Caster Semenya Quotes

I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying that I would wake up the next day and be a girl, to be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me. I remember looking into the mirror struggling to say just two words, 'I'm transgender.'

You don't go out and change your gender for a television show, O.K.? It ain't happening. I don't care who you are.

I thought, transgender people are much worse off than I am. That's why they're willing to risk everything to be who they are. But the older I got, the harder it got to stay in my body.

I woke up one morning with this song in my head, and the opening line of the song is, 'My name was Richard Nixon, only now I'm a girl.'

It's actually one of the hardest things for trans people, is to go to the bathroom.

Number one, I don't understand a transgender. I don't understand. Is it a guy dressed up like a girl, or a girl dressed up like a guy?

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.

If someone asks about sexual reassignment surgery, you are supposed to say, 'Why are we talking about that?' But I am a post-op transsexual. And I am a reporter. If you can explain and talk about it, you demystify it. And if you demystify it, it's not an issue.

There's power in naming yourself, in proclaiming to the world that this is who you are. Wielding this power is often a difficult step for many transgender people because it's also a very visible one.

The way I see things is that, I think that transgender people are super brave. If you're a female to male, male to female, if you're that brave to take control of your own body and make it however you want it to be, more power to you.

I'm very happy with myself and I think - I always say that I think that if you feel like you're not in the right body, then by all means get to where you want to be.

Growing up, my experience with transsexualism was nothing but shame. It was something very hidden, and dealt with very privately.

My parents started questioning me about whether or not I was transgender - whether or not I was trying to be a woman. It was a big argument.

They are allowing young kids in primary school to be able to have the permission to change their gender if they want by taking away the permission of the parents. They are trying to take control, as a government, to make those decisions for young kids who are basically 16 years old, or young.

I am transgender. I knew that I was for as long as I can remember.

The problem with the spectrum that is trans-ness and where people like Caitlyn Jenner lie, transitioning and being trans is more than a physical thing. Transition is a process.

The weirdest thing I've seen is someone who was a male, and he changed one half of his face to be female.

We didn't have anyone to tell us that what was going on with me was alright. There was no information about transgender people when we started our journey, but we managed to make it through because of the tremendous amount of love that our family had.

Transgender people really are misunderstood.

For me, having a gender identity that was different from my sex assigned at birth and that wasn't seen by society felt like a constant feeling of homesickness - that unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach.

I do think that that would be fair, but I can understand that people would be a little apprehensive to take that road because there is a tradition of natural-born women, but today where there are so many surgeries and so many people out there who have a need to change for a happier life, I do accept that because I believe it’s a free country.

I reject totally the characterization of a transwoman as a mutilated man. First, that formulation presumes that men born into that sex assignment are not mutilated. Second, it once again sets up the feminist as the prosecutor of trans people. If there is any mutilation going on in this scene, it is being done by the feminist police force who rejects the lived embodiment of transwomen. That very accusation is a form of "mutilation" as is all transphobic discourse such as these.

I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.

I wonder, would I have transitioned from female to male if I was 30 years younger? Possibly. But if I had been born even 30 years later, because it seems like the technology will only get better, it seems like one might not ever need to settle down at all.