James Baldwin Quotes

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

The most refined form of sexual attractiveness - as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure - consists in going against the grain of one's sex.

A man who reads effeminate may well be consistently heterosexual, and another one might be gay. We can't read sexuality off of gender.

You don't walk like other boys. You don't talk like other boys. But at six, you are not thinking about your sexuality.

Queering don't make the world work.

We have to look at queerness as a means towards challenging normativity.

The gender thing doesn't exist; it's a social construct you don't have to fit into.

I think rigid heterosexuality is a perversion of nature.

When I was young there were lesbians who said "Oh, I will free myself of all norms of masculinity, all norms of heterosexuality ". And then, they ended up in very complex relationships that were maybe full of heterosexual power dynamics or full of lesbian forms of masculinity and they became very confused.

I think in times of fear and hysteria in a culture, gender experimentation as it pertains to men has to go underground because it scares people too much and it's too much for people to take on. Especially when a culture is held hostage by fear and hysteria and fundamentalism.

Heterosexuality has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women. Yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty.

But boys will be boys, even the ones who are only girls dressed up: That's one of the rules of the world.

I never saw a ­distinction between a man and a woman. My ­grandparents and my mother were great examples of men and women, and they taught me ­equality. So I would fight with boys and wear my cousin's clothes. I would do whatever I wanted, and that's where I still stand today.

I have a lot of characteristics that would normally be present in a guy and then less that would be present in a woman.

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 always wear something slightly masculine.

If I hadn't been born a woman, I would have certainly been gay.

The framework of men's wear is so narrow, that when you play at the edges you get labeled.

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?

Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheeps and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white.

Someday I'm going to go onstage in a dress if I want to.

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.

I was very much a tomboy. I just couldn't do the pink ballet tutus.

I like shocking people just because, like, I can wear a dress, too. Not even for people to go, 'Oh she's grown up,' but to show people that I'm actually a girl.

I wasn't a masculine kid; I was pretty effeminate.