Quotes About Stigma

I mean, where I come from, 'communism' is not a terrible word.

A word, for example, that is negative, pejorative, and has caused more pain and suffering is 'illegitimate.' But every person has a mother and father. It is another way we let society hurt others.

Let's just start with the word 'diva.' It is obviously a sexist slight - a term that is only applied to women, almost always in a derogatory way. It's usually applied to women who are viewed as overly ambitious. It is applied to demanding women, to women who follow their own path.

People think, 'Oh, he's a black quarterback, he must be dual-threat.' People throw around that word all the time. It's lazy.

We didn't exist. Ronald Reagan didn't say the word 'AIDS' until 1987. I've tried desperately to get a meeting in the White House; Gay Men's Health Crisis is already an established organization. I have a certain presence.

I've always thought of fat as just a descriptive word.

Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

Coming out as nonbinary was a response to a lot of criticism I got when it leaked that I'd be playing a nonbinary character on 'Steven Universe.' I never really had the words like nonbinary or gender fluid or gender nonconforming until after 'Drag Race' and that's when I first started identifying publicly as nonbinary.

I think it's true for men and for women, if you are even remotely attractive, people will assume you're just another pretty face and you don't have the work ethic or the talent to put in the time to flesh out a career.

If you're a fat person - and especially if you're a woman - at all stages of your life you'll get abuse for it, so you have to work out a way of dealing with it. The best way is to be humorous about it - that defuses any tension.

I'm not your typical quarterback. I don't like when people say, 'Quarterbacks aren't supposed to run,' or, 'Quarterbacks aren't supposed to work out a certain way.'

There exist thousands of Americans who have AIDS-defining diseases but are HIV negative.

For thousands of years, there have been lies about being gay or not being gay. If you know they're lies, you're free.

People are threatened by female sexuality.

I'm just a receiver. I don't want to be labeled as a deep-threat guy, which is always going to happen because I'm always going to be able to run past people until I'm slow. I watch some guys who are very good at being deep threats, but it's like people don't respect them doing anything else.

I can't be the only person in the world to have three different husbands, and yet those relationships are never talked about.

It's very limited what women who look like me can do on television. You don't often see 'my type' on television unless she's a sidekick - certainly not a three-dimensional series regular who is pertinent to the plot.

Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The problem with writing a book about bulimia is that whenever you go to the washroom, people think you're throwing up.

I know that the classical world has resisted film composers throwing their hat into the classical concert music ring. And you know I don't think that's totally without justification. I think sometimes it seems to me there is a built in automatic prejudice against the whole idea of it. And it's very difficult to overcome that stigma.

Everybody thinks I'm a thug or something like that.

Everybody points their finger at me and says that I'm the crazy guy and this thug.

A lot of people think I'm just an athletic thug.

You can so easily be dismissed as a thug or hysterical if you're a woman if you don't keep your rage in check.