Pearls Before Swine Quotes

“The patriarchy longs for the days ‘when men were men’ and women were oppressed, silent and subservient – and they can see no wrong in it. It justifies its former power and lust to hold on to it – and if possible, to regain it by quoting fundamentalist and radical religion and tradition and while calling it ‘love’. Some love! How can oppression and power and complete control over another person's life ever be ‘love’?”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“If being transgender were a job, no-one would apply.

Imagine actually applying to be an outcast everywhere you go, feeling out of place even inside your own body, even when looking in a mirror, at old family photo albums, being continually denied by family members you held dear, being barely recognized or even acknowledged by old acquaintances, school or college friends, and taking the brunt of bigotry and spitefulness from colleagues and supervisors?

Does being excluded from family events, work parties, and being constantly attacked by religious groups and people sound like fun? How about constantly wondering if you will wake up with civil rights the next morning, or if you will be arrested or beaten up or murdered in the streets by someone you don’t know, or in your own home by someone you do know? How about the likelihood that your family would dress your dead body as someone else they would prefer you to have been for your memorial service, while dead-naming you and disrespecting the person you were and the things you had accomplished in your life? Sound like the job for you? Apply within.

If there was a CHOICE, then my dears, EVERYONE would walk away.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“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, Pearls Before Swine

“Interestingly enough, every time I corner a homophobic religious fanatic bigot with scientific facts which they cannot argue or disprove, they either dismiss me as ‘anti-God’ and a ‘secular humanist’ or they start spouting reams of misapplied and irrelevant ‘scripture’ at me, like that will in any way, shape or form prove anything… Which just proves to me that common sense and actual reason doesn't come into it. Only very blind hatred.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Who is the more courageous? The macho gay-basher who roars their hatred, or the gay or trans person who faces threats of violence and harm on a daily basis, and carries on being honest about who they are regardless?”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“I don’t think it matters so much who we love – what matters most is that we love.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Peace, shalom, salaam – to all – in our homes, in our streets, in our countries, on our world, and most importantly, in our hearts and minds – not just for one day of the year, or two, but for every day, and for every year, always.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“The very worst thing a parent or teacher or other care-giver can do, is to ignore bullying, to ignore the plight of a child being bullied, or trivialize or even blame a child for the bullying actions of others.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Love yourself. Someone has to. Sure, some people will hate you for who and what you are – but they're not perfect either”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“I believe most people are good, even if only deep down – and even if you have to dig a little. Some people tempt me to pick up a shovel and actually find out”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Many times we refer to people who express hate or behave in a barbaric, savage ‘inhuman’ way as ‘animals’, but on closer inspection we can clearly see that this is in fact, an insult to animals”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Usually, people who ask ‘do you know who I am?’ don't have a clue themselves”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“If you stick your head in the sand like an ostrich, pretending you don't exist – why get upset when the world agrees with you?”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“16 days of activism? I don't know about you folks, but I'm an activist every single day”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“I can understand backward patriarchal reasoning and opinions coming from a male, but from a woman – and of all people, from a leader of women? That says something profound about the nature of that leadership – and, if nothing else – what it says about the followers is not very flattering at all”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“If men could become pregnant – or be legally raped, or understand the unsubtle differences between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ – I am certain they would soon change their tune about abortion and the treatment and trivialization of the suffering of rape victims.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Our people need to stop being victims. We need to fight back. Get tougher. Being gay, being trans, being peace loving, being effeminate – is no reason to not be an ass-kicking terror. Live for the best, prepare for the worst.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“If the people who institute civil partnerships for gay couples think they sound 'just as good as marriage' - why don't they get 'civl partnershipped' then? I suppose because 'marriage' has a nicer ring to it - and that is reserved for straight people.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Why is it that when people who use a word like ‘tranny’ to describe transgender people, are told, by a transgender person, that the word is derogatory and offensive towards transgender people, they rally and insist that it isn't? To deny this in the face of someone who is on the receiving end of this abuse – and who has just informed you that it is offensive – only adds to and compounds the abuse.

To claim that a transgender person is ‘over reacting’ when insulting terms are used against trans people, and that a cisgender person is easily capable of understanding life from a transgender perspective... While making facetious statements like ‘just because you're confused about your gender...’ only adds injury to the insult. You clearly do NOT understand, and you've just proved it.

To crown it all, saying in your defense that you're ‘not transphobic’ because you watch ‘tranny porn’ does NOT make you a cis-ally to transgender people!”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“To suggest that LGBTI protests against any proposal to amend the Constitution to remove sexual orientation or gender protections are 'pointless' due to a perception that there are enough voices of reason in all parties to oppose it, is counter-productive – because as we can see in the USA as a good current example – THERE ARE, UNTIL THERE AREN'T.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“There are always those who aspire to deprive minorities of their equality and civil rights. They NEVER sleep – they wait for an opportunity to realize their aspirations – and those minorities who stop being willing to demonstrate timeously that they are willing to fight for their rights, are destined to lose them.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Do not expect me to keep my mouth shut about human rights abusers and their abuses in the interests of not criticising their ‘culture’. If their culture promotes the abuse of human rights and elevates one group above another at the expense of equality and democracy, then they represent a culture of human rights abuse. One cannot please everybody, so I intend to stand for those on the receiving end of abuses, not those trying to wash themselves clean in human blood.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Worthy of note is the detail that there are NO secular ‘ex-gay’ institutions, only religious ones, which use religion-based homophobia enforced by those who deem LGBT people ‘undesirable’ for questionable religious reasons.

It is obvious that religious prejudice appears to be the sole force behind demands that LGBT people cease to exist – and since religion has no basis in fact, the response therefore to such unfounded prejudice should also be obvious, by demolishing it.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Being gay is not a mental illness – but homophobia directed at gay people can cause psychological harm to the gay person. It is therefore not the gay person who needs psychiatric intervention for being gay – it is homophobes who need help in dealing with their bigotry and prejudices.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Tolerance and respect works two ways. You respect people’s right to not be like you and they respect you for not being a dick about it.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Bullying is not a character-building experience.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“When facts are misrepresented in order to serve an opinion or to promote it aggressively – especially an opinion which demonstrably results in people being victimized, persecuted and their lives destroyed in many places in the world, it should be a matter of concern to everyone who wants people to be treated equally, fairly and justly.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“The coining of a new (somewhat short-lived) term, ‘homophiliac’, used by homophobes as an alternative to ‘homophobic’, is no more than an exercise in facetiousness. The principle employed, is to try to present something morally reprehensible (homophobia) as something ordinary or innocuous – in the same way that racists avoid using words like ‘racist’ to describe themselves, in favor of wrapping their hatred in terms like ‘white pride’ in order to make the same thing seem less reprehensible than itself”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Apparently some people (who don’t know history) seem to think that marriage ‘always has been’ exclusively between males and females – and that this modern inequality somehow justifies the enforced continuation of this inequality.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“If all people were to be judged by ‘right and wrong’, nobody would be wholly right or wholly wrong - for have not all people ‘sinned and fallen from the glory of God’? It seems more than a little unfair (and unhinged) that some folks with at least as much ‘sin’ themselves as any gay or trans person, like to jump up and down and point fingers at what other people are up to in their own lives.”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine