Quotes About Gender

As de Beauvoir put it, religion had given men a God like themselves--a God exclusively male in imagery, which legitimized and sealed their power. How fortunate for men, she said, that their sovereign authority has been vested in them by the Supreme Being.

For women, the cruelest state is to be denied; for men it's to be stricken with shame

Is the library all you hoped?" "It's a holy of holies," I said. And it was, but I could feel the tiny lump of anger tucked beneath my awe. A half million scrolls and codices were within these walls, and all but a handful were by men. They had written the known world.

No, the mother told her. It's too dangerous there. A small incident, but when multiplied a hundred, a thousand times in a little girl's life, she learns that she's not as capable as a boy of handling life on the edge. She learns to hang back.

afflicted with the worst female curse on earth, the need to mold myself to expectations.

the men expressed the shock of reading something geared exclusively to the feminine. It stunned them with an awareness of what women experience. They said they'd felt religiously excluded for the first time in their lives.

It was unthinkable. Unmarried daughters didn't go off to live unprotected on their own in a foreign place. They lived at home with their mothers, and when there was no mother, with their sisters, and when there were no sisters, with their brothers.

I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Was there ever a more galling verse in the Bible?

I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence Was there ever a more galling verse in the Bible?

A half million scrolls and codices were within these walls, and all but a handful were by men. They had written the known world.

Myths born in patriarchy offer a limited source of data on women. What they usually tell is how women react under patriarchy.

Glancing behind me, I saw that the few who'd remained to walk with him were women. Where were these disciples of his? The fishermen? The men? Were we women the only ones with hearts large enough to hold such anguish?

June Singer points out, when a girl is growing up, it is not taken for granted, as it is with boys, that her life and needs will be primary, that she will have access to places of authority and power like her brothers or father. What is taken for granted is that she will find her main source of fulfillment through her husband and family, that she will be secondary to them.35 A

to men in Jewish and Christian Scriptures, women rarely have speaking parts, and they are not mentioned nearly as often. If they are referenced, they're often unnamed.

In this manner I discovered that God had relegated my sex to the outskirts of practically everything

thought, If I'd been born male, dear God! the things I could have done! I longed for parity with men, the freedom and choices of men, the ability to quest without worrying about who would cook dinner or pick up the children. I longed for the power men had to name the world, for the world had been largely male defined. Even God "himself" was defined by men and envisioned in their image.

a woman, nothing existed but the domestic sphere and those tiny flowers etched on the pages of my art book. For a woman to aspire to be a lawyer—well, possibly, the world would end. But an acorn grew into an oak tree, didn't it?

Glancing behind me, I saw that the few who'd remained to walk with him were women. Where were these disciples of his? The fishermen? The men? Were women the only ones with hearts large enough to hold such anguish?

Were women the only ones with hearts large enough to hold such anguish?

One day I pulled the slender volume Children's Letters to God from a bookshelf and came upon this letter from a little girl named Sylvia: "Dear God, Are boys better than girls, I know you are one but try to be fair. Sylvia."22

we've accepted the widespread attitudes and effects of patriarchy as givens. They are so much a part of the world, we start to think that's just the way reality is. In the play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, a deceptively wise

our culture, even the culture of our faith, has helped anesthetize the feminine spirit.

And it was, but I could feel the tiny lump of anger tucked beneath my awe. A half million scrolls and codices were within these walls, and all but a handful were by men. They had written the known world.

I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.