Alison Bechdel Quotes

On my road to self-discovery, only certain terms were available - I didn't use 'trans' or 'transgender' until junior high school, but I was living as trans much earlier.

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.

I was born a girl; it just took me a little while to become one fully.

Being transgender is more than just medical books and everything, procedures. It's something spiritual in which you're finding yourself and really discovering who you are and learning to love yourself.

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.

In the first couple of years when you're transitioning you don't really fit into any gender, because you're changing over. You have to start getting electrolysis before you even start your therapy. But I think all the weird looks help to give you conviction in who you really are.

When I was a prepubescent child, I never really had experiences of gender dysphoria. This is not something that started until adolescence.

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

I spent so many years not understanding my own gender identity and not having the language for it, and not having those conversations, that now I'm so eager to talk about it. Then I learn more about myself and other people.

I've always known exactly who I am. I was a girl trapped in a boy's body.

Being transgender isn't a medical transition. It's a process of learning to love yourself for who you are.

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

Not only am I physically and emotionally attracted to women, I also wonder what being a woman would be like.

Some people say I appeared on the Phil Donahue show to tell 'my' sex change story but I've never appeared on his show for any reason... not even as a member of the studio audience.

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.

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

Gender dysphoria is never an easy thing to live with, mainly because people don't understand it.

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.

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.

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.

The way I see things is that, I think that transgender people are super brave. If you're a female to male, male to female, if you're that brave to take control of your own body and make it however you want it to be, more power to you.

My family knew that they loved me, and whatever this 'I want to be a girl' business was, it certainly wasn't about to change that.

I am transgender. I knew that I was for as long as I can remember.

I look like a dude and feel like a dude, and it sucks. But eventually I'll flip, and I'll present as female.