Christine Schoenwald

There isn't a competition between transgender women and cisgender women on who's the better woman. How you express your womanhood is up to you, as is whether or not you want to express it. It'd be better to widen the definition of a woman rather than limit it.

Now I know that just because I’m fat doesn’t mean that I don’t have moments of fatphobia. My own fatphobia has taught me a lot.

One of the reasons that narcissists are so troubling is their lack of compassion and awareness regarding how their behavior affects other people.

The truth is, we want our cats fat and our women skinny.

My brother, Frederick, was eight when I was born. I don't know if he was happy to have a sister or resented me being born, as it was difficult to get any kind of reading on what he was thinking or feeling. I never felt any love or affection from him — unless his way of showing it was through emotional and physical abuse.

A sad fact: Many men who are sexually attracted to fat women are ashamed of it. We need to talk about men who want sex with fat women but won't date them.

I still went to the painful place of being fat-shamed and decided that was why he had refused to kiss me. The pain never fully went away.

My swimsuit phobia started in middle school — that breeding ground of body shame and fear. One minute I’m a kid excitedly putting on my pink two-piece and running into the ocean, the next, I’m avoiding any place where people are known to live in their swimsuits and I might be forced to wear one.