Nicole Maines Quotes

I was never going to become a beautiful, passable woman, and I was never going to be a man. It's a quandary. But the trans condition is a beautiful mystery; it's one of nature's best ideas.

I don't know that I had context for being trans until I moved to Rochester, New York, to pursue my dream of acting, and started going to drag shows. I had never seen a transsexual before, and I didn't yet fully understand my own identity.

I'd be happy to be taken as a woman - and that's what I was initially trying to do when I started throwing on dresses and stuff. But that wasn't going to happen because everyone kept calling me sir. So I thought I'd change the method and just start wearing what I wanted to wear.

From the start. As early as - I felt I was in the wrong sex; I really did. I would go into my dad's room and put on his clothes.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a boy. I really had gender issues.

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.'

When I was growing up, I didn't know of anybody who was trans. There was always, like, this shame, anxiety thing around all of that, even if I wasn't actively expressing it.

I knew at a very early age, about 6 years old, that there was something different about me. But being young and not being exposed to people who had gender dysphoria, or role models that you see on TV today, I didn't know what it was.

Everyone's journey to coming out as transgender is different. For me, I've know that I'm transgender my entire life.

The first thing that's really important to understand, just when approaching the topic of transgender people, is that the sex you're assigned with at birth is not the same as your gender identity.

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!'

For all intents and purposes, I'm a woman.

I am very gender fluid and feel more like I wake up every day sort of gender neutral. I cop a fair bit of flack for going from 'such a babe to such a boy.'

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.

When I was really little, it was very clear to me that I felt like a boy, and my friends were all boys.

It took me a long time to realise that I was a girl as a teenager. At that point I never really believed it. I looked like a boy for a long time. Now, finally, I feel like a woman.

For the longest time, I thought I was a boy. I really did. I wore boys' clothes, played tag football.

I always had this idea that, 'Sure, I wished I was a boy and felt more like a boy and all of that.' But I wasn't, so I would deal with it. And I for some reason thought there were other lesbians that felt that way and that was just part of that community.

I figured out who I was very early on - actually, at the age of 13, with the help of the Internet - so I knew that a transition, becoming a woman, was always something I needed to do.

My dream was, start young, take hormones, live as a woman, try and become as passable as possible, bury your past, change your friends. Now I've realised that I don't have to be ashamed of my past.

Being transgender is not just a medical transition.

There were definitely songs in the past that were me dealing with living this gender dysphoria, and sometimes they were really direct and no one picked up on it - but oftentimes, they were more veiled in metaphor.

When I was five, I came to understand that I was not a boy.

Everyone else is following these male and female tracks that have already been set for them, but when you're trans there is no trail.

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.