Quotes About Cultural norms

There must be a solid and valid reason as why women in ancient times were not given freedom and kept in veiled condition.

When I was in my 20s, I think there was a lot of really arcane male behaviour that wasn't even questioned.

When I was young, all the books were about a Mary Jane and the football player and the prom and ending up with the quiet guy and making your mom happy.

I grew up at a time with androgyny in the 1980s; it was easy to pass under the radar as a gay may.

We've been socialised and told that there is a way to describe people, and that way is by their gender or their sex.

I'm of the opinion that gender is a social construct.

Since I had been little, everybody wanted me to get married.

I was a girl who was told that girls should not have their voice. I was from a conservative Muslim family where they only think about their daughters getting married.

In America, funny women are allowed to be glamorous and funny, but over here, you're not.

As young as 10 I started fancying boys. It's a common experience but I just wished I wasn't gay up until the age of 18 or 19.

Within our culture, every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy, basically.

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.

A woman can laugh and cry in three seconds and it's not weird. But if a man does it, it's very disturbing. The way I'd describe it is like this: I have been allowed inside the house of womanhood, but I feel that they wouldn't let me in any of the interesting rooms.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

They say women and music should never be dated.

As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life's work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women.

It is essential that God created men and women to be one, as it is said in the first chapters of the Bible. So I think even if our culture is against marriage as essential form of relations between human beings, between women and men. I think our nature is always present, and we can understand it if we will understand it.

The most obvious thing I do is I don't wear a burqa, and I'm definitely not oppressed. Plus, I'm quite obviously an independent thinker, which means as soon as I walk on stage, I dispel a lot of those stereotypes.

There's not a lot of room for thinking in popular culture; there's not a lot of room for being conflicted.

Parties are not built up by deportment, or by ladies' magazines, or gush.

Through my observations, it became clear that most of society's rules and customs are rooted in fear and superstition!

Americans like fat books and thin women.

With a shrug, she adjusted her gloves. "If the gentleman has a daughter, no one blames him for it. They blame his wife for failing to give him an heir. If he gets a son, they congratulate him.