Top 33 Nicole Maines Quotes

I studied digital arts and graphic design, and then, at the same time I was studying, I was still doing auditions.

It’s OK not to understand the whole trans thing. That’s alright. My dad didn’t understand it. I still don’t know everything. What’s important is you sort of educate yourself on your own time, but you have to respect it on everyone else’s time. Because no one should have to wait for equality.

We tried our best to work with the school and with the other families in the school system, and we did a gradual transition. I started transitioning when I was in first grade, and every year we kind of tacked a new thing on to it.

When we have a trans woman playing a trans woman, then you see, ‘Oh wait, this is what trans really is. This is what it looks like: a person.’ That sends a message to trans kids that they are valid in their identities that they are allowed to exist.

This entire issue of transgender people posing a kind of threat to cisgender women in bathrooms is made up. We are just like everybody else – we go into the bathroom, we keep our heads down, we don’t look at anybody.

I think it is necessary to educate folks on trans issues and to make them aware of trans identities and normalise it, because it is normal. But when you’re shielded from something, and it’s actively censored, it takes a negative connotation.

More than anything, I want fans to take away an understanding of trans people that we can be anybody.

I would say my brother got lucky with me. Because we grew up with only boy neighbors, I developed a liking to shoot-’em-up and military video games. I could have come out a lot girlier.

I think kids need to watch ‘Supergirl’ for Nia, because there are more and more trans people coming out younger and younger.

Family has been really important to me.

If I had a super power, I’d want to be able to fly just so I could float around my apartment. Or I’d really like telekinesis because then you’d be able to slam the door on somebody.

When we have trans actors play trans characters, people can look onscreen and say, ‘OK, this is what trans is.’

My acting and activism go hand-in-hand, and they really support one another.

Gender is something that occurs in the mind, and sex is something that occurs, you know, everywhere else on the body. And whether or not those two things happen to align – well, if they do, great. If they don’t, also great.

Cisgender actors don’t take trans roles out of malice. I think it’s just failure to realize the context behind having cisgender people play transgender characters because we don’t see the same issue with sexuality.

We didn’t have anyone to tell us that what was going on with me was alright. There was no information about transgender people when we started our journey, but we managed to make it through because of the tremendous amount of love that our family had.

Because you never know when a transgender person is going to come into your life, you need to be prepared, and you need to be ready to help them.

I think everything’s going to turn out pretty well for me.

I think accurately presenting a trans character means not presenting them as perfect – I think there’s been a pressure to do this with trans characters. They can have no flaws because they must represent the entire trans community.

I’m so glad that all the work that my family and I are doing is yielding positive results and making actual change!

Gender is a spectrum, and that’s something that a lot of folks don’t understand.

I always loved theater, growing up, and I was always like, ‘Wow, it would be so fun to be an actor.’ But my next thought was, like, ‘I’m from Nowhere, Maine.’ You know, no one’s from Maine!

I think our society has sort of built this gender binary, and the way we’ve said it exists does not really exist in nature.

When I was first trying to explain to my parents that I was really a girl, my father didn’t know what to do. He had these preconceived notions about what his family was going to be like, and when I didn’t fit into those notions, he just ignored what I was trying to tell them before he really came around.

My father grew up very conservative, and he really had set expectations for what boys and girls were supposed to be like. So when I came out to him, that did not fit into his plan of what raising twin boys was going to be like.

I think, for all trans people, it’s not our only defining feature, but it is a defining feature.

Acceptance at home is fundamental, yes, but frankly, it’s just not enough. Trans youth, like most young people, spend the majority of their time at school. If you spent Monday to Friday from 8 to 3 being told that you weren’t okay, that you were wrong, how are you meant to think otherwise?

Having trans people play trans roles show that we are valid in our identities, and we exist.

Historically, we have seen cis men play trans women and vice versa. That casting breaks through the fourth wall, and it gives people the message that trans people are being played by cis men in real life, which is where we get this idea of men in dresses.

With trans folks, we have a lot of people accusing us of just playing dress up for whatever reasons, and that’s just not true.

Children are a lot smarter than we give them credit for.

Everybody loves superheroes, and so to be associated with a superhero forever is just kind of like, that’s where the goalposts are. That’s kind of, ‘Bam, you’re immortalized!’

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.