Quotes About Gender

Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever.

Porque não contestam as mulheres a soberania do macho? Nenhum sujeito se coloca imediata e espontaneamente como não essencial; não é o Outro que, definindo-se como Outro, define o Um; ele é posto como Outro pelo Um definindo-se como Um. Mas para que o Outro não se transforme no Um é preciso que se sujeite a esse ponto de vista alheio. De onde vem essa submissão na mulher?

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.

People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.

But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly. Let but the future be opened to her, and she will no longer be compelled to linger in the present.

If so few female geniuses are found in history, it is because society denies them any means of expression.

If I want to define myself, I first have to say, "I am a woman"; all other assertions will arise from this basic truth. A man never begins by positing himself as an individual of a certain sex: that he is a man is obvious.

Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands - two equally harmful disciplines.

I could not help but comment to my distinguished audience that every question asked about Sartre concerned his work, while all those asked about Beauvoir concerned her personal life.

A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man.

Woman] is simply what man decrees; thus she is called the sex, by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex -- absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute -- she is the Other.

Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, ans scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth.

We will not let ourselves be intimidated by the number and violence of attacks against women; nor be fooled by the self-serving praise showered on the "real woman"; nor be won over by men's enthusiasm for her destiny, a destiny they would not for the world want to share.

And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth?

woman is an eminently poetic reality since man projects onto her everything he is not resolved to be.

modern woman is everywhere permitted to regard her body as capital for exploitation.

Kad?n? götürüp mutfaÄŸa ya da süslenme odas?na kapat?yor, sonra da ufkunun darl???na ÅŸa??yoruz; kanatlar?n? kesiyoruz, sonra, uçam?yor diye yak?n?yoruz.

Woman has ovaries and a uterus; such are the particular conditions that lock her in her subjectivity; some even say she thinks with her hormones. Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also contains hormones and testicles. He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with the world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman's body an obstacle, a prison, burdened by everything that particularizes it.

How will the fact of being women have affected our lives? What precise opportunities have been given us, and which ones have been denied? What destiny awaits our younger sisters, and in which direction should we point them?

biology alone cannot provide an answer to the question that concerns us: why is woman the Other? The question is how, in her, nature has been taken on in the course of history; the question is what humanity has made of the human female.