Quotes About Cultural norms

The demands of having to be 'masculine' are as damaging to men as the demands of having to be 'feminine' are to women. I wish we could all agree just to wash it all away. Begin again.

I can't stand men crying. It's wrong, isn't it? Their faces aren't made for it, they kind of crumple; it's painful to watch.

Tradition is a pretty poor excuse for perpetrating stereotypes.

Thousands of years and many civilizations have defined a marriage as the union between one man and one woman. With few exceptions, those civilizations that did not follow that perished.

It's a very difficult thing for people to accept, seeing women act out anger on the screen. We're more accustomed to seeing men expressing rage and women crying.

I think that women are raised to believe that they're supposed to want certain things, and so you feel like you're supposed to apologize when you don't want those things.

As a woman, you're expected to behave and model yourself in a certain way, but that's not right for everybody.

Some girls are just cut out to be housewives, drive SUVs and sing in the shower as opposed to being superstars.

Some kids go walking in the mountains, but I just went to the cinema. So when I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, even though this wasn't normal for Arab kids or anyone in the town, they were sort of expecting it and were very supportive.

I've always been acutely aware of differences and the way you are supposed to act if you want to be popular.

People might be surprised because I settled for an arranged marriage, but that's what's chosen for us.

I got down off the stool and stood waiting. She might or might not blow me down. I didn't particularly care. Once in a while in this much too sex-conscious country a man and a woman can meet and talk without dragging bedrooms into it. This could be it, or she could just think I was on the make. If so, the hell with her.

why do I want to appear to be drinking more than I am?' 'Make it a habit. Men in their cups are fools, more often than not. And it can be wise to look the fool at times.

One merely had to imagine a woman candidate doing what Trump did, from lying to leering, to understand what latitude masculinity possesses. No advanced step take by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public, Susan B. Anthony said in 1900. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized. Or as Mary Beard put it last year, We have never escaped a certain male cultural desire for women's silence.

In 1963, Betty Friedan published a landmark book, The Feminine Mystique, in which she wrote, "The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities—is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.

Sure they're animals. You think you just found out a new principle? Sometimes I wonder just how naive you really are. The French lords and ladies used to screw after the guillotinings. The old Romans used to stuff each other during the gladiatorial matches. That's entertainment, Garraty. It's nothing new.

This being Europe, I felt it safe to kiss her on the cheek.

Sex as civic duty? I thought, somehow, this was very Dutch. Also, sort of adorable.

But people don't on the whole fart raucously in Mozart [concerts]. So I suppose a few vestiges of the thin crust of civilization which prevents our descent into utter barbarism are just about holding. ~Vigilance, by Julian Barnes

If I were just in trousers, somehow I could go out into the world. It would make no difference whether I was naked from the waist up and my feet bare just as long as I had trousers on. Otherwise if you go walking around the streets without trousers, no matter how new your shoes and how elegant your coat, it's enough to raise a big hue and cry. Enlightened society is a kind of trouser society.

We seem to live in a world where you have to walk around grinning like a loon. I can't understand all the fuss about Mona Lisa painting, everyone wondering why she's not smiling, if she's depressed or heartbroken. No, she was just normal! Emotions are always extreme these days: you either have to be crying with laughter or crying in pain. No wonder water levels are rising. It's not global warming, it's all the tears from crying.

You might be a redneck if the tobacco chewers in your family aren't just men.

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.

Lastly no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for nothing that this "ignoble tobagie" as Michelet calls it, spreads all over the world.