Mercedes Ruehl Quotes

Nature chooses who will be transgender; individuals don't choose this.

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

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.

Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it.

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.

There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they're mismatched. That's all it is. It's not complicated, it's not a neurosis. It's a mix-up. It's a birth defect, like a cleft palate.

Society doesn't tell you that you can be trans.

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?

I've always been Sarah. My gender identity has always existed. I've always been a woman. Gay people aren't straight before they come out as gay, and transgender people are who they are before they come out and transition.

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.'

I was bought up as a boy. I don't blame my parents in the slightest since it was just an unfortunate timing in many ways, in other ways it was very fortunate. If I'd been born 20 years earlier, there wouldn't have been the surgical techniques to correct the deformity and by the time I was of an age, they did exist. I was very lucky.

I consider myself a woman. I happen to fall into the transgender category, but I rather describe myself as a woman first.

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.

When I first started out modelling, I was binding my chest at gigs to make sure my physique was able to be 'passable' as male. But now, I never bind. It's highly unsafe and unhealthy.

True transgenders do hypermasculine things.

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

I had always known I was female, since I was 7 years old.

It's hard because the phrase 'woman trapped in a man's body' is thrown around a lot, but that's like shorthand. It's deeper than that. There's so much more to it.

Transgender people really are misunderstood.

Ever since I could form coherent thoughts, I knew I was a girl trapped inside a boy's body. There was never any confusion in my mind. The confusing part was why no one else could see what was wrong.

Being transgender isn't a medical transition. It's a process of learning to love yourself for who you are.

It's something you're born with, and you realize that you're trapped in the wrong body. It's not like one day you're like, 'I want to be transgender!'

If someone's OK with being the 'transgender girl,' that's fine, but that's not me.

I’m a gay man in a woman’s body.