Quotes About Gender

What is being called the UN 'gender architecture' is more like a shack. Women need a bigger global house if equality is ever to become a reality.

Our very strength as lesbians lies in the fact that we are outside of patriarchy our existence challenges its life.

You see," said Margaret kindly, "we all know that men have more power than women, and I suppose the time has come for Norman to pass beyond you. He would not be cleverer than any one, if he could not do more than a girl at home.

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it.

Its time we woke up," pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. "Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who's to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what's more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her?

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? . . . So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . .

Those "feminine charms" we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process.

We seemed to think that if there were men we could fight them, and if there were only women—why, they would be no obstacles at all. Jeff, with his gentle romantic old-fashioned notions of women as clinging vines. Terry, with his clear decided practical theories that there were two kinds of women—those he wanted and those he didn't; Desirable and Undesirable was his demarcation. The latter as a large class, but negligible—he had never thought about them at all.

They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs. MacAvelly suggested. "Why should we?" answered her friend. "We don't make 'em—nor God—nor nature. Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by some men one day and changed by some more the next?" (from According to Solomon)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Nowhere else in the whole range of life on earth, is this degradation found--the female capering and prancing before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not hers.

There are the two of you - the two sexes- to love and help one another. It must be a rich and wonderful world

Only women there—and children," Jeff urged excitedly. "But they look—why, this is a CIVILIZED country!" I protested. "There must be men.

This led me very promptly to the conviction that those "feminine charms" we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process.

When I see them knit,' Terry said, 'I can almost call them feminine.' 'That doesn't prove anything,' Jeff promptly replied. 'Scotch shepherds knit --always knitting.

Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.

In exact proportion as women grow independent, educated, wise and free, do they become less submissive to men-made fashions.

The adjectives and derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and derogatory when applied to human affairs; "effeminate"--too female, connotes contempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas "emasculate"--not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no feminine analogue. 'Virile'--manly, we oppose to 'puerile'--childish, and the very world 'virtue' is derived from 'vir'--a man.

This led me very promptly to the conviction that those "feminine charms" we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process. But Terry came to no such conclusion.

There are many who think in one syllable, who say, 'women don't dress to please men--they dress to please themselves--and to outshine other women.

The only thing they can think of about a man is Fatherhood!" said Terry in high scorn. "Fatherhood! As if a man was always wanting to be a father!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform.

O que me levou à convicção de que os "charmes femininos" que apreciamos não são nada femininos, mas apenas reflexos da masculinidade — desenvolvidos para nos agradar porque elas precisam nos agradar —, nem um pouco essenciais ao desempenho.