Caster Semenya Quotes

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

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.

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 grew up believing I sounded like a boy.

My life isn't really that different from a biological female.

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

I wanted to show a normal young girl whose only difference was that she behaved in the way a boy might, without any sense of guilt on a moral or sexual level.

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.

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.

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.

When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other.

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.'

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

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

I was a tomboy right from the time I was a kid and loved to be like that. I'd hate all the girlie things. Well my best friends as a kid have been boys. I get along best with the opposite sex. I guess that's the case with most people though!

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've given up trying to convince the world about the authenticity of my femininity.

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

I have always fought against being gender specific. I just don't like being identified as female: I'm a person.

I don't know what I am if I'm not a woman.

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.

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.