Best 200 quotes in «masculinity quotes» category

There is one question that gnaws away at the heart of every man, and has done so since the beginning. “Why am I here?” I can’t tell you that there is an easy answer. But I can tell you part of the answer to that question, is the journey of discovering it. The other equally pressing question is “Who am I?

There it is, forming behind us: The Fat Blue Phalanx. All the smug self-satisfied maleness you can drink, and free refills at the station house. It's all I can see in cops, that patriarchal bullshit that will never yield to a contract of mutual respect. That grunting fuck-obsessed inability to deobjectify you and treat you as a person, it’s a subclass of male that will never, ever change, no matter what. There they are with their uniforms and their discipline, an abstract and codified representation of all the construction workers who ever whistled at you and there you were, too polite to pee in their toolboxes in retaliation, too polite to challenge them, walking away red-faced because the worst part of it is that you were wondering whether they were really whistling like they’d whistle at Caprice or if they were just being sarcastic and were even now laughing at you with your short skinny legs and flat ass. Besides you’re not supposed to let it get to you. You’re supposed to have a sense of humour: they do. See them waving their cocks at each other and farting? You aren’t allowed to break the rules of their society which say that you are a cold uptight lesbian bitch if you don’t like their hohoho aggressive male ways so just hold your head high from your position of moral superiority and go home and tell your boyfriend (if you have one, which I don’t) who if you’re lucky will offer to go beat them up knowing you won’t take him up on it because you know perfectly well he’d probably get his ass kicked, most of the boys you know are highly ass-kickable because they’ve been brought up nicely. They were brought up in the luxury of knowing the money power of the military-industrial complex would protect them from the dirt and the grime of uneducated testosterone. its thanx to our weak boyfriends that we have cops at all, surrogate cock and balls to maintain ‘order’, whatever that is. Or was. And where does it really leave you as a prisoner of the suburbs? Fuming over some tiny incident that the aggressors have already forgotten about, but you have the sinking feeling you've just sniffed the true underbelly and the aroma was not what you get in Calvin Klein ads. Scratch 'n' sniff, scratch 'n' sniff, peel the onion... will you ever get down to the reality of what this place is about? And I know I shouldn't brand individual cops with the big blue brush but in my mind these guys are a symbol of the whole iron-cage Boy system that makes me always a victim, no matter what I do, it's a cage I can't escape. I'm the little princess. They dominate, they aggress, they protect.

There seems to be a fear that if men are raised to be people of integrity, people who can love, they will be unable to be forceful and act violently if needed.... We see that females that are raised with the traits any person of integrity embodies can act with tenderness, with assertiveness, and with aggression if and when aggression is needed.

There was something aggressively masculine about Toloose . . . perhaps it was the look in his eye. Or the way he was holding his billiard cue. It was amazing the way a man in an embroidered coat could take on the air of a dockworker.

The structural foundations of traditional manhood--economic independence, geographic mobility, domestic dominance--have all been eroding. The transformation of the workplace--the decline of the skilled worker, global corporate relocations, the malaise of the middle-class manager, the entry of women into the assembly line and the corporate office--have pressed men to confront their continued reliance on the marketplace as the way to demonstrate and prove their manhood.

The term “FTM-Butch Border War” just sounds like an alien land of yore. How is it that the gravitational pull of my beard and low-voice should hold [my lesbian friend's] masculinity in deferential orbit? That when standing side-by-side we are supposedly read in comparison, rendering her unalterably more feminine—shorthand, in patriarchal societies, for “lesser than”? Masculinity has more than enough space to spare. But sometimes its flesh-and-blood vessels act as if we have to wound each other for it, like dogs fighting over too few scraps. Anyway, [she] and I know without speaking that in reality, right here and right now in our present moment, that she and I are two different sides of the same coin; two keys sung for the same tune." - from "Snapshots: "Sharing Space with Women," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014

This medical view of an ideal male who was insulated from pathogens was inextricably bound up with a parallel discourse about the maintenance of strong ego boundaries, a psychic investment in one’s bodily peripheries that effected a gradual closing (and, one might say, a closing off) of the male body, at once from the outer world of dangerous stimuli and from the inner world of threatening passions. Without a doubt, as Norbert Elias has shown, in the western world both men and women experienced a shift in their sense of personal boundaries during the early modern era where, amid changing social circumstances, rising thresholds of repugnance and shame were manifested among the upper-classes as a growing aversion to their own bodily functions and to the bodies of others. The changes wrought by new developments in table manners and etiquette were extended by the introduction of hygienic practices in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that endeavored to maximise the order and cleanliness of the social body while futher compartmentalising the bourgeois self as a discrete bodily unit.

This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue. We will never dismantle misogyny as long as domination is eroticized. We will also never stop racism. Nor will we mount an effective resistance to fascism, which is the eroticization of domination and subordination–fascism is in essence a cult of masculinity. Those are all huge spin-outs from the same beginning. The result is torture, rape, genocide, and biocide.

The word “repurpose” means to take an object and give it amnesia. It means to make something forget what it’s been trained to do so you can use it for a better reason. I am learning that this body is not a shotgun. I am learning that this body is not a pistol. I am learning that a man is not defined by what he can destroy. I am learning that a person who only knows how to fight can only communicate in violence and that shouldn’t be anyone’s first language. I am learning that the difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground.

This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy is to be seen as unworthy of trust.

THIS IS WHAT A MAN LOOKS LIKE. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING; HE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR; HE DESERVES NOT TO BE PHOTOSHOPPED. HE IS HUMAN, AND HE HAS BLEMISHES. HERE HE STANDS, VISIBLE. HE SEES YOU ALL, COUNTLESS INVISIBLE OTHERS LIKE HIM. THIS BODY IS ACCEPTABLE — PUBESCENT, AWKWARD, MARRED. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE INVISIBLE. WE ARE ALL GOOD ENOUGH. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR BODIES.

This was the great difference between disappointing him and disappointing somebody like my mother, or even my aunts. Masculine self-centeredness made him restful to be with.

To be a butch girl in high school, to be better at masculinity than all the men around you, and then to be punished for it!

We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak—a hard man.

To every guy who tries to say that we have already achieved equality for the sexes, if this were true, you wouldn't be told to "man up", "be a man", "stop being a p*#%y", "harden the fuck up", "toughen up", "boys don't cry", "don't be such a girl", "stop being a wimp". As long as this type of language still exists in our society, then gender equality, my friends, has in fact not been achieved after all.

To heal, men and boys must learn to feel again.

To take responsibility is painful. It is hard to admit that the reason for your situation is you. Admitting this often fuels shame. And shame is a dirty lover. Shame says, “See - I told you you weren’t good enough. You should feel horrible about this.” And when I embrace shame - an interesting thing happens. I feel bad. And then we are driven to the same wrong behaviors - porn - overeating - drugs - booze - anger - because hey make you feel better - until the shame kicks in. Getting caught in that cycle is destructive.

We drive, and I'm thinking about users and abusers, like my mom says. The time my dad swung me around by my feet and I got hurt, and how he told me to man up. Who came up with that? Who came up with all those rules and ideas about how a guy's gotta be?

To be wild, to hear the heartbeat of nature, to feel the rush of adrenal strength, to drink from the fresh air and howl at the moon – these are things that are embedded into men.

Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they chose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them.

We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for. Casual sex is a very sad cat and mouse game. The man is entrapped in his role as the sex-driven predator constantly on the hunt for new conquests, while the woman is the prey that must find her perfect combination of sexual allure and virtue, with the sexual allure being what attracts him and virtue what keeps him.

We must dare to face the way in which patriarchal thinking blinds everyone so that we cannot see that the emotional lives of boys cannot be fully honored as long as notions of patriarchal masculinity prevail. We cannot teach boys that "real men" either do not feel or do not express feelings, then expect boys to feel comfortable getting in touch with their feelings.

When I see a word held hostage to manhood I have to rescue it. Sweet trembling word, locked in a tower, tired of your Prince coming and coming.

We've all got scars. Words that were said to you when you were young... Things you saw that you should never have seen... Lifelong consequences from stupid decisions, whether ours or someone else's... Men, make sure that they are SCARS not WOUNDS. If you keep finding that you are sensitive about certain things, held back by the same unreasonable fears, or that you keep making the same bad decisions repeatedly, or that you have habits you just can't quit.... chances are good that you have a wound that never healed right. It's not a scar, it's a wound or an infection. Get it cleaned out and get it healed. If that means you need to get some professional help, to talk to a trusted friend about it, or whatever - the only person that can make the decision to get that part of your life healed is you. A scar shows you've been through the process. An overly sensitive attitude, a destructive habit, a fearful mindset just show that you have a wound you need to work on.

We’ve all heard that women tolerate sex to get relationships, while men tolerate relationships to get sex. That is simply not true—but there is something truly chilling about the fact that most Americans believe it’s true and use this formula as a guide for behavior.

When a man and woman have sexual relations, who gets the most out of the deal? The man, or the woman? Since we live in a society full of tricks, the man thinks he gets more out of the encounter. But what do men really get out of it? The reality is that women have the potential to get more out of it than the man, especially if the man's seeds have accumulated a certain amount of value.

When looking at the attributes associated with masculinity in the US, the same researchers identified the following; winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, dominance, playboy, self-reliance, primacy at work, power over women, disdain for homosexuality, and pursuit of status.

Who can give a man this, his own name?

Whether they regard themselves as pro- or antifeminist, most women want men to do more of the emotional work in relationships. And most men, even those who wholeheartedly support gender equality in the workforce, still believe that emotional work is female labor. Most men continue to uphold the sexist decree that emotions have no place in the work world and that emotional labor at home should be done by females.

You become a man not when you reach a certain age, but when you reach a certain state of mind.

Wild fury and righteous anger stirs up in the hearts of men. Driving them to action, to battle, to fight. Hopefully, it’s tempered with the code, with the order. Fury must be kept in check, and be used to propel justice, to free the oppressed, to protect.

With President Trump, however, the masculine archetype seems to have regressed. Trump is less the strict father than the petulant child: a boyish figure who rejects advice, shirks discipline and refuses to be beholden to behavioral norms. He is rarely even seen as the patriarch of his own family; as Melania Trump said after he was caught boasting about assaults on tape, “Sometimes I say I have two boys at home.

Women destroy me. I allow them to.

You ask about the effects of my work on others. If I may wax ironical, that is a masculine questions. Men always want to be terribly influential, but I see that as somewhat external. Do I imagine myself being influential? No. I want to understand. And if others understand - in the same sense that I have understood - that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like feeling at home.

Why did you leave all the others? he asked me. They weren’t soft enough. —redefining masculinity

Why thank you, little lady,' Dan answers, sounding more like John Wayne than me. He flexes his muscles. 'Let me strap on my manly board and show you what I can really do.

You can hardly say of your soul what sex it is. But if you pay close attention, you will see that the most masculine man has a feminine soul, and the most feminine woman a masculine soul.

You can’t expect to achieve a dream if you don’t push yourself harder. Whether it’s strength training, or a sales goal at work, or anything. You’ve got to push through past what you think you can do. And when you do it, it builds confidence in you, and your next task will have a momentum to it. The confidence gained makes your output exponential. You have already done something you thought was impossible. Now you are waiting for the next impossible task.

You can’t live without purpose. You exist for a reason. You didn’t just “poof” into the world, meant to suck in oxygen, and eat and poop, make a kid or two, and then disappear.

Your feelings come from your thoughts, as you master your mind, you'll need to matter feelings too. If an emotion starts to take control… your best weapon is truth. It's ok to feel. Not okay to be controlled by feelings. Don't follow your heart. Follow truth.

You might even ask, 'Who is this guy to be telling me how to live my life?' And my answer is simple. I’m the guy that is figuring it out just like you. I can’t guarantee that I’m ahead of you in the race - but I do feel it’s my responsibility to help people get into the race, and to stay on track in the race. I know I don’t have it all together. I know that I’m not an expert. I know that I’m not perfect. But I can’t sit by and let men live 'lives of quiet desperation.' (To quote Thoreau) Let’s do this together. Take the flint. Take the steel. Strike. And we will reignite our lives together.

You didn’t get here by accident. The condition of your life, for better or for worse is here because of a very reason. Learning this lesson was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

You have ONE job as a parent. Raising a responsible human being. If you don't set high expectations for that human being - the world will have yet another crappy human being. Give them chores. Force them to do them

Your dream is the destination that you plug into your GPS. And once you know your destination, you plot your course to get there. Sometimes, as you travel, you change your destination. Maybe I wanted to visit California, but I fell in love with Wyoming on the way.

You telling everyone what to do does not make you the boss. You doing everything you told yourself to do makes you the boss.

Bisexuality is almost a necessary factor in artistic production; at any rate, the tinge of masculinity within me helped me in my work.

I'm very empathic to the construction of masculinity within our culture and how we build these identities up.

I just think that culturally, women - we're all human beings - but at least we don't have our masculinity to prove.

I'll be the judge of my own manliness.

I’m confident enough in my masculinity and sexuality that I can say that Ryan Gosling is just dreamy in this movie.