Best 487 quotes in «sexism quotes» category

The attractiveness of a woman to a man is based in limitation and immobilization. Feeders like women so fat, they can't move, and depend on him for the simplest things. Men like women who are young, or have low self-esteem, so he can convince her she is lucky someone gave her the privilege of being acknowledged or used for sex. Men like; high heels, so she can't run. Tight clothes, so she can't move. Youth, so she doesn't know better. Hair, artificial nails, and make-up, to prevent her from doing basic enjoyable things. And this is what they call, "femininity". The entire concept is rooted in misogyny and control.

The attitudinal changes we’ve seen in recent decades regarding racism, sexism, and homophobia are real, but can encourage simplistic optimism about additional progress.

The biased use of pronouns serves to perpetuate the culturally based myth that men are perpetrators and women are victims. This myth is extremely damaging to the millions of male victims of sexual and physical abuse who live unacknowledged by our society.

The characters so many Bollywood actresses portray are ultimately flat, uncomplicated, two-dimensional stock characters that typically range between the girl-next-door and the diva. They may be flawed in small ways, but ultimately lack nuance, conform to and reinforce cultural expectations of a wholesome but ultimately submissive Indian women. The likability of these flat and boring characters hold the actresses' off screen reputations in good stead but reinforce the very norms that imprison and render so many Indian women vulnerable to disrespect and sexism.

The chowdry, or burqa -- the Saudi, North African, and Central Asian version of the head, face, and body shroud -- is a sensory deprivation isolation chamber. It is claustrophobic, may lead to anxiety and depression, and reinforces a woman's already low self-esteem. It may also lead to vitamin D deficiency diseases such as osteoporosis and heart disease. Sensory deprivation officially constitutes torture and is practiced as such in the world's prisons.

The connection between our archaic system of punishment and our androcentric culture is two-fold. The impulse of resistance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest natural origin, is expressed more strongly in the male than in the female. The tendency to hit back and hit harder has been fostered in him by sex-combat till it has become of great intensity. The habit of authority too, as old as our history; and the cumulative weight of all the religions and systems of law and government, have furthermore built up and intensified the spirit of retaliation and vengeance. They have even deified this concept, in ancient religions, crediting to God the evil passions of men. As the small boy recited; 'Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord'--'I will repay.

The decent man and the lover holds back even when he could obtain what he wishes. To win this silent consent is to make use of all the violence permitted in love. To read it in the eyes, to see it in the ways in spite of the mouth's denial, that is the art of he who knows how to love. If he then completes his happiness, he is not brutal, he is decent. He does not insult chasteness; he respects it; he serves it.

The ease with which prostitution is presented as an acceptable choice for women dismisses the psychological trauma that actually seems to be not the occasional, but the inevitable, result of selling sex.

The fact is, rape is utterly commonplace in all our cultures. It is part of the fabric of everyday life, yet we all act as if it’s something shocking and extraordinary whenever it hits the headlines. We remain silent, and so we condone it…Until rape, and the structures – sexism, inequality, tradition – that make it possible, are part of our dinner-table conversation with the next generation, it will continue. Is it polite and comfortable to talk about it? No. Must we anyway? Yes.” ‘To protect our children, we must talk to them about rape

The force of inertia acts in the domain of psychics as well as physics; any idea pushed into the popular mind with considerable force will keep on going until some opposing force--or the slow resistance of friction--stops it at last.

The experiences of a prostitute may be discounted by many women as untypical of normal experience, but there is a resonance to Angela's words as she looks at a society that has successfully told many women that there can be something liberating about working in the sex industry.

The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.

The grace and understanding for the familial choices of married women is a given. The humanity of single moms comes with asterisks, ridicule, and judgmental questions.

The imperative is to better oneself not through any intellectual or emotional growth, but through physical remaking. Such media encourage young girls to believe that good looks rather than good works are at the centre of the good life. What makes these messages particularly attractive to young women is that they constantly return to the language of empowerment and opportunity.

The implications of such marginalization are profound. The insights about sexist and racist biases... are important because information organizations, from libraries to schools and universities to governmental agencies, are increasingly reliant on being displaced by a variety of web-based "tools" as if there are no political, social, or economic consequences of doing so.

The history of hysteria is a history of the relation between the colonizing father and the colonized devalued other.

The insidious reasons for a brown girl’s self-loathing won’t be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations—and what they mean about your worth—might not dawn on you while you’re playing cricket in the sand. What’s at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards.

The lack of a husband was, for some applicants, a selling point. I imagine many of my readers are aware of the awkward position in which governesses often find themselves -- or, rather, the awkward position into which their male employers often put them, for it does no one any service to pretend this happens by some natural and inexorable process, devoid of connection with anyone's behaviour.

the Men, biased by custom, prejudice, and interest, have presumed boldly to pronounce sentence in their own favour, because possession empowered them to make violence take place of justice. And the Men of our times, without trial or examination, have taken the same liberty from the report of other Men. (...) If a Man could thus divest the partiality attach'd to this self, and put on for a minute a state of neutrality, he would be able to see, and forced to acknowledge, that prejudice and precipitance are the chief causes of setting less value upon Women than Men, and giving so much greater excellence and nobility to the latter than to the former. In a word, were the Men Philosophers in the strict sense of the term, they would be able to see that nature invincibly proves a perfect equality in our sex with their own.

the many absurd notions the Men are led into by custom: Tho' there is none more absurd, than that of the great difference they make between their own sex and ours. Yet it must be own'd that there is not any vulgar error more antient or universal. For the learned and illiterate alike are prepossest with the opinion that Men are really superior to Women, and that the dependence we now are in, is the very state which nature pointed out for us.

The men on the show have it easy, in part because men on TV have uniforms: There’s the jacket, in black, blue, or gray. There’s the shirt, the pants. I can never tell whether Tom is gaining or losing weight beneath his boxy suits. He always looks the same. Tom also has the benefit of being Tom, a decorated veteran of the restaurant kitchen. Like so many chefs, he is practiced at the taste-of-this, taste-of-that eating regimen. I’m the one who has to look like a glorified weathergirl, with formfitting dresses and all, which, don’t get me wrong, I love—at least until I don’t.

The method that is required is not one of correlation but of liberation. Even the term “method” must be reinterpreted and in fact wrenched out of its usual semantic field, for the emerging creativity in women is by no means a merely cerebral process. In order to understand the implications of this process it is necessary to grasp the fundamental fact that women have had the power of naming stolen from us. We have not been free to use our power to name ourselves, the world or God. The old naming was not the product of dialogue- a fact inadvertently admitted in the genesis story of Adam’s naming the animals and the women. Women are now realizing that the universal imposing of names by men has been false because partial. That is, inadequate words have been taken as adequate.

The mainstreaming of the sex industry has coincided with a point in history when there is much less social mobility than in previous generations. No wonder, then, if the ideal that the sex industry pushes – that status can be won by any woman if she is prepared to flaunt her body – is now finding fertile ground among many young women who, as Phil Hilton says, would never imagine a career in, say, politics.

The Men who cannot deny us to be rational creatures, wou'd have us justify their irrational opinion and treatment of us, by descending to a mean compliance with their irrational Expectations. But I hope, while Women have any spirit left, they will exert it all, in shewing how worthy they are of better usage, by not submitting tamely to such misplaced arrogance.

The more stories I heard, the more I tried to talk about the problem. And yet time and time again I found myself coming up against the same response: Sexism doesn't exist anymore. Women are equal now, more or less. You career girls these days have the best of all worlds - what more do you want? Think about the women in other countries dealing with real problems, people told me - you women in the West have no idea how lucky you are. You have "gilded lives"! You're making a fuss about nothing. You're overreacting. You're uptight, or frigid. You need to learn to take a joke, get a sense of humor, light up... You really need to learn to take a compliment.

The message sent by this policy is that if women are to be accepted into the exclusive ranks of men, then they have to look like men: buttoned up, stuffy, and no-nonsense. As if to show a little cleavage, to highlight a curvaceous figure, or to in any way appear feminine would discount, discredit, and disqualify them. I strongly disagree with this idea. I feel that women should wear clothes that suit their bodies rather than forcing themselves into unflattering men's suits and that it is feminist to make a wide range of women's clothes acceptable business attire.

The most cursory examination of even the most progressive organs of information reveals a curious inability to recognize women as newsmakers, unless they are young or married to a head of state or naked or pregnant by some triumph of technology or perpetrators or victims of some hideous crime or any combiniation of the above. Women's issues are often disguised as people issues, unless they are relegated to the women's pages which amazingly still suvive. Senior figures are all male; even the few women who are deemed worthy of obituaries are shown in images from their youth, as if the last fourty years of their lives have been without achievement of any kind. If you analyse the by-lines in your morning paper, you will see that the senior editorial staff are all older men, supported by a rabble of junior females, the infinitely replacesable 'hackettes'.

The notion that we should promote “happy” or “humane” exploitation as “baby steps” ignores that welfare reforms do not result in providing significantly greater protection for animal interests; in fact, most of the time, animal welfare reforms do nothing more than make animal exploitation more economically productive by focusing on practices, such as gestation crates, the electrical stunning of chickens, or veal crates, that are economically inefficient in any event. Welfare reforms make animal exploitation more profitable by eliminating practices that are economically vulnerable. For the most part, those changes would happen anyway and in the absence of animal welfare campaigns precisely because they do rectify inefficiencies in the production process. And welfare reforms make the public more comfortable about animal exploitation. The “happy” meat/animal products movement is clear proof of that. We would never advocate for “humane” or "happy” human slavery, rape, genocide, etc. So, if we believe that animals matter morally and that they have an interest not only in not suffering but in continuing to exist, we should not be putting our time and energy into advocating for “humane” or “happy” animal exploitation.

The penis is always depicted as sufficient in itself, the genital equivalent of the Eye of Sauron.

There are aspects of traditional femininity, from home-making to empathy, that should belong to men too. If we move away from biological determinism we enter a world with more freedom, not less, because then those behaviours traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity could become real choices for each individual.

The prediction of false rape-related beliefs (rape myth acceptance [RMA]) was examined using the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (Payne, Lonsway, & Fitzgerald, 1999) among a nonclinical sample of 258 male and female college students. Predictor variables included measures of attitudes toward women, gender role identity (GRI), sexual trauma history, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. Using linear regression and testing interaction effects, negative attitudes toward women significantly predicted greater RMA for individuals without a sexual trauma history. However, neither attitudes toward women nor GRI were significant predictors of RMA for individuals with a sexual trauma history." Rape Myth Acceptance, Sexual Trauma History, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Shannon N. Baugher, PhD, Jon D. Elhai, PhD, James R. Monroe, PhD, Ruth Dakota, Matt J. Gray, PhD

The problem with the 'masculinity crisis' is not that women have excelled too much and therefore created a crisis for men, but that we have such a stein inability to let go of what it has traditionally meant to be a man...As long as we perpetuate the myth that men have inherent qualities that make them more suitable than women for certain types of work, the shifting nature of the economy (and women's attainment of better jobs) is going to continue to be interpreted as a crisis of masculinity.

There are many who think in one syllable, who say, 'women don't dress to please men--they dress to please themselves--and to outshine other women.

There are some animal advocates who say that to maintain that veganism is the moral baseline is objectionable because it is “judgmental,” or constitutes a judgment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism and a condemnation that vegetarians (or other consumers of animal products) are “bad” people. Yes to the first part; no to the second. There is no coherent distinction between flesh and other animal products. They are all the same and we cannot justify consuming any of them. To say that you do not eat flesh but that you eat dairy or eggs or whatever, or that you don’t wear fur but you wear leather or wool, is like saying that you eat the meat from spotted cows but not from brown cows; it makers no sense whatsoever. The supposed “line” between meat and everything else is just a fantasy–an arbitrary distinction that is made to enable some exploitation to be segmented off and regarded as “better” or as morally acceptable. This is not a condemnation of vegetarians who are not vegans; it is, however, a plea to those people to recognize their actions do not conform with a moral principle that they claim to accept and that all animal products are the result of imposing suffering and death on sentient beings. It is not a matter of judging individuals; it is, however, a matter of judging practices and institutions. And that is a necessary component of ethical living.

There are some feminist-inspired commentators who have charted society from the point of view of gender, often brilliantly, but there are many more clinging on to the old concepts, especially in politics, social policy and academia. There has been a collective reluctance to submit the whole area to scrutiny, and a widespread refusal to see this talk of crisis as anything other than sexist fearmongering. Instead of accepting that the old 'truths' of feminism are due for an overhaul, numerous attempts are made to breathe life into the old concepts and politics. This is somewhat worrying since women who think like this now have more influence than ever before in many western governments.

There are some however more condescending, and gracious enough to confess, that many Women have wit and conduct; but yet they are of opinion, that even such of us as are most remarkable for either or both, still betray something which speaks the imbecility of our sex. Stale, thread-bare notions, which long since sunk'd with their own weight; and the extreme weakness of which seem'd to condemn to perpetual oblivion; till an ingenious writer, for want of something better to employ his pen about, was pleased lately to revive them in one of the weekly * papers, lest this age should be ignorant what fools there have been among his sex in former ones. To give us a sample then of the wisdom of his sex, he tells us, that it was always the opinion of the wisest among them, that Women are never to be indulged the sweets of liberty; but ought to pass their whole lives in a state of subordination to the Men, and in an absolute dependance upon them. And the reason assigned for so extravagant an assertion, is our not having a sufficient capacity to govern ourselves. It must be observed, that so bold a tenet ought to have better proofs to support it, than the bare word of the persons who advance it; as their being parties so immediately concern'd, must render all they say of this kind highly suspect.

There can have been no doubt in Eleanor's mind as to what was expected of her as a wife. In her day, women were supposed to be chaste both inside and outside marriage, virginity and celibacy being highly prized states. When it came to fornication, women were usually apportioned the blame, because they were the descendants of Eve, who had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, with such dire consequences. Women, the Church taught, were the weaker vessel, the gateway to the Devil, and therefore the source of all lechery. St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "To live with a woman without danger is more difficult than raising the dead to life." Noblewomen, he felt, were the most dangerous so fall. Women were therefore kept firmly in their place in order to prevent them from luring men away from the paths of righteousness. Promiscuity--and its often inevitable consequence, illicit pregnancy--brought great shame upon a woman and her family, and was punishable by fines, social ostracism, and even, in the case of aristocratic and royal women, execution. Unmarried women who indulged in fornication devalued themselves on the marriage market. In England, women who were sexually experienced were not permitted to accuse men of rape in the King's court. Female adultery was seen as a particularly serious offence, since it jeopardized the laws of inheritance. Men, however, often indulged in casual sex and adultery with impunity. Because the virtue of high-born women was jealously guarded, many men sought sexual adventures with lower-class women. Prostitution was common and official brothels were licensed and subject to inspection in many areas. There was no effective contraception apart from withdrawal, and the Church frowned upon that anyway: this was why so many aristocratic and royal bastards were born during this period.

There is a need for promoting women's sexual agency in today's society, because if it wasn't an issue, terms such as 'female sexual empowerment' would be made redundant. The fact that we merely have this vocabulary is indicative of that.

There is a great difference between a gift given freely, and one that's meant to tie you to a man.

There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground.

There is oppression that shouldn't exist. There is a struggle for freedom all the time. There are very serious dangers: the species may be heading toward extinction. I can't see how anybody can fail to have an interest in trying to help people become more engaged in thinking about these problems and doing something about them.

There’s a general sense now that children’s rights, children’s needs, children’s wants and desires have taken on too prominent a place in our family lives. That we’ve over indulged them and now have to tighten the reins. The backlash is, at base, against ourselves — against a form of boomer and postboomer parenting that many agree has gone off the rails. But the targets of that backlash — its victims — are children. 'People as individuals and in societies mistreat children in order to fulfill certain needs through them, to project internal conflicts and self-hatreds outward, or to assert themselves when they feel their authority has been questioned,' Young-Bruehl wrote. We often use children as pillars for our narcissism, she said, and, in particular, tend to use them to provide salve for our narcissistic wounds. The more that we’re wounded — and, I think it’s fair to argue that almost all of us have been wounded in the devastating economic downturn of the past several years — the more angrily we make our demands. The more adults feel 'beleaguered and without power,' she noted, the more rage they vent at their kids for not making them feel valued, respected, even loved. Young-Bruehl noted that the concept of childism can — and should — force us to think differently about the whole range of parent behavior ranging from spanking to child abuse, just like the acknowledgment of sexism in society led us decades ago to think differently about rape. With a heightened understanding of prejudice against women, rape came to be seen less as an outgrowth of unrestrained male libido and more as a perverse manifestation of the abuse of male power: incest too, soon afterward, came to be seen in that light. Her extrapolation from sexism to childism teaches, then, that we can’t simply think of freakish acts of child abuse — like the case of the 9-year-old Alabama girl run to death by her stepmother and grandmother as punishment for eating a candy bar — as entirely isolated crimes. We have to think of them in a context of prejudice against children — and of diffuse adult feelings of impotence and rage — that is widespread enough that it’s all too easy for an unbalanced parent to cross the line between discipline and abuse.

There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. How am I to put this together with my human life, my intellectual life, my solitude, my transcendence, my brains, and my fearful, fearful ambition? I failed miserably and thought it was my own fault. You can't unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and anti-matter; they are designed to not to be stable together and they make just as big an explosion inside the head of the unfortunate girl who believes in both.

There should be a public outcry about what happened to me and other women in the name of our government! But history has shown “the customs of society and laws of the State allowed it to crush my aspirations and barred me from the the pursuit of almost every object worthy of an intelligent, rational mind.”45 What law has the right to entrust the interest of myself and my children into the hands of such an evil bunch of men? I did not occupy my rightful place in 1976. 45. (paraphrased from Gurko, Miriram, The Ladies of Seneca Falls; the Birth of the Women's Rights Movement, 1974.

There's no being out too late in Whileaway, or up too early, or in the wrong part of town, or unescorted. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and become sexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and there are no strangers -- the web is world-wide. In all of Whileaway there is no one who can keep you from going where you please (though you may risk your life, if that sort of thing appeals to you), no one who will follow you and try to embarrass you by whispering obscenities in your ear, no one who will attempt to rape you, no one who will warn you of the dangers of the street, no one who will stand on street corners, hot-eyed and vicious, jingling loose change in his pants pocket, bitterly bitterly sure that you're a cheap floozy, hot and wild, who likes it, who can't say no, who's making a mint off it, who inspires him with nothing but disgust, and who wants to drive him crazy.

The reproductive abilities of women and other female animals are controlled and exploited by those in power (usually men) and both are devalued as they age and wear out—when they no longer reproduce. Cows, hens, and women are routinely treated as if they were objects to be manipulated in order to satisfy the desires of powerful men, without regard to female's wishes or feelings.

There's not a place in the whole world where everyone isn't willing--no, eager--to give a girl up to a man.

There’s something different about when a female directs versus a male. The level of maturity, mutual respect, and energy that you get from a female director is so different. I’ve worked with male directors who aren’t good, and no one says anything about it, but then we had one female director who was kind of all over the place and everyone complained. It’s so gendered. I feel safer when working with a female director because I know it’s from a female gaze.

There's something infinitely fascinating or fatal about a woman behind the wheel.

There were elements of Mad Men at Newsweek, except that unlike the natty advertising types, journalists were notorious slobs and our two- and three-martini lunches were out of the office, not in...Kevin Buckley, who was hired in 1963, described the Newsweek of the early 1960s as similar to an old movie, with the wisecracking private eye and his Girl Friday. "The 'hubba-hubba' climate was tolerated," he recalled. "I was told the editors would ask the girls to do handstands on their desk. Was there rancor? Yes. But in this climate, a laugh would follow.