Quotes About Norms

The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be

It was not because they [Harris and Klebold] were deviants, but rather because they were overconformists to a particular normative construction of masculinity, a construction that defines violence as a legitimate response to a perceived humiliation.

Women become aunties as soon as they are married while men become sir. And this happens not just in India but everywhere in the world, including Brazil.

The girls show more skin these days, but I think, generally, they behave the same way as when I was growing up.

Since, beginning with the same premise and examining the same body of anthropological evidence, she now arrives at a slightly different sexual role for women, one might seriously question the basis upon which she decides the roles a woman should play -- and finds it so easy to change the rules of the game from one decade to the next.

Until 1604 the age of consent was twelve for a girl, fourteen for a boy.

Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and finds fault with him who escapes it at whichever end.

Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?

The sensitive boy who reacts deeply to stimuli and exhibits emotional sensitivity is perfectly normal. However, there's something wrong with a society that shames males who do not act in a tough, aggressive, and emotionally repressed manner—especially when such a significant portion of the population simply isn't cut out for or comfortable with these behaviors.

Neurotypical people seem to think and feel that it's okay to be rigid as long as their ideas are shared by enough people.

LAe ciscexuelLE projète sans distinction sa cissexualité sur les autres personnes, ce qui transforme la cissexualité en attribut humain considéré comme acquis. Il y a là une analogie évidente avec l'évidence hétérosexuelle.

There are, as always, social and political aspects to seeing nothing as well. Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C. found it perfectly natural to count slaves as 'nothing,' . . . Slaves, like machines today, were simply taken for granted. These days, we take for granted everything from homeless people sleeping in the street to telephones and computers. We have learned to renormalize these things as part of 'nothing.' Whatever is standard becomes effectively invisible.

It`s remarkable the truly stupid things people can do because it`s expected of them, or they think it`s expected of them.

I do housework," she said, "and I mend clothes. I'd do a proper job if I could. I'd have been a surgeon, like my father, except it's not allowed." He frowned. "It isn't?" "Of course not. Women can't be surgeons or clerks or lawyers or lecturers at Temple or merchants. There's not actually a law, but there doesn't have to be. People wouldn't stand for it.

The deviant and the conformist...are creatures of the same culture, inventions of the same imagination.

Our standards of morality are begotten of the past needs of society, but is society to remain always the same?

Today's society will ignore almost any form of public behavior except getting in the express line with two extra items.

Guys with bigger boobs than I have walk around, and they're fine. If women were to do that, they could go to jail. That's totally wrong.

Human beings are rule-following animals by nature; they are born to conform to the social norms they see around them, and they entrench those rules with often transcendent meaning and value. When the surrounding environment changes and new challenges arise, there is often a disjunction between existing institutions and present needs. Those institutions are supported by legions of entrenched stakeholders who oppose any fundamental change.

If morality is reducible to culture, then there can be no real moral progress. For the only way one can say that a culture is getting better , or progressing, is if there are objective moral norms that are not dependent on culture to which a society may draw closer.

Conventions are often surrounded with the solemn language of morality, but in fact they have little to do with it.

Fashion is a tyrant from which there is no deliverance; all must conform to its whimsical

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality

Customs have no reason; they simply are.