Quotes About Gender

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

For a male artist, people instantly assume they write their own music, but for women, they assume it's all manufactured.

I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.

One of my favorite stories is, I got fired off 'Bionic Woman' in part because I was told that I don't know how to write women, and they promptly replaced me with a guy. What I find lovely about the story is how unaware the white dude who said that to me was when he said it.

The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I'm just gonna tell her, 'Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they'll have to hire you, they can't really fire you, and you don't have to produce that much. It'll be awesome.'

Why does 'writer' have no gender, but 'actor' has a gender? What is that?

What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.

Long before the writer Gillian Flynn popularized the concept of the insufferable 'Cool Girl,' who doesn't exist except in men's fervent fantasies, Hugh Hefner dreamed her, undressed her, and put her in his magazine.

Now I would say I'm absolutely a feminist writer.

It's hard enough to be a lady writer. Doubly hard to be a funny lady writer.

Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual.

If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.

I always do a lot of work around characters to make them real people because, oftentimes, they really are a sliver of a person. Even with truly wonderful writers, women characters are there to emote, and they're often incredibly chaste or worthy. Or they're a 'different type of woman', which is the worst.

The notion of having your muse was not something that was built for women originally. That's not to say women don't have muses. I get muses in terms of actors or writers who inspire me, so I understand the concept.

I've been trying to find women writers for my staff for a while now and I have three women on my staff and three guys so it's pretty equal. I don't know why that is. It's been the same thing for a while. It's hard for female comedians to stand out. That's weird. That's a shame.

Over the years, the writers at DC Comics softened Wonder Woman's powers in ways that would have infuriated Marston. During the 1960s, she was hardly wondrous at all, less a heroic warrior than the tomboyish girl next door. It was no longer clear whether she was meant to empower the girls or captivate the boys.

I think it's not an accident that you don't have that many Asian American women writers who are breaking out. I don't think it's an accident that you don't have that many Asian American writers, either women or men. I don't think that immigrants are encouraged to become artists. That's very gendered and racialized and ethnicized.

Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power.

In 1986 we were trying to help women get in print, stay in print, and come to the attention of booksellers and libraries. At that time, books by men mystery writers were reviewed seven times as often as books by women.

That's my main complaint with Murakami: that he writes these complex males and then really static women.

What I find weird is that the term 'chick lit' is used to encompass literally anything a woman writes about relationships. It's the assumption that because you're female, you must write in a certain way. I don't understand why that is - it is a bit demeaning.

Nobody ever has a problem if a man writes a woman. I wanted to be able to say, 'Well, I can write your men and your action, too. You don't just have to give me the love scenes, which I don't even think are my strong suit.'

Everyone has this idea of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin: the woman being pretty and prancing around while the guy writes all the songs.

But there was the mirror in which I would glimpse his handsome form, because mirrors don't lie about men, only women.