Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Sarah McBride
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist Sarah McBride.
Last updated on December 20, 2024.
Instead of moving backward, we should expand opportunity and protections by repealing hateful laws and passing comprehensive LGBT nondiscrimination laws at the local, state, and federal level.
When I came out, I wondered whether I had a future not just professionally but romantically. Would I be able to find someone who loved me?
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.'
Will we be a nation where there's only one way to love, one way to look, one way to live? Or will we be a nation where everyone has the freedom to live openly and equally?
Trans justice calls on us to combat the blend of prejudices that demean the lives and diminish the autonomy of another person.
Change always seems impossible until it's inevitable.
The Trump-Pence administration has truly become one of the most explicitly anti-LGBTQ administrations in history.
Gorsuch showed his true colors to the LGBTQ community when, in one of his first dissenting opinions on the high court, he advocated limiting the reach of the landmark 2015 marriage equality ruling by denying certain parenting rights to same-sex couples.
I grew up in an upper-income household, in an accepting environment, and with incredible educational opportunities.
For my entire life, I've wrestled with my gender identity.
We certainly hope that Secretary DeVos will work on behalf of every student and ensure equal access to a safe and quality education for LGBTQ young people.
Trans issues are also environmental issues. They're also healthcare issues. They're also national security issues.
Days after being sworn in as the nation's top law enforcement officer, Trump's attorney general, the virulently anti-LGBTQ Jeff Sessions, revoked lifesaving guidance promoting the protection and dignity of transgender students.
This is how systems of oppression work: The violence, discrimination, and stigma I face as a woman compounds the violence, discrimination, and stigma I face as a trans person, and vice versa.
Access to public facilities like bathrooms is important for transgender people. But the fight for transgender rights does not begin and end at the bathroom door.
The first thing we need allies to do is listen. Come to us with a willingness to grow and evolve. You're going to make mistakes, and that's fine, but be willing to listen and grow from those mistakes. I think that's the most important trait an ally can have.
Trump's appointed extremist judges to the federal bench, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose decisions demonstrate a judicial philosophy far more concerned with the rights of corporations than marginalized Americans.
While Donald Trump claimed during the campaign that he would be a 'friend' to the LGBTQ community, we knew it was likely one more 'alternative fact' spouted by the President and his team.
When the work you're doing every single day is so directly about who you are as an individual and who you are as a person, it can be both exhausting and empowering in different moments.
When you know someone's story, it becomes much harder to hate them.
Put simply, barring transgender people from restrooms consistent with their gender identity doesn't help anyone, and continuing to allow transgender people to access those restrooms doesn't hurt anyone.
Living authentically isn't an act of courage as much as an act of survival.
I want to make sure that people understand that, behind this national conversation around transgender rights, there are real people who hurt when they're mocked, who hurt when they're discriminated against, and who just want to be treated with dignity and respect.
There is no one-size-fits-all narrative; everyone's path winds in different ways.
A life in pursuit of position or power is not a life well-lived or in service to others.
The harassment and the bullying that students face is a learned behavior.
Efforts to bar transgender people from restrooms are nothing more than an attempt to codify discrimination before our country advances any further on transgender equality.
I met my future husband Andy fighting for trans equality, and we fell in love. A couple of months after we started dating, Andy was diagnosed with cancer, and despite getting a clean bill of health several months later, eventually his cancer came back, and it was terminal.
There's no question that the best way to get people to care about an issue is to humanize it.
Time and time again, we have seen a growing alliance of allies who are willing to stand with trans people, who are educating themselves on trans identity and trans equality, and who understand that our lives are worth celebrating and that our cause matters.
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.
When gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals come out, their friends and families, for the most part, understand what it feels like to love and to lust. Cisgender people have more of a challenge when it comes to transgender identities. I discovered that analogy of homesickness in conversations with my parents, in trying to bridge that empathy divide.
Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Jeff Sessions are using their powers and offices to make life as difficult as possible for everyone from the transgender worker to the gay widower to the queer undocumented immigrant. These efforts are not about bathrooms or religious freedom; they're about driving LGBTQ people out of public life.
For me, having a gender identity that was different from my sex assigned at birth and that wasn't seen by society felt like a constant feeling of homesickness - that unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach.
Whenever you tell a group of people that they can't use bathrooms, or they can't access spaces that other people use, that is dehumanizing. It is discriminatory, and it reinforces the stigma and the prejudices that the transgender community already faces.
The reason why access to facilities - and access to public spaces - is so important is because it's much more difficult to go to work, to go to school, to participate in the public marketplace if you can't access bathrooms that make sense for you, that match who you are.
When the boys and girls would line up separately in kindergarten, I'd find myself longing to be in the other line.
I would take issue with the assertion that President Trump has reached out to a diverse group for his cabinet secretaries. In fact, his cabinet is one of the least diverse in modern history.
Transgender people frequently face bias in court and are assigned unsupportive public defenders, factors which lead to more extreme sentences and longer incarcerations.
Despite saying the letters 'LGBTQ' at the RNC, Donald Trump consistently endorsed anti-equality positions.
We have to open hearts and change minds while at the same time pushing for laws that protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
Being an American is an action; it's an ideal to strive for. It's being part of this constantly perfecting union that, with each generation, expands our scope and human understanding of 'We the people.'
LGBTQ people are still targeted by hate that lives in both laws and in hearts.
Homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, they're all rooted in the same prejudice: the belief that one perception at birth - the sex we are assigned - should dictate who we are, who we love, how we act, and what we do.
In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It's when we challenge ourselves to walk in the shoes of someone whose pain or plight might seem so different than yours that it's almost incomprehensible.
Every single day matters when it comes to building a world where every person can live their life to the fullest.
My name is Sarah McBride, and I am a proud transgender American.
Trump's campaign is not a collection of ignorant statements. It is a candidacy of hate and fear that poses serious risks to people of color, women, people with disabilities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people.
During my sophomore year at American University, I was elected president of the student body. At the same time, I was struggling with my identity and whether or not to come out as transgender.
There's no question that the political is personal.
Since taking office, Donald Trump and Mike Pence have governed the exact same way they campaigned, which is with bigotry and with bluster, and that includes toward the LGBTQ community.
While I don't think President Trump is going to round LGBTQ people up, I do think the concerns from the community about his vision are not only understandable but warranted.
It was easier to forget, or be dismissive about, transgender issues when there weren't transgender staffers or interns walking the halls of the White House.
No one should be forced to not dream anymore.
Too often, when transgender people die, family members or funeral homes will end up dressing a body of a transgender person in the garments of the gender that they were assigned at birth instead of their gender identity. They're often dead-named and misgendered.
Like all women, my path to womanhood is unique. No two paths are the same. Each of us travel with different privileges, challenges, and perspectives - some limiting, others illuminating.
My whiteness, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, family support, and so many other factors shield me from some of the worst possible consequences - often fatal ones - that result from the toxic combination of misogyny, racism, and anti-trans sentiment.
The first time I heard the word 'transgender' had been in a sitcom episode that mocked the potential for cisgender people to find people like me attractive. Every time someone expressed any interest in the gorgeous trans guest character - her identity still a secret to most of the main characters in the show - the laugh track would cue.
My gratitude is great to my family and friends for accepting me as the person who they now know me to be and for letting me show them the possibilities of a life well lived.
Transgender people, especially transgender women of color, face pervasive discrimination throughout life, including by those sworn to protect us.
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