Quotes About Cultural norms

America's a civilized country. More or less.

there was no beatnik movement in Germany because there were now no traditions to revolt against;

In Egypt, where my research is focused, I have seen plenty of trouble in and out of the citadel. There are legions of young men who can't afford to get married, because marriage has become a very expensive proposition. They are expected to bear the burden of costs in married life, but they can't find jobs.

In India, it's a matter of fact that a girl child is seen as a liability. Probably the only expectation is that you grow up to a presentable young woman who can get a decent spouse.

I will never understand how so many young women can go out in the freezing cold wearing so little clothing.

The stigma of being an unmarried mother was something we can't comprehend today. It was not uncommon that you'd go off somewhere to have your child, then give it up for adoption.

I mean, who made up all the rules in the culture? Men-white male corporate society. So why wouldnt a woman want to rebel against that?

The better class of Briton likes to send his children away to school until they're old and intelligent enough to come home again. Then they're too old and intelligent to want to.

All really nice girls wonder when men don't try to kiss them. They know they shouldn't want them to and they know they must act insulted if they do, but just the same, they wish the men would try.

In the society of ladies, want of sense is not so unpardonable as want of manners.

Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.

Whatever their relative valuation of the single and married states, most societies in history made sharp distinctions between those who married and those who remained single: They were seen as mutually exclusive ways of life, with different legal rights and social obligations.

Acting is kind of gay. It makes you soft. You got all these people combing your hair and putting a coat over your shoulders when you're cold. I don't want a coat over my shoulders!

There are certain practices that may be historically acceptable to some people but that have no place in our culture.

When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.

In England, we have such good manners that if someone says something impolite, the police will get involved.

I had unwittingly crossed a line. Not only was Hikari-chan an outcast, but she was also a half-breed, fathered out of wedlock by an American GI. It was all too much for Auntie Oima, who couldn't contain her fear that I would be contaminated by association. Keeping my reputation unsullied was one of her major preoccupations.

Yoli, she said, I'm just saying that apologies aren't the bedrock of civilized society. All right! I said. I agree. But what is the bedrock of civilized society? Libraries, said Elf.

status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth.

Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a holiday in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over.

Women are told for so long that our feelings—our internal sensations of pain, pleasure, joy, sadness, or anger—are too much, or wrong, or bad. So eventually we can't stop thinking and thinking about these problems, trying to think them out, but we stop feeling our feelings about them.

The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men's institutions and institutional power.

The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.