Quotes About Identity

Amelia thought the word "boyfriend" sounded ridiculous when it was applied to a forty-five-year-old woman. When it was applied to herself.

Terence Smith. Graham's golem, formed from the slime at the bottom of a pond of lowlifes somewhere in the Midlands.

You couldn't necessarily judge a woman by the man she slept with. (Or could you?) Eva

He was Irish, which always helped. A man with an Irish accent could sound wise and poetic and interesting even when he wasn't.

When he stepped off the train in Waverley Station yesterday, he had been expecting the 50 percent of his genes that were Scottish to recognize their heritage. He thought perhaps he would discover an emotional link with a past he'd never known, walk down a street and the faces would feel familiar, turn a corner or climb a stair and there would be an epiphany of sorts, but in fact Edinburgh felt more foreign to him than Paris did.

She thought of Dr Kellet and Pindar. Become such as you are, having learned what that is. She knew what that was now. She was Ursula Beresford Todd and she was a witness. She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing the air like long-lost souls. This is love, Ursula thought. And the practice of it makes it perfect.

A woman in her sixth decade, dressed in everyday drab, is more invisible than a librarian.

But then, what constituted real? Wasn't everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?

You can try things on if you want," Izzie said carelessly. "Although you're rather small compared to me. Jolie et petite." Ursula declined, fearing enchantment. They were the kind of clothes that might turn you into someone else.

I, of course, am considered mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Home... wasn't Egerton Gardens, wasn't even Fox Corner. Home was an idea, and like Arcadia it was lost in the past.

The father washes his hands of his son, so the boy is forced to set out alone to try and find fear, hoping that by doing so he'll fit in, that finally he'll belong. That maybe once he can shudder, he'll be able to go home. That's a line that always got me, that part about the shudder and going home.

Those times when I couldn't stand what I was, and I didn't know how I could possibly be something else.

In this struggle for our freedom of expression, there comes a point when this gender system reveals itself to be not only repressive but silly. When we begin to see how ridiculous it is, we can try begin to dismantle it.

As an exercise, can you recall the last time you saw someone whose gender was ambiguous? Was this person attractive to you? And if you knew they called themselves neither a man nor a woman, what would it make you if you're attracted to that person? And if you were to kiss? Make love? What would you be?

Are you breaking some either/or cultural law, just by being who you are? If so, you're not alone.

It doesn't really matter what a person decides to do, or how radically a person plays with gender. What matters, I think, is how aware a person is of the options.

Drag queen is a gender like no other, and with practice I'd learned to rise to it.

I remember one Fourth of July evening in Philadelphia, about a year after my surgery. I was walking home arm in arm with Lisa, my lover at the time, after the fireworks display. We were leaning in to one another, walking like lovers walk. Coming towards us was a family of five: mom, dad, and three teenage boys. Look it's a coupla faggots, said one of the boys. Nah, it's two girls, said another. That's enough outa you, bellowed the father, one of 'em's got to be a man. This is America!

One answer to the question Who is a transsexual? might well be Anyone who admits it. A more political answer might, Anyone whose performance of gender calls into question the construct of gender itself.

If we buy into categories of sexual orientation based solely on gender--heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual-- we're cheating ourselves of a searching examination of our real sexual preferences.

Personally, I think no question containing either/or deserves a serious answer, and that includes the question of gender.

Our spirits are full of possibilities, yet we tie ourselves down to socially-prescribed names and categories so we're acceptable to more people. We take on identities that no one has to think about, and that's probably how we become and why we remain men and women.

It doesn't really matter what a person decides to do, or how radically a person plays with gender. What matters, I think, is how aware a person is of the options. How sad for a person to be missing out on some expression of identity, just for now knowing there are options.