It is always brave to insist on undergoing transformations that feel necessary and right even when there are so many obstructions to doing so, including people and institutions who seek to pathologize or criminalize such important acts of self-definition. I know that for some feels less brave than necessary, but we all have to defend those necessities that allow us to live and breathe in the way that feels right to us. Surgical intervention can be precisely what a trans person needs – it is also not always what a trans person needs.

As we interpret ourselves differently, we also live ourselves differently.

Bound to seek recognition of its own existence in categories, terms, and names that are not of its own making, the subject seeks the sign of its own existence outside itself, in a discourse that is at once dominant and indifferent. Social categories signify subordination and existence at once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination.

All of those who inhabit the world have a right to be here by virtue of their being here at all. To be here means you have a right to be here.

"Gender trouble" is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done.

Every taxi driver I have ever spoken to has a theory of gender.

There is a rather huge ethical difference between electing surgery and being faced with transphobic condemnation and diagnoses. I would say that the greatest risk of mutilation that trans people have comes directly from transphobia.