Quotes About Gender

I've become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue.

Men will never ovulate, gestate, lactate, menstruate, or go through menopause. Women who identify as men might, but that thing is different.

When we say that men are taller than women, the words -on average- are implied. Pointing to the existence of your friend Rhonda, who really is quite tall, does not negate the statistical truth that, on average, men are still taller than women.

Men were taught to have so much pride, to go out into the world and make something of themselves. This Depression was deeply humiliating. Since women were taught that they were worthless, they took poverty and hardship less personally.

A girl's desire is like a pretty butterfly. And a man's desire is like a butterfly net. His desire captures and kills her. He turns her into an object to be pinned on a corkboard. I don't think I'm interested in the tyranny of the couple. I'm more interested in what a person does when they're forced to be by themselves.

There is no real dignity in any of these costumes. If I'm a maid, I do what the owner of the house tells me to do. If I'm a nurse, I do whatever the doctor tells me to do. What are we as women, other than barnacles that attach themselves to higher life forms in some pathetic attempt to clean up messes? Tidy up what men have left behind- make the world a lovelier, better place for men. I would like to play a part in which I don't have a superior.

My dad had told me that if you stayed out after nine and you were a girl it meant that you wanted to have sex with whoever was passing by. He told me that if I got raped after nine o'clock the courts would probably say I deserved it.

Frauen stünde gelehrt sein nicht? Die Wahrheit zu sagen, nützlich ist es: Es steht Männern so wenig wie Fraun.

Girls are so much nicer than men (apart from Tom-but homosexual).

Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi

I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass thirty are 'out.' Huh. As if.

Certainly, I am writing as a 21st-century woman, so I am much more inclined to view her as a three-dimensional woman. I think we keep coming up with this stubborn problem of a woman being judged by her appearance rather than her accomplishments. We are much more inclined to ask: was Cleopatra beautiful?

I was always longing to do, emotionally and physically, what my male counterparts always got to do. I just felt envious, every time I saw a movie that I was in awe of, and it was usually a male lead. And those kinds of roles weren't available. They just weren't being written.

I've written extensively on Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and seen up close how those women, who were born when the country hoped for a male heir, made their way as leaders.

Turkey is a complex country. Most readers are women, of all generations, and they are passionate about books. However, the written culture is mostly patriarchal. In general, men write; women read. I would like to see this pattern changing. More women should write novels, poems, plays, and hopefully, more men will read fiction.

I'm difficult to cast. In comedy, if there's a female character, usually written by a bloke, she's either the ditsy good-looking one, or the sexually aggressive one. I never fit into those.

People are so used to men playing these amazing roles that they sometimes can't even see that there is no reason it has to be a man other than it was written that way - this is true for diversity in general.

My family was always wondering why I ended up playing people who were mentally ill, insane, downtrodden, and a little crazy. I think what they don't understand is that most female parts are written basically as hysterical women.

I've wondered if 'Harry Potter' would have been as big if it was 'Harriet Potter.' Now that I've written a screenplay - and raising a son in particular - I'm looking at story content and realizing how limited women are onscreen.

If a man is talking in the forest, and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?

I never took a path that was the usual path for someone in my generation. A lot of the women who I went to school with, in those days, it was still the track of becoming a teacher, becoming a nurse. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I didn't go down that path.

You see, feminists don't really like to define the Patriarchy. They prefer to keep it nebulous and amorphous so they can conveniently blame it for everything that goes wrong in their lives. Not being paid enough? Patriarchy! Not getting a promotion? Patriarchy! Too many catcalls? Patriarchy! Too few catcalls? Patriarchy!

We're not ashamed of the old stuff, but when you look back at the posters it does make you think: 'My God, six men and one woman.' Weirdly we didn't say 'that's wrong' and no one else did, either. It's been a really quick shift in the landscape of telly, which is brilliant.

There's nothing masculine about being competitive. There's nothing masculine about trying to be the best at everything you do, nor is there anything wrong with it. I don't know why a female athlete has to defend her femininity just because she chooses to play sports.