, this isn't the result of pure curiosity- after all, we don't actually understand why most people turn out to be cisgender, yet very few people ever inquire about that outcome!

When I tell someone that I used to be male, they are often dumbfounded at first, as if they have difficulty reconciling that someone who seems so naturally female to them could have once been something they consider to be so completely different. The fact that a single individual can be both female and male, or ugly and beautiful, at different points in their life challenges the commonly held belief that these classes are mutually exclusive and naturally distinct from one another.

In other words, sexualization is a more general tactic to delegitimize and dehumanize people. This helps to explain why there is often so much shame, reluctance, and secrecy surrounding discussions of sexuality, as even broaching the subject can lead a person to become stigmatized.