Transman Quotes

Being transgender is who you are, and the pain is what the outside does to you. The pain is what happens when you and the world go at each other's throats.

I'm done begging for a scrap of respect-I am done with those who enact suffering, and I am done with the sons of bitches who stand back and let it happen.

I finally said, "Let's put it this way: I'd rather lose you than stop my shots.""You mean that chemical is more important to you than I am?""No, I am more important to me than you are.

Bein transgender is who you are, and the pain is what the outside does to you. The pain is what happens when you and the world go at each other's throats.

A big fear of mine is that I will die before the gender professionals acknowledge that someone like me exists, and then I really won't exist to prove them wrong.

My opened shirt blew in the wind—The sun tanning my stomach—Feeling lean and alive and beautiful—Saying I am a man—Saying I love men.

It really hasn't hit me that I am about to die. I see the grief around me, but inside I feel serene and a certain kind of peace. My whole life I've wanted to be a gay man and it's kind of an honor to die from the gay men's disease.

I don't even know if there was anyone that's ever felt as I do.. how they coped, what they did...how do I find out what someone like me does?

In a lot of ways I think the problem is I spend too much time seeing myself though other people's eyes and not really being in my body and enjoying myself and relaxing in my image.

It's not that I've changed, but that everyone else has changed toward me, just because they think I'm male now. And I feel less self-conscious because of that. I haven't changed inside at all.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have stated, “[F]emale- to-male transsexuals appear to be individuals who are fundamentally homophilic but cannot consciously accept their sexual orientation” (Fagan, Schmidt, and Wise, 1994). I can see it now: in a clinical setting, a transman desperate to be allowed to transition tries to express his “normal” sexual- ity by asserting his attraction to women and denying that he is a lesbian. Yes, he’s telling the truth from the perspective of his gender identity. But what the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-per- ception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

What the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-per- ception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

What the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-perception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

I was trying to make life easy for myself, but I have a mouth too hard for kisses, and arms too rough for embraces. One could easily make a fool of me in any game played under the covers, for I'm a young man, not a girl.

Binders have become my protective layer, my second skin, my shield that makes me feel safe and more myself.

What the doctors hear is filtered through their own belief that the body tells us who we are, and this transman in front of them wants to change his body so he can change the abhorrent nature of his lesbian sexuality. These clinicians don’t understand that it isn’t necessarily his sexuality that is abhorrent to him. Even if this patient fell in love with a man, it wouldn’t necessarily change his relationship to his own body: in his own self-perception he might then be homosexual after all, even if his body were still female and the body of his partner were male. That wouldn’t necessarily change his need to transition.

Is sex reassignment surgery moral/right? ''If a patient came to you and wanted you to remove his normal left eye or his right hand, would you do that, just because he asked you to?'' A patient who comes in with such a request is, on the face of it, acutely psychotic. Transsexuals are not psychotic. Further, transsexuals do not want a useful organ removed, reducing their efficiency; but they want a more or less (to them) useless sexual equipment altered so that a more or less useful (to them) equipment will result.

I don't even know if there was anyone that's ever felt as I do.. how they coped, what they did...how do I find out what someone like me does?

Sometimes I worry (and I know I worry too much, too seriously) that I will have the same self-doubts and uneasiness as a man as I have a woman. I worry that I will fail to find the happiness I think I will. But as I wash myself and prepare for this surgery, when I buy my new shirts and look at my breasts and think they are sexy (!), I know I'll come out of this a better person.

Why would you want to be one of them?" she says. ”How could you live with yourself?" I've asked myself that so many times. How could I ever want to be a part of the section of humanity responsible for so much of my suffering? In what ways haven't men hurt me? But then again—in what ways haven't women? In what ways hasn't everyone? I say, "I don't believe in original sin." Mary looks at me askance, frowning. “What they've done isn't my burden to bear. It's theirs.