Michelle Shocked Quotes

Someone said to me a long time ago, 'You're a drag queen,' and at the time I was a little like... hello? But then I realized over the years that I actually am.

I very much related to the idea of sexual identity and how it doesn't have to be black and white. When I first came out, there would be butch people in baseball caps, and that wasn't me, and then there were girls in heels and dresses, and that didn't feel like that was me either. But after a while I learned there's a lot of ground in between.

I identify as queer. I just don't know what any of these labels mean.

I'm queer - and queer, to me, is not being stuck in a binary and being kind of fluid.

You might be raised as a boy in a very conservative environment and then somehow, at some point, there was a side of me that felt really powerful and sensual in a way that was more feminine. For me, it's not about living my life as a boy or a girl - but I'm also not trans - it's just that one day you wake up feeling masculine, and one day you wake up feeling feminine. The flickering in between those two states is what's most fertile for me.

Gender is really varied and complicated and sort of infinitely individualistic.

We move away from only the binary boxes of "masculine" or "feminine" and begin to live along the full human continuum of identity and expression.

Some people are both genders. I think you just come out the way you come out, and you have to embrace it honestly.

I think that there's so many versions of femininity, and in terms of gender as a binary construct, that seems to be being dismantled.

I think we have a perception of transvestites all being the same, as one block. It's not one mass or tribe. Everybody's got a different story.

I do say gender fluid, because I experience my gender identity as being fluid because it's on a spectrum.

I don't view myself as a 'trans actor' or a 'trans model.' I mean, I am - it's part of who I am - but it's not something that solely defines me.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that only gender non-conforming, non-binary, or trans people have a gender identity. But the truth is, everyone has a gender identity.

I model as male, female, and everything in between. I model as all genders.

I spent so many years not understanding my own gender identity and not having the language for it, and not having those conversations, that now I'm so eager to talk about it. Then I learn more about myself and other people.

Bodies have a sex, but gender is a thing we made up, like your star sign or nationality. It doesn't really say anything about who you are. The destruction of gender binary would free everybody.

I do want to inspire people - young girls who may like to wear boys' clothes and who romanticize women and feel nothing wrong with it.

I didn't come out as gay; I came out as I don't really believe in gender.

As many of you know, my story begins where most people's in the LGBT+ community begins... with fear. I knew I was different from my peers, my friends, and those around me when I started to discover who I was and who I identified as from a young age.

Am I a girl, or am I boy? It's a spectrum.

Any kind of gender expression is performance for me, regardless of where it is on the spectrum.

I really don't care about what anyone says unless they are also gender-nonconforming. Then I really listen. I love the solidarity felt between us gender failures.

Gender fluidity is not really feeling like you're at one end of the spectrum or the other.

You can't just put gay in a little gay box anymore.