Best 791 quotes in «gender quotes» category

A remarkably consistent finding, starting with elementary school students, is that males are better at math than females. While the difference is minor when it comes to considering average scores, there is a huge difference when it comes to math stars at the upper extreme of the distribution. For example, in 1983, for every girl scoring in the highest percentile in the math SAT, there were 11 boys. Why the difference? There have always been suggestions that testosterone is central. During development, testosterone fuels the growth of a brain region involved in mathematical thinking and giving adults testosterone enhances their math skills. Oh, okay, it's biological. But consider a paper published in science in 2008. The authors examined the relationship between math scores and sexual equality in 40 countries based on economic, educational and political indices of gender equality. The worst was Turkey, United States was middling, and naturally, the Scandinavians were tops. Low and behold, the more gender equal the country, the less of a discrepancy in math scores. By the time you get to the Scandinavian countries it's statistically insignificant. And by the time you examine the most gender equal country on earth at the time, Iceland, girls are better at math than boys. Footnote, note that the other reliable sex difference in cognition, namely better reading performance by girls than by boys doesn't disappear in more gender equal societies. It gets bigger. In other words, culture matters. We carry it with us wherever we go.

Are boys encouraged to express sadness, fear, or anxiety? In general, our society gives boys permission for one emotion: anger. If a boy is hurt or upset, he may be comforted briefly, but then he is told to stop crying and "be a man." This message usually implies he should hide his feelings. Boys and men are supposed to be solid unemotional rocks. Demonstrations of emotions are seen as "silly." Anger is seen as a sign of strength. Males are considered to be standing up for their rights if they react to a frustrating or undesirable event with anger. Outrage is often the only reaction to an injustice that is allowed from boys.

Are you bisexual" "Labels were invented for people like you who can't grasp a reality outside of a defined gender role. I like what i like.

Aretha Franklin doğallığının teyit edilmesinden ziyadesiyle memnun görünmesine rağmen, bu teyidin hiç bir zaman güvence altına alınmamış olması, doğallığının etkisinin ancak o heteroseksüel tanınma uğrağının sonucunda sağlanması konusunda tamamen ve paradoksal bir ihtiyatlılık içindedir de. Yine de Aretha'nın 'Bana kendimi doğal bir kadın gibi hissettiriyorsun' şarkısı, bunun bir tür metaforik ikame, bir hilekarlık, sıradan heteroseksüel transvestitlik eyleminin doğurduğu bir ontolojik yanılsama kapsamında bir tür yüceltme ve anlık katılım olduğunu akla getirmektedir.

Are we to deny our daughters the works of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck or Shakespeare?....Where is the equality in banning girls from enjoying wonderful works of literature?....What kind of society defines suitable reading material by sex? This is indefensible censorship encouraging ignorance and bias. [About Caitlin Moran's statement.]

As Atwood concludes after a random and informal sampling, men and women differ markedly in the 'scope of their threatenability': 'Why do men feel threatened by woman?' I asked a male friend of mine....'[M]en are bigger, most of the time...and they have on the average a lot more money and power.' 'They're afraid women will laugh at them,' he said. 'Undercut their world view.' Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, 'Why do women feel threatened by men?' 'They're afraid of being killed,' they said'.

As has been long observed, men are people, but women are women.

--As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females." --"I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere.

Ask a woman if she has been harassed, or if she thinks about rape regularly, and she will almost always say "no" initially. Who wants to think about rape? Ask her, however, if she makes eye contact when she walks down the street, where and when she loiters for pleasure on a warm day, if she runs by herself at night, or if she pays for cabs instead of peacefully strolling home. Then ask her why. We are taught to fear rape but not to question its pervasive threat or doubt how "natural" it is or isn't.

A sociocultural environment is not some cunningly contrived thing only exists in social psychology labs. Don't look now, but you're in one right this moment.

A society that does not respect women's anger is one that does not respect women; not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.

As she began to speak she stood and started to wrap herself, expertly, creating a binding in minutes that held without a wrinkle until the show ended. Peggy made a connection between binding her breasts and wrapping her hands in boxing wraps; this was what one did before battle, to protect one's self (and it is the Self, absolutely, that binding protects for many butches).

As the community stays with the uncomfortable tension of contradiction, individuals begin to perceive the truth of “the other” as their own experience, and the polarities of conflicting positions often dissolve into an unexpected emergence of a deeper underlying unity: a profound recognition that, ultimately, there is no “other”. We are all one.

As the Greeks saw it, to be a man was to be defined by your ability to exert power in a world articulated through transcendent forces ultimately beyond human control. The apparent futility of this perspective was outweighed by the nobility that came with the struggle.

Astronomy workers changing gender? Yes, it is a well known occurrence from the effect of high altitude induced alterations of the human sex hormones.

At first, feminists were assumed to be only discontented suburban housewives; then a small bunch of women's "libbers", bra burners, and radicals; then women on welfare; then briefcase carrying imitations of male executives; then unfulfilled women who forgot to have children; then women voters...that really could decide elections. That last was too dangerous, so suddenly we were told we were in a "postfeminist" age...

A text by a minority writer is effective only if it succeeds in making the minority point of view universal. ('The Universal and the Particular')" ... In claiming the lesbian point of view as universal, she overturns the concepts to which we are accustomed. For up to this point, minority writers had to add "the universal" to their points of view if they wished to attain the unquestioned universality of the dominant class. Gay men, for example, have always defined themselves as a minority and never questioned, despite their transgression, the dominant choice. This is why gay culture has always had a fairly wide audience. [From the Foreword "Changing the Point of View" by Louise Turcotte]

At some point during my research, I came across the term "gender fluid." Reading those words was a revelation. It was like someone tore a layer of gauze off the mirror, and I could see myself clearly for the first time. There was a name for what I was. It was a thing. Gender fluid. Sitting there in front of my computer--like I am right now--I knew I would never be the same. I could never go back to seeing it the old way; I could never go back to not knowing what I was. But did that glorious moment of revelation really change anything? I don't know. Sometimes, I don't think so. I may have a name for what I am now--but I'm just as confused and out of place as I was before. And if today is any indication, I'm still playing out that scene in the toy store--trying to pick the thing that will cause the least amount of drama. And not having much success.

Auf dem allerersten Foto, das von mir geschossen wurde, liege ich auf der Säuglingsstation, eingewickelt in eine gelbe Decke. Nicht blau, wie all die anderen Jungen, und auch nicht rosa wie die Mädchen. Es war eine gelbe Decke, und ich habe sie mein Leben lang aufgehoben. Ich schlief jede Nacht damit. Selbst als es mir peinlich wurde, weil ich zu alt dafür war, liebte ich diese Decke. Aber ich habe eben immer Sachen geliebt, die meine Liebe nicht erwiderten. Ich habe mich immer gefragt, ob die Leute, die mich und meine gelbe Decke zwischen den anderen Babys sahen, mich für einen Jungen oder ein Mädchen hielten. Ob es überhaupt eine Rolle spielte. Ob ich an meinem ersten Tag auf dieser Erde vielleicht keins von beidem war. Ich war einfach nur schön.

...at the heart of sexism is the construction of gender polarization, in which femininity and masculinity are assumed to be clearly delineated and any transgression of this pattern warrants punitive measures.

A useful education served women best, More thought. To ‘learn how to grow old gracefully is perhaps one of the rarest and most valuable arts which can be taught to a woman.’ Yet, when beauty is all that is expected or desired in a woman, she is left with nothing in its absence. It ‘is a most severe trail for those women to be called to lay down beauty, who have nothing else to take up. It is for this sober season of life that education should lay up its rich resources,’ she argued.

Bailey, a former prosecutor, attacked her credibility scattershot, an approach he would use throughout the trial, particularly with female witnesses. ... He accused her, that is--without coming out and saying it--of being a certain kind of woman: conceited, disingenuous, and dissatisfied. The universal misogynist caricature. I'd never gone in for academic gender theories, but Bailey's cross-examination strategy--with Farrar and other women to come--convinced me that the culture of criminal justice has a fundamentally masculine tilt. Repeatedly, in a manner that I suspected was typical in modern courtrooms, he portrayed the female mind as intrinsically unreliable, ruled by emotion, immune to logic, prone to pettiness, swayed by lust, and corrupted by vanity. It rarely spoke plainly. It was seldom candid. It was composed of layers of hidden agendas. It put up a front, behind which was another front. It either aimed to please or to conceal, which were often the same thing. The only way to get the truth from it was to push and prod until it snapped. Make it angry. Make it cry.

because women were also believed to be closer to the raw forces of nature than were males, controlling their power was, for the adult male, part of the larger project of creating human civilization itself.

Be a woman of substance. That’s what you are and should always strive to be. You are neither a second rate citizen, nor a toy for the vultures. You are a representative of the whole human race. You have zero deficiency and should never waste your time trying to be equal, even, with men. There is a reason a country or continent is referred to as her and not him.

Being creatures means that we cannot re-create ourselves in any fashion or form that we desire by a simple act of the will or the complex work of a surgeon. When we as creatures reject the Creator's blueprint, we are both rebelling against the natural order of how things objectively are, and (thought it may not seem like it) we are rejecting the life that is going to be the highest good for us.

Being equal does not mean being the same.

Before we learn to speak or understand language, we are being indoctrinated in gender. The first question most people ask when they hear of a birth is ‘Is it a boy or a girl?

Being socialized female and spending my life "othered" by this world gives me a unique perspective. In the past, this has felt like shit. In the present, it feels pretty good. In the future I hope somebody loves me enough to watch me age ungracefully.

Being transgender guarantees you will upset someone. People get upset with transgender people who choose to inhabit a third gender space rather than “pick a side.” Some get upset at transgender people who do not eschew their birth histories. Others get up in arms with those who opted out of surgical options, instead living with their original equipment. Ire is raised at those who transition, then transition again when they decide that their initial change was not the right answer for them. Heck, some get their dander up simply because this or that transgender person simply is not “trying hard enough” to be a particular gender, whatever that means. Some are irked that the Logo program RuPaul’s Drag Race shows a version of transgender life different from their own. Meanwhile, all around are those who have decided they aren’t comfortable with the lot of us, because we dared to change from one gender expression or identity to some other.

Be that kind of girl who smiles when you walk past other girls instead of casting a dirty look. Don't buy into the notion of female competition that society so heavily promotes.

Bravery, she thinks, belongs to girls. But freedom belongs to boys.

Biological, phenotypic, and chromosomal sex differences of 'male' and 'female' are considered as having a biological (organic) basis, in contrast to the role meanings afforded to these sexes in the form of 'masculine' and 'feminine' genders, which may be considered as social constructs.

Both men and women experience pressure to conform to social standards of attractiveness. Men to look strong and be tough, women to look pretty and soft. Men to be masculine, women to be feminine. Men get judged for being "too feminine", women get criticized for being "too masculine". Gender policing affects us all.

Binary thinking is human nature: Light/Dark, Beautiful/Ugly, Full/Empty, Male/Female. But NONE of those are binary—they’re all gradients.

Bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space.

Bringing light of our personal and social consciousness to dark corridors of human pain that have long been neglected and suppress.

But as I peeked at my brother's inert body....I was aware only of what a strange thing it was to be male. Society discriminated against women, no question. But what about the discrimination of being sent war? Which sex was really thought to be expendable.

Boys dream of strippers, men dream of their women waiting for them at home.

But I did it. I imagined myself, muscular, lean and deliciously male, in a suit, holding my completed dissertation. I was accepted to the PhD program in History at Yale University today, as well as starting hormone replacement therapy: subcutaneously-injected testosterone in a solution with cottonseed oil. The universe, fate, or what I chose to call God, has an incredible way of working things out like that. And then I plunged the needle into my skin. I did it with clear intention and the surest, most earnest heart I have ever felt beat inside my chest...I breathed in and exhaled as I pushed the testosterone into my body for the first time. Little pinch. A leap of faith into the rest of my life.

But in every way, the shared metaphors we use of female access to power - 'knocking on the door', 'storming the citadel', 'smashing the glass ceiling', or just giving them a 'leg up' - underline female exteriority. Women in power are seen as breaking down barriers, or alternatively as taking something to which they are not quite entitled.

But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?" "Yes, I am fond of history." "I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all -- it is very tiresome.

But I knew the first question Mom asked Gail was, Is its a boy or a girl? Because, for some reason, that is the first thing everybody wants to know the minute you’re born. Should we label it with pink or blue? Wouldn’t want anyone to mistake the gender of a infant! Why is that so important? Its a baby! And why does it have to be a simple answer? One or the other? Not all of us fit so neatly into the category we get saddled with on Day One when the doctor glances down and makes a quick assessment of the available equipment.

But the essence of the process at its best is basically the same: women and men join together as equals, they get deeply honest with each other about their experiences, and through this process they heal past wounds, awaken to new realisations together, reach a place of reconciliation and forgiveness, and are thereby mutually transformed.

But since we’re on the topic of identity and narrative voice - here’s an interesting conundrum. You may know that The Correspondence Artist won a Lambda Award. I love the Lambda Literary Foundation, and I was thrilled to win a Lammy. My book won in the category of “Bisexual Fiction.” The Awards (or nearly all of them) are categorized according to the sexual identity of the dominant character in a work of fiction, not the author. I’m not sure if “dominant” is the word they use, but you get the idea. The foregrounded character. In The Correspondence Artist, the narrator is a woman, but you’re never sure about the gender of her lover. You’re also never sure about the lover’s age or ethnicity - these things change too, and pretty dramatically. Also, sometimes when the narrator corresponds with her lover by email, she (the narrator) makes reference to her “hard on.” That is, part of her erotic play with her lover has to do with destabilizing the ways she refers to her own sex (by which I mean both gender and naughty bits). So really, the narrator and her lover are only verifiably “bisexual” in the Freudian sense of the term - that is, it’s unclear if they have sex with people of the same sex, but they each have a complex gender identity that shifts over time. Looking at the various possible categorizations for that book, I think “Bisexual Fiction” was the most appropriate, but better, of course, would have been “Queer Fiction.” Maybe even trans, though surely that would have raised some hackles. So, I just submitted I’m Trying to Reach You for this year’s Lambda Awards and I had to choose a category. Well. As I said, the narrator identifies as a gay man. I guess you’d say the primary erotic relationship is with his boyfriend, Sven. But he has an obsession with a weird middle-aged white lady dancer on YouTube who happens to be me, and ultimately you come to understand that she is involved in an erotic relationship with a lesbian electric guitarist. And this romance isn’t just a titillating spectacle for a voyeuristic narrator: it turns out to be the founding myth of our national poetics! They are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman! Sorry for all the spoilers. I never mind spoilers because I never read for plot. Maybe the editor (hello Emily) will want to head plot-sensitive readers off at the pass if you publish this paragraph. Anyway, the question then is: does authorial self-referentiality matter? Does the national mythos matter? Is this a work of Bisexual or Lesbian Fiction? Is Walt trans? I ended up submitting the book as Gay (Male) Fiction. The administrator of the prizes also thought this was appropriate, since Gray is the narrator. And Gray is not me, but also not not me, just as Emily Dickinson is not me but also not not me, and Walt Whitman is not my lover but also not not my lover. Again, it’s a really queer book, but the point is kind of to trip you up about what you thought you knew about gender anyway.

But this is your home' 'Not any longer, my poppet. Women make nests but men make bequests and scatter them. Heigh-ho!

But Tik Tok believes everything's circular, including men and women. He says nature seems to go around and around, and that we all have bits of everything.

But Pascal quickly forgave me, and it's a good thing, since friends of my own age and gender were not available, the girls of Kilanga all being too busy hauling around firewood, water, or babies. It did cross my mind to wonder why Pascal had the freedom to play and roam that his sisters didn't. While the little boys ran around pretending to shoot each other and fall dead in the road, it appeared that little girls were running the country.

But the idea of an Aryan race could never become metaphysically true, despite all the violence unleashed to create it, because there simply is no Aryan race. There is only the idea of it—and the consequences of trying to make it seem real. The male sex is very like that.

Bye bye binary. For gender, for sexuality, for everything. ... Lots of people can like lots of people. And could everyone please get over it and update their idea of normal.

By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that WE are too hard to understand, and suggests that there’s no point in trying.