Quotes About Social norms

I haven't yet learned to call you by your first name, and Miss Nin sounds so stiff, like an invitation to tea.

It is the men who take the women to the circus, and they go to hear the men laugh!

And mother, handmaiden to the Lord, says wear this, do that, don't do that, don't say that, sit, close your legs, wear white gloves and don't get them dirty, girls don't climb trees, girls don't run, girls don't, girls don't, girls don't; wasn't nothing girls actually did do of any interest whatsoever. It's when they get you a doll that pees that you recognize the dimensions of conspiracy, its institutional reach, its metaphysical ambition.

standard forms are sometimes called conventions, conventions are mightier than armies, police, and prisons. each citizen becomes the enforcer, the doorkeeper, an instrument of the Law, an unfeeling guard punching his fellow man hard in the belly.

According to the prevailing double standard, the young man who was equally responsible for the pregnancy was not condemned for his actions. It was her fault, not their fault, that she got pregnant. This was in that period of time when there wasn't much worse that a girl could do. They almost treated you like you had committed murder or something. —

A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.

Bad behavior is seen as something to be noticed, reported on, and analyzed, whereas people who do not lie and cheat are taken for granted.

Should a black woman carrying her "madam's" white baby travel in the "whites only" or the "nonwhites" section of the train? Or would a Japanese visitor who used a "whites only" public toilet be breaking the law? Or what was a bus conductor to do when he ordered a brown-skinned passanger to get off a whites-only bus and the passanger refused, insisting that he was a white man with a deep suntan?

You can go to thousand schools, and it's always the same. Because the standard rule of thumb is: There's the girls over here, and there's the boys over there. Separated. Which direction [do I go]?

I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.

That's what makes life so hard for women, that instead of thinking that this is the way things are, we always think it's the way we are.

I'm excited for people to realize that I'm 25 years old and not a teenager anymore... even though I still look 18 and can't get into a bar to save my life!

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.

I get that you despise convention, but you shouldn't let it get to the point that you're incapable of saying, 'Fine, thanks,' just because it isn't an original, brilliant utterance. You can't be unconventional in every aspect of life. People will get the wrong idea.

Now the dressing-room full of RSC hierarchy. Suddenly Trevor Nunn pushes his way through and 'Trevs' me. I've heard a lot about this 'Trevving', but never had it done to me. From what I'd heard, a 'Trev' is an arm round your shoulder and a sideways squeeze. But this 'Trev' is a full frontal hug, so complete and so intimate that the dressing-room instantly clears, as if by suction. I'm left alone in the arms of this famous man wondering whether it's polite to let go.

Shame is an ornament to the young; a disgrace to the old.

Australia has a thing where apparently it's fine for me to dress up as an Asian woman. No one has questioned that.

Here's my questions to anybody when they talk about comedy. When you are with your friends, who don't judge you, what do you say? And if that's appropriate to say with your friends, why is it not appropriate anywhere else. Like, I hate those people who judge me and are hypocrites.

When guys talk about sex, eyebrows don't get raised. It's different for girls.

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.

The gender question has always obsessed me.

Kids today don't want to get married. Too many of their friends have been married and divorced already. They just don't believe in it.

Trevor and I had been going to awards ceremonies for years. People knew. Look, if you don't get married by age 65, people know something's up.

Our culture has created two almost irreconcilable descriptions of a 'good woman.' The first is the individual achiever; the second, the self-sacrificing domestic goddess.