Quotes About Gender

All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.

I don't want a sharp chick who quotes Kerouac; I just want to hear my old lady say, "Get up and fix the toilet, it's still making noise.

The general lack of awareness of gender differences disadvantages both girls and boys, but it disadvantages them in different ways. When teachers don't understand these gender differences, the results too often is a school where the boys think that creative writing is for girls and the girls think physics is for guys. When teachers understand these gender differences they can break down gender stereotypes.

Girls spend slightly more time playing with the doll than with the truck. Boys on the other hand typically spend great deal more time playing with the truck rather than with the doll.

As a society and as parents we face a challenge without precedent. We have to help girls and boys make a transition to a gendered adulthood, to adult life as women and men in a culture in which women can do anything, including being rocket scientists, and men can do anything, including staying home to raise a baby. We have to find ways to value and cherish gender differences without restricting freedom of opportunity.

Some boys are happier being more feminine than masculine although they still have masculine elements. Some girls are happier being more masculine than feminine although they still have feminine elements. The explosion in the proportion of people who believe that they are trance gender may well represent the failure to understand that gender is two-dimensional not one-dimensional.

The notion of the opposite sex assumes that you are either masculine or feminine. It assumes a one dimensional continuum: feminine - masculine. But researchers have known for more than forty years that that notional is just isn't accurate.

Don't pressure your daughter or your son to conform to gender stereotypes. If your son wants to take ballet classes, cheer him on. If your daughter wants to study marshal arts and computer programming, sign her up. Teach your son that there are all kinds of man in the world including men who excel at ballet and macrame. Teach your daughter that there are all kinds of women in the world, including women who are masters of karate and computer programming.

But biological sex, male or female, seems to run deeper than sexual orientation, gay or straight. Gay men whether masculine or feminine have more in common with straight men then they have in common with women.

Gender is important, gender is complicated and gender is meaningful. Know your child and celebrate the kind of girl or boy your child is becoming.

A subtle but pervasive bias has infiltrated gender studies over the past decade. A bias that allows saying unkind things about the majority under the guise of being kind to the minority. But I think the bias is bias.

If there are 3 girls in a class with 11 boys those 3 girls may feel like they don't belong and no amount of preaching about gender equity is going to change that. But if the class is just girls you may get more girls to sign up and the girls will be more comfortable and will likely gain more competence.

The proposition that the alphabet has hindered women's aspirations and accomplishments seems, at first glance, to be antithetical to historical facts.

Alas, woman is faithful as long as she loves, but you demand that she be faithful without love and give herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel then, woman or man?

Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through man's passions, nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.

Yes, I am cruel—since you take so much delight in that word-and am I not entitled to be so? Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through his passion nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.

Be then my slave, and know what it means to be delivered into the hands of a woman.

Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.

Who was I now—woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.

If I'm not with a butch everyone just assumes I'm straight. It's like I'm passing too, against my will. I'm sick of the world thinking I'm straight. I've worked hard to be discriminated against as a lesbian.

I remembered what it was like to walk a gauntlet of strangers who stare—their eyes angry, confused, intrigued. Woman or man: they are outraged that I confuse them. The punishment will follow. The only recognition I can find in their eyes is that I am "other." I am different. I will always be different. I will never be able to nestle my skin against the comfort of sameness.

More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: Are you a man or a woman?

Are you with women who only bleed monthly on their cycles?

Wie kann ein Mann ein Ding lieben, das, ihm zum Trotze, auch denken will? Ein Frauenzimmer, das denket, ist ebenso ekel als ein Mann, der sich schminket. Lachen soll es, nichts als lachen, um immerdar den gestrengen Herrn der Schöpfung bei guter Laune zu halten.