The Transgender Manifesto Quotes

“If you’re in doubt as to whether or not a question is inappropriate, here’s a helpful tip. Ask yourself if you would feel comfortable asking that question to a cisgender person. Generally speaking we as a society don’t around asking people about their private parts. They’re called private for a reason.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“The rejection of your identity by your pastor or your parents is not a rejection of you, the person. Only you as the image someone else wants you to be. That image will never make you happy.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“The conservative ideology sees LGBT rights as an affront to the traditional way of life, for some reason. We are attacked as phonies, pretenders, even perverts, just for being who we are. There are people who wish for us to go back into the shadows, the closet, never to return.

Many of these people who wish to deny us our very legitimacy, who denounce us as mentally ill deviants, spend an hour each week paying homage to an ever-present, yet non-interventionist man in the sky. They go to courts across the land to defend their right to praise that uncorroborated deity at the expense of other people’s civil liberties. To them, we the living, the transgender people who walk the earth, are fake, but the man up there, He is real.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“Makeup can be used to express yourself as well. Those experiences should not be limited to women. Everyone should be free to be as colorful as they want to be.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“The people who claim that being transgender is a choice are right on one regard. Living freely as the person you were meant to be is, in fact, a choice. You can choose not to. The decision to transition reflect the time spent grappling with that difficult question:

Are you going to give yourself a real chance to be happy?”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“Terms such as "man bun," "man purse," "guyliner," "meggings," and the new "romp-him" (romper) have entered the American lexicon. These terms refer to new fashion trends involving men wearing garments or using grooming regiments once thought of as exclusive to women. The term metrosexual comes to mind. While they may be amusing to read, and certainly to say out loud, they are dangerous roadblocks preventing the collapse of the binary.

That notion might also make you laugh. Think about it. What purpose do these unnecessary labels serve, other than to single out that these stylistic choices go against the grain? Eyeliner is applied to people's eyelids. Leggings are worn by people who have legs. The gendered associations exist solely as social constructs. Men used to wear leggings all the time in the middle ages. Probably would have shopped at Sephora too, if there had been one at the faire.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“Coming out of the closet feels liberating because you no longer have to carry all that crap around with you, in your mind, wherever you go. This kind of language makes the closet sound like a horrible place, which it is. Unfortunately, for many people, it is also necessary to spend some quality time inside, if just to figure shit out in peace without the noise of the outside world.

The role of the closet has changed over the years. Coming out, or simply being out, is certainly easier in a more general sense given that society is, as a whole, more excepting of the LGBT community than it has been in the past. This does not change the fact that many LGBT youth have to stay in the closet for fear of the personal safety or that many people will still take punitive actions against LGBT people just for being who they are.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“Despite their frequent cries to the contrary, politicians have rarely demonstrated an ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. If they are focusing their time on bathroom bills against transgender people, chances are they’re not doing much else on the sexual assault prevention front. They shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that they care about the public.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto

“What is faith, if not an acceptance that there are things out there that cannot be explained?

You know what you know, because you've never lived a life without that truth. That you are different, that your gender did not compute with that label assigned at birth. It does not matter how large a percentage of the general population is perfectly fine with their identity. That does not change you, how you responded to the mechanisms that made you who you are.”
― Ian Thomas Malone, The Transgender Manifesto