13 Quotes by Hanne Blank

Kertbeny coined 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual' as a pair on purpose: having two marked categories instead of only one generates a certain amount of equality, which was precisely his point. The paired words suggest that both 'homo' and 'hetero' are marked categories whose specialization sets them off from the unmarked human universal, the undifferentiated 'sexual'.

The models we have, and the standards we are expected to maintain, come to us via heterosexuality as a normative state. Heterosexuality--whatever the current version of that concept happens to be--is unremarkable because it is the standard by which everything else is measured. That is heterosexual privilege.

(In actuality there are no such things as "male" or "female" hormones. Hormones have no sex of their own, and all types of sex hormones are present in all human beings in varying amounts.)

We don't just want what we want because we want it; we want what we want because that's what we've learned to want.

Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded consumer of popular media did not bar one from also enjoying being manipulated by it.

There is no wrong way to have a body.

Real women are fat. And thin. And neither. And both. And otherwise.

You have the right to not have to constantly manage how you look for other people’s sake. You aren’t here to decorate the world for other people. You’re here to live in it for yourself, no matter what that looks like.

We don’t just want what we want because we want it; we want what we want because that’s what we’ve learned to want.