Swara Bhaskar Quotes

I think once I was in high school - I had boyfriends and stuff like that, but I think when I was younger, I went through a period where I looked like a boy, and people thought I was a boy.

Hedi was and is still misspelled 'Heidi,' and my perception of genders ended up slightly out of focus from an early age.

I don't understand when you say I'm a man or I have a deep voice. I know I'm a female, so there's no question for me.

I grew up believing I sounded like a boy.

As a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl. Before you reach that age where your sexuality starts to display itself, kids can look very androgynous, and I guess I leaned more toward the feminine. All those things were very hard, growing up, because you're trying to create an identity, and you're feeling shameful about the one that you're making.

To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.

I always felt like the male from the time I was a child. There wasn't much feminine about me.

I see myself as quite feminine. But many people seem to think differently about that; sometimes people mistake me for a man. In Paris I often hear 'bonjour monsieur'.

When I was a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl.

For the longest time, I thought I was a boy. I really did. I wore boys' clothes, played tag football.

Gender dysphoria is never an easy thing to live with, mainly because people don't understand it.

Seeing myself as female every time I look in the mirror is painful in a way I will never be able to describe.

I was really sensitive because people would say they thought I was a boy or call me a boy and stuff like that. I always had my hair back and, like I said, baggy clothes. So it was kind of sad. I didn't know what to do about it, and I didn't know what I was doing wrong because I was just being me.

The thought of being a boy makes me cringe. I just couldn't do it.

When I was five, long before I understood what the word 'gender' meant, I would always tell my mother that I wished I were a girl.

I was very worried about being unattractive because I think I look quite masculine. Sometimes I feel more masculine than feminine and I don't like it.

I am happy being a man in a dress. Some people get confused and think I'm a trans woman, but I'm strict about the difference. What I do is performance, it's staged, it's glamour - it's not real life. But for trans people, being born in the wrong body - there's nothing glamorous or easy about that.

But puberty was... well, before puberty, at school, I didn't tell kids I was a transvestite 'cause I thought they might kill me with sticks, you know?

We all have a cross-gender character: Every woman has a man that they can play, and every man has a woman that they can play.

Being perceived as a guy is nothing new or complicated to me. It is what it is.

When I was very young, I wanted to be a girl. I was jealous that girls got to be princesses and wear skirts. It tormented me. When I was 6, I even heard that you could change your sex, and I was very intrigued until the moment I realized that if I changed into a girl, I would be an ugly girl, and this is the last thing I wanted to be.

I have a few girlfriends, but nearly all my friends are guys. I don't think I ever wore girl clothes. I wore baggy jeans, baggy T-shirts, sweaters, just to avoid the looks that everyone gives you when you're a young female in the world.

Being in drag for three months - I now have an idea of what women go through. At least maybe a little.

It's my view that gender is culturally formed, but it's also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation.

As a little kid, I was convinced that I was a guy.