Intersex Quotes

“Love isn’t a choice. You fall for the person, not their chromosomes.”
― I.W. Gregorio, None of the Above

“Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend, the other who has privately lost something to do with innocence and gained something to do with knowledge and adulthood that can never be undone. I feel sometimes there are things that tear me in two directions, that there are two sets of thoughts that grow side by side. But then I realize that I am whole, whatever that means and does not mean; I am complete without the need for additions or alteration.”
― Abigail Tarttelin, Golden Boy

“You are an anomaly of a man," she said.

"Perhaps because I'm not a man at all." He sat closer now. The sheets wrinkled as he scooted himself toward her.

"Aye. You gender-malcontent. You otherling," she said..."Me too. I am a boy and a girl and a witch all wrapped into one very strange, flimsy, indecisive body. Do you think my body couldn't decide what it wanted to be?"

"I think it doesn't matter because we get to decide what our bodies are or are not," he answered.”
― Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts

“May you hear my feeble voice! It will tell you that here below there is a heart full of the memory of you.”
― Herculine Barbin, Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite

“You are to be pitied more than I, perhaps. I soar above all your innumerable miseries, partaking of the nature of the angels; for, as you have said, my place is not in your narrow sphere. You have the earth, I have boundless space. Enchained here below by the thousand bonds of your gross, material senses, your spirits cannot plunge into that limpid Ocean of the infinite, where, lost for a day upon your arid shores, my soul drinks deep.”
― Herculine Barbin, Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite

“The common thread from all those stories was that talking helped, and listening, and time. One day I would find my own place. I couldn't run there, though, because it didn't exist yet; I had to build it myself, out of forgiveness, truth, and terrifying gestures of friendship.”
― I.W. Gregorio, None of the Above

“While there is no shame in being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex - or even straight (but not narrow) - there is most certainly shame and dishonor in being a homophobe, a transphobe and a bigot.”
― Christina Engela, Blachart

“I could still feel the echo of his hand on mine.”
― I.W. Gregorio, None of the Above

“Do you want me to lick you again?”
― Alyssa Brugman, Alex As Well

“Male? female? both?
No one's ever asked me that question, I see myself as neither. I'm something different all together.”
― E.M. Hamill, Dalí

“We're a group of people whose misunderstanding of each other is only topped by people's misunderstanding of us.”
― Thea Hillman, Intersex

“I personally believe that gender equality underlines every other equality, and certainly the issue of sexuality. For instance, if we didn’t distinguish between gender, in terms of giving different genders disparate values and attributes, what problem would we have with two men loving each other?”
― Abigail Tarttelin

“screw that gender essentialism bullshit, men have as much of a right to care about clothes as women. Girls can like sports and cars and guns. So why does it even matter if you identify as a girl, a boy or as neither?”
― I.W. Gregorio

“If there's a place you should be able to put yourself first, it's in your own sexual fantasies.”
― Alyssa Brugman, Alex As Well

“I can see where this is going, too. Of course, I can, because I am Alex as well. But I want to dress up in gorgeous clothes and strut up and down the runway like they do in the magazines, swishing my tail. I want to dress up with Amina and Julia and giggle and be girlfriends, arm in arm. I want to be beautiful. I want other people to think I am beautiful.”
― Alyssa Brugman, Alex As Well

“¿No te parece que una persona con genitales masculinos y femeninos es el
símbolo supremo de poder y de belleza?”
― Kōji Suzuki

“That's my wish for our community, as it were, that during this very confusing and amazing time, we be gentle with ourselves, and with each other.”
― Thea Hillman, Intersex

“Bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space.”
― Katrina Karkazis, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience

“I can understand why you would want to be literally out of your own heard, because being inside your own head is unbearable.”
― Alyssa Brugman, Alex As Well

“Among societies with only two sexes, they often chose to pass as a man or a woman, and became expert at it.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant

“In a 1999 paper, Reiner indicates that his data show "that with time and age, children may well know what their gender is, regardless of any and all information and child-rearing to the contrary. They seem to be quite capable of telling us who they are, and we can observe how they act and function even before they tell us.”
― Deborah Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights

“It's an arbitrary thing if you're born with an XX or XY chromosome, but it can determine your experience of the world. It's about whether you are physically intimidating vs. being physically intimidated. It determines whether you are the one to take an active role in sex and society.”
― Abigail Tarttelin

“I'm never going to be happy, but I could get close now, I think. I could be almost normal. I could have a friend.”
― Alyssa Brugman, Alex As Well

“Sometimes I don't know what I am. But what I would like to be on the outside -- what I want other people to see -- is a girl.”
― Alyssa Brugman, Alex As Well

“Dwarves are sequential hermaphroditic parthenogens," Ruby said, anticipating his question.

"What?"

"They can change back and forth from male to female and are capable of fertilizing themselves to make more dwarves. They exhibit what we regard as male characteristics, typically, but some favor a more feminine approach."

Durham sat with his mouth hanging open. Ruby poked him in the tongue with her quill feather making him gag and sputter.

"So, Ginny is, what, short for Regina? Virginia?"

"I rather think it's long to 'Gin'," Ruby answered. "She's head of hazard team and Thud's second."

"So, the changing sex thing. How does that work? Does it take a while or is it the sort of thing that might happen in the middle of a conversation?"

"Hard to say," Ruby said. "Does she need to clear her throat or did she just become a male? Is he just pausing for thought or did he just impregnate himself mid-sentence?" She shrugged. "Dwarf physiology isn't really my field."

"Is there an easy way to tell?"

"Which sex a dwarf is at the moment? Not that I'm aware of but I haven't managed to think of a situation where it would matter, either, so I've not dwelt on it much.”
― Jeffery Russell, The Dungeoneers

“Honey, there is no one right way to eat cannelloni.”
― Alyssa Brugman, Alex As Well

“La existencia de personas intersex demuestra que, a nivel biológico, no es tan clara nuestra división entre machos y hembras. La literatura médica reconoce muchísima variabilidad sexual. Entre otras clasificaciones, se ha planteado la existencia de cinco sexos: hombres, mujeres, pseudohermafroditas femeninas, pseudohermafroditas masculinos y verdaderos hermafroditas. Los tres últimos están agrupados en la categoría de intersexuales.”
― Gerard Coll-Planas, Dibujando el género

“What I was, and still partially am, is socially disorientated. My social equilibrium is out of whack, punched out like I was in a boxing match, and only recently have I felt like I can actually differentiate life phases and recognize if my life is moving, spinning, or standing still.

Later we will see if I’ll go full circle with this boxing analogy and end up being punch-drunk in twenty-plus years. There are so many hits you can take, but I am optimistic since I’ve learned how to roll with the punches.”
― Ina Ferenčić, Pussified: A sex change story I didn't have the balls to tell

“[John] Money spent the rest of his childhood in a predominantly female household in consistent poverty. His childhood instilled in him a dislike of religious dogma and sexual prudery as well as a deep class-consciousness alongside his ambition to transcend his meager beginning, Science would become his religion.”
― Sandra Eder, How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea

“Money spent the rest of his childhood in a predominantly female household in consistent poverty. His childhood instilled in him a dislike of religious dogma and sexual prudery as well as a deep class-consciousness alongside his ambition to transcend his meager beginning, Science would become his religion”
― Sandra Eder, How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea