Steve Erickson Quotes

I believe in assigned sex but not necessarily gender. Gender is a learned construct that is detrimental to both sexes.

We all live in a culture that is continually isolating feminine and masculine aspects, even when they're not related to people.

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.

Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.

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'.

Gender is a way to hide from the simple truth we all tell: 'Hey, I'm here, I have a body.'

I don't have the panic I used to have, meeting people who are androgynous, but when you meet someone whose identity is unclear, that throws your own identity into flux because the way we treat each other is very gendered.

As you get older it's more confusing. Suddenly, there's more pressure to fit in to your assigned gender.

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

I think that people are most comfortable when the world is orderly. I think there's the sense that when you begin questioning basic distinctions, such as the distinction between being male and being female, it represents a threat to the social order.

I don't think gender even exists.

I never get to forget who I am, my gender identity.

I feel like so many people invalidate the experience of transgender girls thinking that they aren't regular girls, but I am a normal girl.

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 think our society has sort of built this gender binary, and the way we've said it exists does not really exist in nature.

If you don't know somebody, whether you're inquiring into their sex or their gender, it's invasive.

Gender and sex are about rules which we have invented, but we are animals; we belong to nature.

I'm totally fine with myself. It's the other people I run into out there who are so hung up on gender. The way it trips them up is their problem, not mine.

Gender doesn't exist in my book.

I never feel confined by gender, by labels, by expectations, by stereotypes. I'm free to be myself.

We need to overcome the stereotype that genders aren't fluid.

Sex is biological, but gender is mental.

I wish everything was gender neutral. I wish we weren't separated by boundaries like pink and blue and little things like that. I wish we could choose how we express ourselves without hate.

Trans women, and women in general, have so many constraints placed on our bodies. As women, we are told not to show our bodies, and as trans people, we've been told not to exist.

You have your assigned sex but gender is more of a construct and I think one that is incredibly disillusioning and I think when we buy into those constructs then we start to maybe, unbeknownst to ourselves, cause real damage to our psyches.