The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You Quotes

“One bright pansy popping through a sidewalk crack will get weeded or stepped on; it's not until twenty fabulous flowers bust through and the pavement is ruined anyway that someone decides maybe it isn't a sidewalk at all, but a flower garden. So please, for the love of gender--go bloom.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“So please, for the love of gender- go bloom. Or water someone else while they do.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“There are more locations than girl and boy, man and woman. Decamping from one does not have to mean climbing into another. There’s plenty of space in between, or beyond the bounds, or all along and across the plane or sphere or whatever of gender, and it is entirely okay to say, “I do not like being a girl, and so I shall be a boy.” But it must also be okay to say, “I do not like being a girl, so I shall set about changing what it means to be a girl,” and, yes, okay to say, “I do not like being a girl, and so I shan’t.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“I’m just saying: I have never really felt like a girl is not the same as I have always felt like a boy. I mention this because when I have these tortuous inner conversations about how I may yet need to change my body and whether (and in what way) I am prepared to invest myself in the destination model of transition, I have to keep reminding myself of this important thing.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“You should move toward whatever changes, whatever surgeries, whatever renovations or alterations or restorations will create you in the glory you deserve, oh yes you should. And you should do it with your usual style, and you should do it without shame, and when you’re healed up and ready we can go shopping for something fabulous to showcase the many wonders of you.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“But if I can’t go from the body I have to a body that I am certain would feel very right—right like having wings would be or even right like wearing spats would be—then I think, maybe not for me.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“Instead of wishing for the Field Guide, be glad to live in the beautiful chaos of each of us finding our way into our own gendered menu, our own identity, and our own name for it, which—if you will just love us while we do this complex and fragile part—we will kiss into your mouth with such gratitude when we’re through.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“And at the risk of answering the same question the same way over and over: it’s not a fucking binary. It would be easier for a lot of people if it were, but it just bloody well ain’t, and nothing any of us does can make it that way. Please take a deep breath. Or,”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“I honed my argumentation skills early and often, growing up in a family and a community that held friendly, even warm conversations at a decibel level that in other cultural contexts means the will is being rewritten as soon as the doors have been slammed.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

“Passing is one of the few words in the transgender lexicon that’s not a medical-legacy word. We did ever so much better with this one: it’s a racist-legacy word, a legacy of the time when Africans were kidnapped from their homeland to be enslaved in the Americas. If you’re not familiar with this, a hierarchy of race developed in which the lighter your skin was, the more attractive and intelligent you were considered, and someone quite light-skinned could sometimes pass for white and live in white society.”
― S. Bear Bergman, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You