Kanye West Quotes

I saw this Facebook video of a boy, probably around seven, wearing a dress he had fashioned from a blanket, sashaying through his house while his mother applauded and cheered him on. He was so proud. It was such a beautiful thing but bittersweet because I knew his spirit would change soon: that he'd become self-aware and ashamed at some level.

We've been socialised and told that there is a way to describe people, and that way is by their gender or their sex.

I feel like we're so limited by the context at which we look at life. The way we look at who we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to love... everything. I feel like that, in and of itself, is a project of a lifetime: the problem of how to break out of the limiting context that is imposed upon us by the educational system, by the church, by our parents... As a kid I rejected it without even thinking about it. Now that I'm a little older, I see how deeply destructive it really is.

I felt alien my whole life, but I didn't feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender.

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

As a little kid, I was convinced that I was a guy.

Some people look gender non-conforming because they want to look that way - they don't want to conform to society's expectations.

I do believe that it's something that we don't talk about, but when there are clearly defined gender roles, it is much simpler. Because you don't have to think, which people apparently don't like to do.

Clearly, we are not programmed at birth to behave a certain way based on our gender. Instead, we are trained throughout our lives to conform to our gender norms.

I can't write - I can't think like a woman... it's not natural, but I've tried.

I believe in assigned sex but not necessarily gender. Gender is a learned construct that is detrimental to both sexes.

When I was a kid, I did want to be a boy. I didn't like to play with dolls, and most of my friends were kind of sensitive, sissy boys. But as I got older, the mystique of being a girl began to interest me. It was confusing what sexuality was, and the responses of other people, but it didn't make me feel terrified or vulnerable.

I want to say that the way in which we understand gender actually changes the way we live gender.

Just ask yourself, if we weren't taught to be women, what would we be? (Ask yourself this question even if you're a man, and don't cheat by changing the words.)

I don't know anything except being female, so I don't know the opposite of it.

As a kid, I wanted to be a boy because I equated that with strength. There's a problem with that. It's only growing into my own womanhood that I realize how warped that is that I was attributing strength to male qualities.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Men were only made into 'men' with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally 'a man' any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

I know people want me to sort of defend myself, to sit here and be like, 'I'm a boy, but I wear make-up sometimes.' But, you know, to me, it doesn't really matter.

I'm an only child, so I never had sisters to tell me what I should like based on my gender. I liked what the boys were doing and thought: 'Why let them have all the fun?'

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.

If you come from a normal family, you immediately start playing the role of a boy, a girl a man or a woman, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that those are only roles, limited roles, at that.

I think that every child grows up with the ideas that what we are given, is our society. Your education, and your mother and father, they tell you this is how it is, but then you hit adolescence and you think, 'Is it? Why? Why is it like that?' Sometimes that questioning leads to something more.

I wanted to be a boy when I was young because boys got to do all the good stuff. So I became very aggressive and very competitive at a young age.

Being a parent of a boy who wants to wear sparkles and grow his hair long - especially when you don't know where it's all going to go - it's hard stuff. I'm not being politically incorrect in acknowledging that, am I?