Ezra Furman Quotes

I know about homophobia in the music industry - not just in hip-hop. Obviously, we're dealing with homophobia in hip-hop; we're dealing with homophobia in the black community.

The marginalization of African-Americans within their own community based on sexuality is a construct that is more complex than the idea that 'blacks just hate gays.'

No one knew I was gay growing up but I was bullied. I was a cheerleader, fairly popular and considered straight.

Homophobia is manufactured in high schools, so it's probably useful to keep in mind that it really does bother people.

Homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, they're all rooted in the same prejudice: the belief that one perception at birth - the sex we are assigned - should dictate who we are, who we love, how we act, and what we do.

There's still a great deal of bias about homosexuality.

Why are some people bullied? Because they are different. How? It doesn't matter.

These awful middle-class queens - which is what the gay movement has become - are so tiresome. It's all Abercrombie & Fitch and strollers.

When I was running for speaker, people would go out of their way to point out why I wasn't going to win: 'You're a woman, you're too liberal, you're gay, you're from the West Side of Manhattan,' which in that context was an insult.

Being gay immediately placed me outside the values of the society I was growing up in. Apartheid was a very patriarchal system, so its assumptions seemed foreign to me from the outset. I've always had the advantage of alienation.

All my life, the naysayers have told me that I can't win because I'm a progressive... because I'm a woman... even because I'm a lesbian.

Gingers get a bad rep. They get teased at school. So we should feel sorry for them.

I've had friends of mine say, like, they're tired of 'gayface,' and I was like, 'What's gayface?' They were like, 'It's the gay version of blackface: like, come in and be more effeminate.'

Men continue to misinterpret the second-rate status of women as implying a privileged status for themselves; heterosexuals think the same way about homosexuals; gentiles about Jews; whites about blacks; haves about have-nots.

I always think that there's a weight of prejudice from the past that gay people perhaps carry around with them. Even if it doesn't exist so much around them, they still have a feeling of being excluded, and perceived prejudice is almost as unsettling as actual prejudice.

It doesn't bother me or Curtis being questioned about our sexuality and it probably happens more because we're dancers. That stereotype is disappearing, but people always made ignorant, short-sighted comments when we were growing up.

There's entrenched homophobia behind the scenes at all levels of the music industry.

Whenever you tell a group of people that they can't use bathrooms, or they can't access spaces that other people use, that is dehumanizing. It is discriminatory, and it reinforces the stigma and the prejudices that the transgender community already faces.

I got rid of my teeth at a young age because I'm straight. Teeth are for gay people. That's why fairies come and get them.

When you're young and queer and closeted, you can end up in this place where you regard your straight peers as the enemy.

I think artists are scared to have same-gendered pronouns in their writing, and I don't think it's because they're scared to be out, because gay artists are visible, but they don't want to alienate an audience.

There are different ways that kids who are gay take on the rejection and alienation they feel. The way I dealt with it was to say, 'You know what? You're imposing judgments on me and condemnations, but I don't accept them. I'm going to instead turn the light on you and see what your flaws are and impose the same judgmental standards on you.'

There's nothing wrong with being gay, but I'm not.

Being gay and being a woman has one big thing in common, which is that we both become invisible after the age of 42. Who wants a gay 50-year-old? No one, let me tell you.

I was the first South Asian female to do comedy videos on YouTube. But at the same time, all races face their barriers, and I've learned through YouTube, if it's not race, it will be sexism, if it's not sexism, it will be homophobia. It will always be something, and all voices should be heard.