Quotes from Leslie Feinberg

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.

Are you with women who only bleed monthly on their cycles?

Sometimes I feel like I'm choking to death on what I'm feeling. I need to talk and I don't even know how.

Oh, Ruth. I wish we had our own words to describe ourselves, to connect us." Ruth stood up and opened the broiler. "I don't need another label," she sighed. "I just am what I am. I call myself Ruth. My mother is Ruth Anne; my grandmother was Anne. That's who I am. That's where I come from." I shrugged. "I don't want another label either. I just wish we had words so pretty we'd go out of our way to say them out loud.

I learned that strength, like height, is measured by who you're standing next to.

I think girls and boys should be able to be any way they want to be without getting picked on.

More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: "Are you a man or a woman?

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Everybody's scared, but if you don't let your fears stop you, that's bravery.

Since I had no words to bring the woman I loved so much, I gave her all my tenderness.

Every day I saw others like me in this city—enough of us to populate our own town. But we only acknowledged each other with a furtive glance, fearful of calling attention to ourselves. Being alone in public was painful enough; two could find themselves smack in the center of an unbearable sideshow. We didn't seem to have any of our own places to gather in community, to immerse ourselves in our own ways and our own languages.

I kept yelling at them that you were a human being, that you mattered, and it was like they weren't even listening to me. I couldn't do anything to help you and I couldn't make them take care of you the way I wanted, you know?" I nodded. I did know. And now I knew that Duffy did too.

That's when I began passing as a man. Strange to be exiled from your own sex to borders that will never be home.

When I was really small I thought I'd do anything to change whatever was wrong with me. Now I didn't want to change, I just wanted people to stop being mad at me all the time.

It's a beauty one isn't born with, but must fight to construct at great sacrifice.

I wanted to thank you. If it wasn't for you, I'd never have known I had a right to be me.

I want to understand about change--I don't just want to be at the mercy of it. I feel like I'm waking up inside. I want to know about history. I have all this new information about people like me down through the ages, but I don't know anything about the ages.

The shades of gender in her voice were intricate, like mine.

I wondered how it would feel to be touched and not be afraid.

You made me ache and you liked that. So did I.

wishing I could do everything in my life once as practice, and then go back and do it again.

I put on lipstick and high heels and walk down the street arm in arm with you, Jess. This is my life, and I'm damn brave to love who I love. Don't try to take who I am away from me." My chin trembled, "Well, what do you think's being taken away from me? What the fuck am I going to do, Theresa? Tell me, what can I do? ...I don't want to die and I don't know how to live. I'm really afraid.

I live proudly in a body of my own design. I defend my right to be complex.

I didn't regret the decision to take hormones. I wouldn't have survived much longer without passing. And the surgery was a gift to myself, a coming home to my body. But I wanted more than to just barely exist, a stranger always trying not to get involved. I wanted to find out who I was, to define myself. Whoever I was, I wanted to deal with it, I wanted to live it again. I wanted to be able to explain my life, how the world looked from behind my eyes.