45 Quotes by Leslie Feinberg

The shades of gender in her voice were intricate, like mine.

That’s when I began passing as a man. Strange to be exiled from your own sex to borders that will never be home.

When I was really small I thought I’d do anything to change whatever was wrong with me. Now I didn’t want to change, I just wanted people to stop being mad at me all the time.

All the girls and women looked pretty much the same, so did all the boys and men. I couldn't find myself among the girls. I had never seen any adult woman who looked like I thought I would when I grew up. There were no women on television like the small woman reflected in this mirror, none on the streets. I knew. I was always searching.

Since I had no words to bring the woman I loved so much, I gave her all my tenderness.

I've been going to the library, looking up our history. There's a ton of it in anthropology books, a ton of it, Ruth. We haven't always been hated. Why didn't we grow up knowing that?

From that moment on I was her butch and she was my femme.

I live proudly in a body of my own design. I defend my right to be complex.

Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.