Best 791 quotes in «gender quotes» category

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.

Our body-minds tumble, shift, ease their way through space and time, never static. Gender transition in its many forms is simply another kind of motion. I lived in a body-mind assigned female at birth and made peace with it as a girl, a tomboy, a dyke, a queer woman, a butch. But uncovering my desire to transition—to live as a genderqueer, a female-to-male transgender person, a white guy—challenged everything I thought I knew about self-acceptance and love.

our contemporary ideas about manliness, reflected in action movies and westerns, generally prohibit so-called real men from displaying high emotion, with the exception of anger. John Wayne doesn’t cry. By contrast, Achilles, the epitome of manliness in Homer’s Iliad, weeps openly and at length over the loss of his friend Patroclus.

Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce; wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must.

O woman, father says natural is beautiful so why do you redden your cheeks and blacken your eyes? Why do you remove the hair on your legs and draw them into your brows? Why do you hold your breath lest your stomach show and hold your fart lest they know that you’re a human? O woman, father says natural is beautiful so why do you straighten your hair to curl it next and pretend to orgasm so they think you enjoyed the sex? Why do you dumb yourself down and push your breasts up? Why do you smile when you’re told to and love when you don’t want to? When? When will you stop, woman? Father says natural is beautiful but that is doubtful for what does father know he’s only a fellow.

People always think it's unprofessional if your appearance doesn't match your biological sex. What does my gender have to do with my skills?

People also tend to refer to nonhuman animals as “it” or sometimes “he,” regardless of the individual’s sex. This one-sex-fits-all approach objectifies and denies individuality. In fact, nonhuman animals who are exploited for food industries are usually females. Such unfortunate nonhumans are not only exploited for their flesh, but also for their nursing milk, reproductive eggs, and ability to produce young. When guessing the gender of a nonhuman animal forced through slaughterhouse gates, we would greatly increase odds of being correct if we referred to such unfortunate individuals as 'she'.

People often squabble over what defines a person as a woman or a man—whether it should be based on their chromosomes, assigned sex, genitals, or other factors—but such reductionist views deny our indisputably holistic gendered realities. For all of us, gender is first and foremost an individual experience, an amalgamation of our own unique combinations of gender inclinations, social interactions, body feelings, and lived experiences.

People say I'm not much of a girl either," Tiger Lily said. She thought of Tik Tok, who was fond of saying that people were all bits of each thing, boy and girl.

Perhaps, thought Nanny, little green Elphaba chose her own sex, and her own color, and to hell with her parents.

Pregnancy and childbirth are not only physical and medical experiences, after all. They are also social experiences that, in modern America, just as when abortion was criminalized in the 1870s, serve to restrict women's ability to participate in society on equal footing with men.

Reconciliation is a step beyond the domain of conflict resolution, which, as traditionally defined and practiced, is coming to be viewed as inadequate for creating true healing, harmony, and effective community in arenas where they has been long-standing conflict.

Sadly, our society still perpetuates the false ideal that a real man should be all masculine, and a real woman all feminine. Neither is possible, nor desirable.

Safe gender is being who and what we want to be when we want to be that, with no threat of censure or violence. Safe gender is going as far in any direction as we wish, With no threat to our health, or anyone else’s. Safe gender is not being pressured into passing, not Having to lie, not having to hide. Sane gender is asking questions about gender - talking To people who do gender, and opening up about our Gender histories and our gender desires. Sane gender is probably very, very funny. Consensual gender is respecting each others’ definition Of gender, and respecting the wishes of some to be alone, And respecting the intentions of others to be inclusive in Their own time. Consensual gender is non-violent in that it doesn’t force Its way in on anyone. Consensual gender opens its arms and welcomes all People as gender outcasts - whoever is willing to admit it.

Scale the heights of your career and break that glass ceiling, but do it very quietly and gingerly, and be sure to make a man think he did it for you.

Schoolgirls are not distractions. They are students. Teach them something other than misogyny.

Scientists can test only what they do not take for granted. That can make studying familiar phenomena particularly challenging...This may be especially true of masculinity, femininity and sexuality, because certain ideas abut gender and sexuality are so broadly shared in our culture

sex separation in the classroom leads to a bullshit socio-economic situation perpetuated by people with good intentions.

Sex has to do with your physical body, while gender has to do with your social expression of a range of masculinities and/or femininities (and/or neutralities).

[S]ex trafficking and mass rape should no more be seen as women's issues than slavery was a black issue or the Holocaust was a Jewish issue. These are all humanitarian concerns, transcending any one race, gender, or creed.

Sexual expression is so powerful a way of bonding with others and so devastating a way of hurting others that it can never be reduced to a mere matter of personal preferences. Sexual desires have immense capacities to order or disorder the social world. Because of this, the social meanings and expressions of sexual desire, connections, and taboos are an organizing component of human societies: Who wants whom? Who belongs with whom? Who is forbidden to whom? What do infractions mean, and what are their consequences?

She could not be silent even if the men of science, many of them smug experts in white lab coats who promised “better living through chemistry,” dismissed her warnings as feminine hysteria.

She did, she really told her. She was pretty scary, actually," "The best women always are, love; you don't get to my age without realizing that.

She must have already forgiven him for leaving her behind. Girls were good at colouring in those disappointing blank spots. I thought of the night before, her exaggerated moans.

She stopped walking between two doors. They were labeled, in quixotic fashion, “Squids” and “Mollusks.” Shaun raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “Which one am I?” “All gender is a construct and binary gender doubly so, but you have a hard shell and you’re hard to kill, so you’re probably a mollusk,” said Foxy blithely.

She transcends her sport, which is what any sport needs...And she does it while smiling the whole time. It's kind of a joke, but then again it's not, especially if you're a male pro trailing in her wake. To have this woman in the middle of such a suffer fest out there crushing people and smiling all the way...

Single, childless women are the only women who report that they have the time and freedom to pursue interests, ambitions, and hobbies at the same rate as married heterosexual men do.

Society' consists mostly of women. Women carry on most of its processes, therefore women are its makers and masters, they are responsible for it, that is the general belief. We might as well hold women responsible for harems--or prisoners for jails. To be helplessly confined to a given place or condition does not prove that one has chosen it; much less made it. No; in an androcentric culture "society," like every other social relation, is dominated by the male and arranged for his convenience.

So many men in my life have tried to “fix me”; they viewed me as a “fiery” being who is in need of taming

Some critics of trans people have told us that we shouldn’t feel this pain of being denied the legitimacy of our own selves; gender is, of course, just a social construct. I wonder if these people also tell widows not to bother grieving their husbands, because marriage is also just another social construct.

Personally, I mistrust all handsome men. The superficial pleasures of this life come too easily to them, and they seem to walk the world as though they themselves were personally responsible for their own good looks. I don't mind a woman being pretty. That's different. But in a man, I'm sorry, but somehow or other I find it downright offensive.

Punishment [is] applied like a rabbit's foot, with as little regard to its efficacy.

Quoting Samuel Johnson: "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

She'd been taught that pants were inappropriate for girls because they were immodest [...] If women's pants were suggestive, men's were equally so, and they revealed a great deal more of what was underneath them. There was almost always a bulge--you couldn't help but notice it--and if the pants were tight, you could see practically everything. And the way men were always drawing attention to it! Touching and scratching themselves with total unselfconsciousness, as if they were alone and not in public. She'd even seen Aidan do it a few times, absent-mindedly. And yet no one accused men of being improper or of encouraging sin by reminding women of what hung between their legs. She looked at herself in the mirror, irritated suddenly by the double standard. This was how her body was made. The fact that it was well made and encased in a pair of blue jeans didn't mean she was inviting anything.

She had a theory that the fear of getting in trouble was what made her not as good a programmer and that, in fact, it was all linked to testosterone, and that was why there were more guy programmers than women. It was a very hazy theory, and she didn't like it, but she had pretty much convinced herself it was true, although she couldn't bear to think of sharing it with anybody, because it was a lot better to think that there were social reasons why girls didn't usually become code monkeys than to think there were biological reasons.

She wanted to hold on to the rosy candlelight glow of romance, rather than have to deal with the bright, sometimes glaring day-to-day life with another person. And who could blame her?

Shooting Willoughby carrying Marianne up the path. ... Male strength -- the desire to be cradled again? ... I'd love someone to pick me up and carry me off. Frightening. Lindsay assures me I'd start to fidget after a while. She's such a comfort.

Significantly, in future feminist movement we will spend less time critiquing patriarchal marriage bonds and expend more effort showing alternatives, showing the value of peer relationships which are founded on principles of equality, respect, and the belief that mutual satisfaction and growth are needed for partnerships to be fulfilling and lasting.

[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!" My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!

Six men control almost all the media in the United States--book publishing, magazines, television, movie studios, newspapers, and radio. They are not friendly toward feminism, which has almost disappeared from the surface of our society. You will almost never see a feminist column on an op-ed page, a feminist article in a magazine, or newspaper, actual (not satirized) feminist ideas on television or in the movies. Only magazines & radio controlled by feminists--and these are few and not well-funded--offer information on the feminist perspective. This might be understandable if feminism were a wild-eyed manic philosophy. But it is a belief, a politics, based on one simple fact: women are human beings who matter as much as men. That is all that feminism claims. As human beings, women have the right to control their own bodies, to walk freely in the world, to train their minds and bodies, and to love and hate at will. Only those who wish to continue to coerce women into a servant/slave class for men cannot accept this principle.

Some men are so indoctrinated that they sincerely believe that other than cooking and cleaning the only thing that a woman can do better than them is being a woman.

Some of these stories, it is understood, are not to be passed on to my father, because they would upset him. It is well known that women can deal with this sort of thing better than men can. Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic. Men, for some mysterious reason, find life more difficult than women do. (My mother believes this, despite the female bodies, trapped, diseased, disappearing, or abandoned, that litter her stories.) Men must be allowed to play in the sandbox of their choice, as happily as they can, without disturbance; otherwise they get cranky and won't eat their dinners. There are all kinds of things that men are simply not equipped to understand, so why expect it of them? Not everyone shares this believe about men; neverthetheless, it has its uses.

Some people will say, “Oh, but women have the real power, bottom power.” And for non-Nigerians, “bottom power” is an expression in which I suppose means something like a woman who uses her sexuality to get favors from men. But “bottom power” is not power at all. Bottom power means that a woman simply has a good root to tap into, from time to time, somebody else’s power. And then of course we have to wonder when that somebody else is in a bad mood, or sick, or impotent.

Some women think being arrogant, selfish, bitter and looking down on others are qualities of being an Independent, strong, powerful and successful business women. No matter how high you are in life. Never look down on others and never forget humanity.

Some women have become far too proscriptive of other women's pleasures and private arrangements, and the definition of feminism has become ideologically overloaded.

So much time lost, so much of my childhood gone, because nobody every asked the right questions.

So, no, this conversation is about gender. Some people will say, "Oh, but women have the real power: bottom power." (This is a Nigerian expression for a woman who uses her sexuality to get things from men.) But bottom power is not power at all, because the woman with bottom power is actually not powerful; she just has a good route to tap another person's power. And then what happens if the man is in a bad mood or sick or temporarily impotent?

So think how this might alter the memory of The Matrix: In some protracted reality, film historians will reinvestigate an extremely commercial action movie made by people who (unbeknownst to the audience) would eventually transition from male to female. Suddenly, the symbolic meaning of a universe with two worlds—one false and constructed, the other genuine and hidden—takes on an entirely new meaning.

So, we may wreck people simply to validate ourselves. We may wreck them because we’re jealous. We may wreck them because we fear the sight of public suffering, or because, well, everyone else hates them, so they must have done something to deserve it. Maybe. But then, there’s my favorite theory: Maybe we wreck people because they’re women.