Transitional Quotes

“We all transition. It's what binds us, not what separates us. Be it through moving from childhood into adolescence, our sexuality, our gender, in our relationship with love, our racial identity or individual purpose, every aspect of our lives is in transition; and if we can apply transitional thinking to our lives, we can begin to deconstruct both the internal barriers within ourselves and the external barriers between each other.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition

“You can't run away from yourself. The destination will always be you. I only stopped running away when I made myself into the home I no longer wanted to run away from. I wish I'd come to that realisation sooner.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition

“Being conscious of our trauma, and recognising how it unavoidably manifests itself within our approach to romantic and platonic relations, skies is to strategise our connections. It helps us to it helps us to recognise patterns, set boundaries, take heed of red flags and ultimately aim higher.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition

“Everything is an attempt to flee if you can't love who you are.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition

“I’ve come to realise that happiness cannot remain a goal situated at a destination. It can’t be rooted in ‘if only’; if only I move to this city, if only I get this surgery, if only I meet this partner, if only I achieve this accolade, if only, if only, if only – there will always be another if only once we realise that the previous one didn’t fix what we are running from – ourselves. Happiness isn’t over there, it’s in the here and now. It has to be now, and we are the source.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“It’s twice the work when you have to do your job plus having to talk about everything this represents. My cisgender peers manage to get the same types of jobs as me without having to lead discussions about their identity with every job they book. We’ve established that cisgender women don’t want to have to talk about being women all the time, so why should we? But it seems that we are often still not invited into these spaces without our difference being harnessed as a selling point. These conversations are necessary but I’m beginning to despair as to when or whether we’re ever going to get past this. Are minorities only going to be included as an act of representation or can we move this needle forward to actual inclusion?”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“I think things like ‘cancel culture’, call-out culture and pile-ons are sometimes necessary to draw attention to things. But I don’t believe this is going to be enough for change. Social media companies aren’t built to overthrow systemic oppression; they uphold it within the very functioning of their platforms. In addition to this, billionaires are not the people who are about to hand us the tools to overthrow power structures that they benefit from. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and ByteDance are not about to liberate us. The algorithmic functioning of social media companies simply isn’t built for marginalised people because at large they are not coded by people with marginalised experiences.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“If I had taken the initiative to seek out information about the LGBT rights movement, I would have found that it was a Black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson, a Latinx trans woman, Sylvia Rivera, and a butch lesbian, Stormé DeLarverie, who were the catalysts of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, which led to the first ever Pride march, which birthed the Gay Rights Movement, which became the LGBT movement. But I didn’t, largely because I assumed that, much like the majority of the history that we are taught in the British academic syllabus, it was cisgender, white, gay men that initiated that movement.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“their book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, Ture and Hamilton discuss the difference between individual instances of racism, which are often overt, and racism that exists as part of a system, which is often covert, and less recognisable should you be white yourself. Ture and Hamilton state that institutional racism ‘exists in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than individual racism’. While the functioning of systemic racism may be less conspicuous than individualised racism, it is just as dangerous, if not more so.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“Being conscious of our trauma, and recognising how it unavoidably manifests itself within our approach to romantic and platonic relations, allows us to strategise our connections. It helps us to recognise patterns, set boundaries, take heed of red flags and ultimately aim higher.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“It’s one thing knowing about the importance of self-love. It’s another thing feeling, owning and exercising it after an adolescence where society made you feel that you didn’t deserve to be loved. It’s easier to believe that one day someone is going to miraculously appear, sweep you off your feet and make everything better, than it is to see yourself as your own hero. But the easier strategy for coping with our trauma doesn’t always make for the most effective solution, when the reality is that nobody can heal your trauma except you.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“Drag helped me to combat my anxiety and social awkwardness. It brought a joy to my life that allowed me to feel at home in my body. It changed how I saw myself. I went from being largely mirror-evasive to feeling affirmed, empowered, almost as if I had seen myself for the first time. It gave me the confidence to do uncomfortable things, like eventually calling my father to talk to him about my love life and my sexuality – something I had long been avoiding. His response was masked disappointment and awkwardness, but I felt the relief of laying claim to myself again, of not hiding parts of my life as if they were too shameful to mention.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“A fact that isn’t made clear often enough is that sex is what you do and sexuality is what you feel. You can have a feeling without having performed an act. You can be a child and not sexually active and still be queer; you can be celibate and still be queer; you can be in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex and still be queer. You can have sex with someone of the same sex and not be gay, and you can have sex with the opposite sex and not be straight. The majority, in this case the alleged majority, has controlled society for hundreds of years by portraying any sexual difference as perversion to be held at bay. If heterosexuality is to be upheld as the norm, then homosexuality will be portrayed as a perverted sexual urge, reduced to an act, with the suggestion of paedophilia and other predatory behaviors often thrown into the mix.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“We can only become true allies to each other when we are willing to acknowledge the privilege that we move through the world with and the potential that it holds to do harm to others or to allow harm to continue.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“But if you don’t seek out reality and truth about the way the world is, all you’re left with is ideology and indoctrination about how those in power want the world to be.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community

“The human subconscious is the attic of the soul, a storage room for inconvenient truths, but it’s also probably the place in our minds that understands our need and desire to continually transition in our lives. All a lot of us want to do is adjust parts of ourselves to feel comfortable living our lives, not to exist with one foot in the attic and the other in the living room. It is crucial that every door of every room in our soul stays open. It is crucial that light and air runs throughout our house in order to keep a healthy, happy home for our soul and our psyche to live in.”
― Munroe Bergdorf, Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition – The Ground-Breaking Guide to Identity, Differences, and Community