Nevada Binnie Novel Quotes

Trans people are very often very funny. Jokes can be a defense mechanism, a trauma response; if you can make someone laugh before they remember that they hate people like you, you might get out of a 7-Eleven before they can hurt you.

When she was little, she was responsible for protecting everybody else from her own shit around her gender—responsible for making sure her parents didn’t have to have a weird kid. Of course, then they had a weird, sad kid anyway, right? Whatever.

I’m sorry, she always thinks, I learned to police myself pretty fiercely when I was a tiny little baby, internalizing social norms and trying to keep myself safe from them at the same time.

That stereotype about transsexuals being all wild and criminal and bold and outside the norm and, like, engendering in the townsfolk the courage to break free from the smothering constraints of conformity? That stereotype is about drag queens. Maria is transsexual and she is so meek she might disappear.

There is this dumb thing where trans women feel like we all have to prove that we’re totally trans as fuck and there’s no doubt in our minds that we’re Really, Truly Trans. It comes from the fact that you have to prove that you’re trans to psychologists and doctors: the burden is entirely on your own shoulders to prove that you’re Really Trans in order to get any treatment at all. Meaning hormones.

When you’ve learned to dissociate defensively around cis people, and you spend all of your time among them, and when they frequently make it clear that you are right not to feel safe around them, you can forget that it is even possible to let your guard down. That you don’t necessarily have to be alone to feel safe. That it is even possible to feel safe.

When critics do not find what they expect, they cannot imagine that the fault may lie in their expectations.

dramatic

Steph cried and for a minute Maria felt like she might not and she felt heartless and mean down to the bottom of her lungs, but then she cried too. Just a little. They hugged and Maria said something about figuring out logistics tomorrow but that she had to go get drunk right now. Steph laughed, which made Maria feel like probably one day they’d be friends. Dykes.

It means you need to take a lot of breaks, leave the store a lot, you know? Maria goes on her first walk at 9:45. She’s like, maybe pizza for breakfast?

She’s like Sigmund Freud: she can come up with a million examples to support whatever bullshit theory she wants to support.

it’s actually way easier just to humor these men who grew up watching movies where the girl doesn’t like the hero until he’s been persistent enough to make her like him. This is the grease that keeps the gears of the heteronormativity machine spinning, obviously, but it’s just easier to slip out of an awkward situation with an awkward guy than it is to call out the misogyny inherent in what he’s doing. It’s a tough spot to be in, but also, this is coming from an angry dyke who’s also trans and who, at one point, had society try to use her as a vessel for that kind of misogyny.

The internet at that time was this big, exciting place where you could anonymously spill your guts about gender and discomfort and heteronormativity and how weird male privilege felt and lots of other things, except back then she didn’t really have language for it so she just went like: everything sucks and I am totally sad.

meant,

whatever.

gender is stupid and annoying and I don’t want to talk about it any more ever.