Quotes About Stigma

I have known female whores who spoke very bitterly of their calling. "If they don't like my face, they can put a cushion over it. I know it's not that they're interested in." But to the boys this profession never seemed shameful. It was their daytime occupations for which they felt the need to apologize. In some instances, these were lower class or humdrum or, worst of all, unfeminine. At least whoring was never that.

am alone. It is a choice I've made, yet it is also a choice made with few other options available. Beiruti society wasn't fond of divorced, childless women in those days. Still, I made my bed—a simple, comfortable, and adequate bed, I might add.

a saddening thought, she said, that when a group of women get together, far from advancing the cause of femininity, they end up pathologising it.

You, of all people, understand the burden of having to prove that you are good enough to exist, that you are worth all the grief your mother caused everyone. Bastard equals monster in our hearts' respective lexicons; that's why you always had such insight into it.

As a drag performer, people have traditionally put us into the category of 'pervert' or 'deviant' or things like that. So I've always been really careful not to be vulgar or grotesque with sexuality.

Too many kids think condoms are nasty and vulgar, instead of as something that can save your life.

My greatest vulnerability is that I'm not 'normal.' I'm not married, I don't have children. It's something I feel defensive about.

I don't think the very fact that I'm a woman makes me suddenly more vulnerable or more inherently used and abused.

People get stigmatised for their bodies and for their differences. Then those people become very vulnerable.

We took Big Pun, a 700-lb Spanish guy, one of the greatest rappers ever, and made him a sex symbol. Women would wait on line to kiss him.

People wait in line to see me, saying there's plenty of living to be done even if you have an HIV diagnosis. People say they are 10- or 15-year survivors and still moving forward.

I read an article somewhere that stated 1 in 4 American women will be considered clinically depressed in their lifetime. This should be more than a gold mine for pharmaceutical companies - it should be a wake-up call.

I will alway support anybody being vocal about their mental illness, how they're dealing with it, and how it affects them. And I'll always support people waking up and paying attention to that.

It's funny, because when you tell people you've stopped drinking, there's an automatic reaction. People ask, 'Was it a lifestyle choice or were you waking up in a skip?'

It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves.

At North Hollywood High School, I was shunned by everyone. I would sit down in the cafeteria, and students would get up from the table and walk away. They thought I was from the Mafia.

Now I walk around with my head down, trying to hide, thinking that everybody knows that I inflicted people with HIV, because that is all they are going to read.

I believed that old people never laughed. I thought they sighed a lot and groaned. They walked with sticks, and they didn't like children on bicycles or roller skates... or with big dogs.

I got a lot of very bad hate on social media from some people from my school. I think people thought I changed because they saw me on TV. They weren't close enough to know that I was still the same human being... When I walked at graduation, I got booed. It was kind of stupid.

People think I'm this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage.

I remember walking on the street, and they would call me a stupid lil' punk, little criminal. Thank God I haven't become a criminal like they said.

We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with their sweatpants dangling, however, with their hoodies on. And folks think that this is a show of power or a show of force. But I know, because I've been among those kids, it ultimately is fear.

I thought Christians were walking idiots.

Where I grew up, the one unmistakable sign of homosexuality was to betray some interest in your appearance.