Best 238 quotes in «gender roles quotes» category

Fear (...) that has no relation to capabilities or even to reality is epidemic among women today. Fear of being independent (that could mean we'd end up alone and uncared for); fear of being dependent (that could mean we'd be swallowed by some dominating "other"); fear of being competent and good at what we do (that could mean we'd have to keep on being good at what we do); fear of being incompetent (that could mean we'd have to keep on feeling shlumpy, depressed, and second class). (...) Phobia has so thoroughly infiltrated the feminine experience it is like a secret plague. It has been built up over long years by social conditioning and is all the more insidious for being so thoroughly acculturated we do not even recognize what has happened to us. Women will not become free until they stop being afraid. We will not begin to experience real change in our lives, real emancipation, until we begin the process - almost a de-brainwashing - of working through the anxieties that prevent us from feeling competent and whole.

Finding The Man. Keeping The Man. Not scaring The Man, building up The Man, following The Man, soothing The Man, flattering The Man, deferring to The Man, changing your judgement for The Man, changing your decisions for The Man, polishing floors for The Man, being perpetually conscious of your appearance for The Man, being romantic for The Man, hinting to The Man, losing yourself in The Man. 'I never had a thought that wasn't yours.' Sob, sob. Whenever I act like a human being, they say, 'What are you getting upset about?' They say: of course you'll get married. They say: of course you're brilliant. They say: of course you'll get a PhD and then sacrifice it to have babies. They say: if you don't, you're the one who'll have two jobs and you can make a go of it if you're exceptional, which very few women are, and if you find a very understanding man. As long as you don't make more money than he does. How do they expect me to live all this junk?

For Archie was an expert in dividing the affairs of life into men's business and women's business. An empty cupboard and a full plate were the man's business, a full cupboard and an empty plate the concern of the woman.

Foremost, we need a paradigm shift in cultural attitudes towards gender stereotypes. Everyone—both men and women —needs to step outside of their comfort zone and analyze how these misconceptions are clouding our judgment on a subconscious level. Our strategic mindset should not be thwarted by having these misconceptions seep into our every-day interactions, create artificial divisions between the genders, or prescribe a path rooted in tradition over reason.

For every woman you know who has been given substandard treatment by her parents, used by her friend or boyfriend, abused by her husband, discriminated by her employers and ridiculed by society, I know a man who has been burdened with family responsibility since childhood, humiliated by his girlfriend, bullied by his employers, pushed by society and harassed by his wife. Everybody is fighting their own battle.

For me, the times that I dressed provocatively had been empowering. It felt good. It's those times that I felt comfortable in my own skin. Like really, really comfortable. And let's face it, body self-esteem issues are a hurdle many women struggle to overcome. So when a person tears a woman down for how's she's dressed, they are tearing her down at a moment she feels at the top of her game. That's where the real shame is—not in how a woman is dressed, but in the desire to minimise her self-worth and empowerment. That's not kind, or well meaning. It's rude and cruel.

From the moment we take our first breath (and sometimes even before that, what with sonic imaging technology), the cry “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” ushers us into this world. As we grow into adulthood, everything about us grows and matures as we grow and mature. Everything except gender, that is. We’re supposed to believe that our gender stays exactly the same as the day we were born. Our genders never shift, we’re told. The genders we’re assigned at birth lock us onto a course through which we’ll be expected to become whole, well-rounded, creative, loving people—but only as men or as women. From where I stand, that’s like taking a field of racehorses, hobbling the front legs of half of them and the rear legs of the other half, and expecting them to run a decent race: it doesn’t work. Gender, this thing we’re all seemingly born with, is a major restraint to self-expression. That doesn’t make sense to me. Why should we be born with such a hobble? Does that make sense to you?

For whatever reason, none of the women in this house cooked. He’d had to learn in order to survive.

For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off!

From time immemorial we’ve been cleaning up after male messes. When a man does it for a woman, it’s called being rescued. When a woman does it for a man, it’s housework.

Gender identity is our internal response to a social construction that attempts to make a connection between a person’s biological makeup and their eventual role in society.

Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable.

Gender roles suck," says Swift Fox. Then you should stop playing them, thinks Toby.

Gender is a shell game. What is a man? Whatever a woman isn't. What is a woman? Whatever a man is not. Tap on it and it's hollow. Look under the shells: it's not there.

Gender roles are so deeply conditioned in us that we will often follow them even when they chafe against our true desires, our needs, our happiness.

Gender schemas... simplify the world around us, but they also reproduce problematic discrimination.

Given our socialization into dependency, women are also poor risk takers. (...) We avoid new situations, job changes, moves to different parts of the country. Women are afraid that if they should make a mistake, or do "the wrong thing", they'll be punished. Women are less confident than men in their ability to make judgments, and in relationships will often hand over the decision-making duties to their mates, a situation which only ensures that they will become less confident in their powers of judgment as time goes by. Most shockingly of all, women are less likely than men to fulfill their intellectual potential. (...) In fact, as women proceed into adulthood, they get lower and lower scores on "total intelligence", owing to the fact that they tend to use their intelligence less and less the longer they're away from school. Other studies show that the intellect's ability to function may actually be impaired by dependent personality traits. (...) Confidence and self-esteem are primary issues in women's difficulties with achievement. Lack of confidence leads us into the dark waters of envy. (...) envy must be recognized, seen, and fully comprehended; it can too easily be used as a cover-up for something that is far mroe crucial to women's independence - our own inner feelings of incompetence. These must be dealt with - directly - if we are ever to achieve confidence and strength.

He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins.

He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was built like that she'd fall on her face. She said, If we don't let her have one like all the other girls she'll feel singled out. It'll become an issue. She'll long for one and she'll long to turn into one. Repression breeds sublimation. You know that. He said, It's not just the pointy plastic tits, it's the wardrobes. The wardrobes and that stupid male doll, what's his name, the one with the underwear glued on. She said, Better to get it over with when she's young. He said, All right but don't let me see it. She came whizzing down the stairs, thrown like a dart. She was stark naked. Her hair had been chopped off, her head was turned back to front, she was missing some toes and she'd been tattooed all over her body with purple ink, in a scrollwork design. She hit the potted azalea, trembled there for a moment like a botched angel, and fell. He said, I guess we're safe.

How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say...you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not written by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very well for you to say, pointing to the streets and squares and forests of the globe swarming with black and white and coffee-coloured inhabitants, all busily engaged in traffic and enterprise and love-making, we have had other work on our hands. Without our doing, those seas would be unsailed and those fertile lands a desert. We have borne and bred and washed and taught...the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are...at present in existences, and that...takes time.

How come when girls play with gender it's a sign of strength and when boys play with gender it's a sign of weakness?

I didn't want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home. We didn't wait for Dad. It was his job now to catch up with us.

Girls don't want men to be quiet and gentle, I'm told. If you're not panting with impatient lust they think you're not interested.

Guys, you don't have to act "manly" to be considered a man; you are a man, so just be yourself. You don't have to prove your masculinity to anyone.

Guys, you don't have to act "manly" to be considered a man; you are a man, so just be yourself. Don't let society make you believe you have to prove your masculinity to anyone because you don't. You are you and you are worthy, full stop.

Have you thought about the evolutionary psychology of it? Men have evolved to be strong worker homestead-keepers, while women - with babies to protect from harm - have had to become aggressive and violent. The few partial patriarchies that have ever existed in human society have been very peaceful places.

He should be very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of him if he didn't, she answered. They disagreed always about this, but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Andrew whatever he did.

How could I explain that it was not all playacting? That I felt more of the male spirit within me than the female - a fierceness that whittled me down to a sharpened spear of ambition. And as a boy, I was applauded, not punished, for such raw energy. It was not beaten out of me for my own good, or worn away by women's chores.

I did everything Fred did, only backwards and in high heels.

I do believe our culture is doing a bad job raising boys. The evidence is in the shocking violence of Paducah, Jonesboro, Cheyenne, and Edinboro. It's in our overcrowded prisons and domestic violence shelters. It's in our Ritalin-controlled elementary schools and alcohol-soaked college campuses.

I do criticise the narrative that excludes women and continually puts men in the forefront.

I don’t think male gamers are more or less sexist than non-gamers. Sexism is unfortunately still a large problem in our culture overall. It is not unique to gaming. Have a pretty girl walk by a construction site in a mini-skirt and you’ll see that. For anyone to imply that male gamers are somehow inherently more sexist than the rest of society smacks of insincerity or naiveté.

Eyebeam: What do you mean, I have “male answer syndrome”? Sally: It’s the compulsion to provide an answer to any question, even if it means resorting to pure speculation. Eyebeam: I knew that… Sally: It’s a very widespread phenomenon. Beth: I wonder what causes it? Eyebeam: Cause? Well, society has chosen male role models who always exhibit total control… If a male says “I don’t know”, he’s admitting to conversational helplessness and failing to live up to that societal standard… Sally: Pretty pitiful, huh? Eyebeam: Damn! Beth: …And I always thought they learned it all in “shop”.

... I felt that it was not so different from all the other advice handed out to women, to girls, advice that assumed being female made you damageable, that a certain amount of carefulness and solemn fuss and self-protection were called for, whereas men were supposed to be able to go out and take on all kinds of experiences and shuck off what they didn’t want and come back proud. Without even thinking about it, I had decided to do the same

I like being a girl. I just want to be the one who says what that means.

If we don't place the straitjacket of gender roles on young children, we give them space to reach their full potential.

He drank some more wine, feeling he was about to commit a forbidden act. A transgression. For a man should never go through a woman's handbag. . .

I know nothing of being a wife, but I have learned much about the running and maintenance of an estate. It may be that you will find my manner too straightforward for your tastes, but, my lord, it is just that - my manner. Would that I die before I give up that part of me.

I like a bit of spunk in a lady

I like domestic stuff,"he tells me, his voice falling to a sudden romance-novel huskiness. So fuck a butler. Men, it bears repeating, are so weird.

Men, perhaps, might nourish both heart and mind, but for a woman there could be no such luxury... How readily the rules of female behavior--gentleness, acquiescence, ever-mindfulness--turn to shackles. So, she thought, there must be declared a new kind of virtue: one that made the throwing off of such rules, and even such deceit as this required, praiseworthy.

Men succeed. Women get married. Men fail. Women get married. Men enter monasteries. Women get married. Men start wars. Women get married. Men stop them. Women get married.

[If we pursue] a positive economic future...this will entail facing up to the fact that our 'masculine' militarism is the most energy-intensive entropic activity of humans, since it converts stored energy directly into waste and destruction without any useful, intervening fulfillment of basic human needs.

I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence. I have watched men order at dinner, ask for shitty wine and extra bread with a confidence I could never muster, and thought, What a treat that must be. But I also consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can't articulate them. It's a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it. "I know that when I am dying, looking back, it will be women that I regret having argued with, women I sought to impress, to understand, was tortured by. Women I wish to see again, to see them smile and laugh and say, It was all as it should have been.

I know girls aren't supposed to tell, but I've got to tell—just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later—I wish I'd told him.

Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.

I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy.

I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.

In a study of children's toy and television preferences, researchers Isabelle Cherney and Kamala London found that, when left alone, half of boys ages five through thirteen picked "girl" and "boy" toys equally - until they thought they were being watched. They were especially concerned about what their fathers would think if they saw them. Over time, boys' interests in toys and media become more rigidly masculinized and codified, whereas girls' stay relatively open ended and flexible.

Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl––pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!––who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!