C. N. Lester

“Some critics of trans people have told us that we shouldn’t feel this pain of being denied the legitimacy of our own selves; gender is, of course, just a social construct. I wonder if these people also tell widows not to bother grieving their husbands, because marriage is also just another social construct.”

“Trying to take away someone’s language is usually the first step in trying to change them.”

“If we start preemptively cutting out parts of who we are because they’re ‘not feminist enough’, then we’ve failed before we’ve begun.”

“By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that WE are too hard to understand, and suggests that there’s no point in trying.”

“We assume that anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don’t see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long.”

“When we are surrounded by such diversity - in nature, in culture, in human spirit - how can we stand not to acknowledge it?”