Quotes About Gender

Girls were meant to paint screens, sob out ballads, and play the pianoforte, not see through the masks of polite society. "It

How could I explain that it was not all playacting? That I felt more of the male spirit within me than the female - a fierceness that whittled me down to a sharpened spear of ambition. And as a boy, I was applauded, not punished, for such raw energy. It was not beaten out of me for my own good, or worn away by women's chores.

Men impinged upon women without thought; another male right in a world of male rights.

She was to be a fine young man, at least in the cut of her clothing. Her manner, however, was not so easily stitched into masculinity. According to his lordship, she still needed to deepen her voice, be less careful with the placement of her arms and legs, and now also take up more space. No easy task since she had spent most of her life learning to control any excess gesture or movement.

That seems highly unlikely, Lady Helen. Two weak elements do not make a strong whole. We would prefer that you have a male Terrene. I am sure you are most intelligent, but you are still a woman and therefore reliant upon emotion rather than logic, and subject to your sensibilities as are all your sex. You cannot be expected to have the same strength, strategic mind or logic competence as a man. A male Terrene would counter that deficit.

You're a woman,' said Ogo. Ayndra spat, 'Ha!' and then started laughing. She turned her back on him again, and pulled an undertunic over her head. Through the wool she said, 'And what of it?' 'I . . . I thought you were a boy.' 'I never told you so.' 'No, but . . . I thought . . . there's a rule of no women in the camp.' 'No women in the camp. Is there a rule of no women in the army?

As a system, patriarchy encourages men to accept male privilege and perpetuate women's oppression, if only through silence.

Male experience is what patriarchal culture uses to represent human experience, even when it is women who most often live it.

Women's potential to disrupt patriarchy and make men vulnerable is why it's so easy for women to make men feel foolish or emasculated through the mildest humor that focuses on maleness and hints at women's power to stop going along with the status quo.

A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male dominated, male identified, and male centered. It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women.... If men occupy superior positions, it's a short leap to the idea that men must be superior...[and that] whatever men do will tend to be seen as having greater value.

The more powerful a woman is under patriarchy, the more 'unsexed' she becomes in the eyes of others as her female cultural identity recedes beneath the mantle of male-identified power and the masculine images associated with it. With men the effect is just the opposite: the more powerful they are, the more aware they are of their manhood. In other words, in a patriarchal culture, power looks sexy on men but not on women.

He viewed her as a farmer views a prize cow: she was someone who would give him what he wanted – namely, a large family – and he demanded she respect his need for utter subservience in the relationship

In our culture it is a woman's body which is considered important while it is a man's mind or his activities which are valued. A woman is sexy. A man is successful.

Women hate each other in science. You know why? Because the few that are around were trained by men. They survived by being twice as good and twice as competitive and twice as badass as the guys.

Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman.

No man would ever use both hands to hold a cup of tea, unless he was one day's march from the South Pole, with one chum dead in the snow, dogs all eaten and six fingers about to drop off. And even then he would look around the empty tent to check, in case anybody thought it was girly.

For men, life is a highway. For women it is a roadmap.

Oh, Topher," Veronica said with even less patience than before. "Only a man would think that regrets were a liability.

but because in the default of the gender hierarchy, for some reason, the man's need as usual came first.

All these years I'd thought being a spy was challenging. Turns out, being a girl is the tricky part.

He's a boy, Kat. I hate to break it to you, but we are fundamentally different.

that history almost always repeats itself. And it is almost always written by men.

I was thirteen when I saw my mother die, when I told my story. When I started "having a hard time," as my grandfather likes to say. Would they have locked me up if I'd been thirty? If I'd been a boy? It's a question I do not dare to ask.

For how easy life must be for him. I wish I were bigger, stronger. Male. I wish I could make people stop worrying about me and my so called frailness.