Popular quotes about Gender! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
... that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today.
Judith ButlerIf you are trying to live with and maintain ascendancy over same-gender attractions, the best way to do that is to have groups that define their members in terms other than same-gender attractions.
Dallin H. OaksGenitive is a funny word because it means "from," but it also is the gender in European languages for objects: the masculine, feminine, and neuter. So if you have a genitive present, there's room for everybody to fit in. I just did a project in Vienna about rock, paper, scissor; you change the gender and it simply changes the whole thing. Rock is no longer a male. It doesn't function the same way.
Lawrence WeinerAs an artist, I never wanted to be fettered by gender nor recognized or defined as a female poet, musician or singer. They don't do that with men - nobody says Picasso, the male artist. Curators call me up and say, "We want your work to be in a show about women artists," and I'm like, why? For Christ's sake, do we have to attach a gender onto everything?
Patti SmithIf we agree that universities need to monitor sexual violence in various locations, and that they will require students to hew to a narrower set of rules than the wider world, how do we deal with putting these ideas into the brains of teenagers who have been schooled in the disgusting gender norms of our American culture for the previous eighteen years? This is the essential conundrum. Can we teach these relatively young dogs new tricks? I believe that we can.
Vanessa GrigoriadisIranian women are very consciously aware of gender-explicit oppression. Therefore: with so much more at stake, Iranian women have each other's back: on the street, in stores, at celebrations, everywhere.
Inga MuscioEven though I grew up in an area of England that was more conservative than my personal politics and my family's personal politics, I grew up with a lot of guy friends. There was no real difference between us. When I moved to London, it really became apparent that gender was going to make a mark. I started experiencing sexual intimidation and aggression. People coming up to women on the streets and telling them how hot they are and what they wanted to do to them. For me, that was shocking coming from a village. I thought intersexuality was a great way of exploring that shock.
Abigail TarttelinMichael J. Copps, acting FCC chairman, has denounced the lack of racial and gender diversity in the broadcast industry as 'a shameful state of affairs.' Unsurprisingly, his proposed corrective is to force the transfer of station ownership to greater numbers of minorities, who are statistically more likely to carry liberal talk shows.
David LimbaughAmerican movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.
Tom HooperIt's not my concern. It's your concern. I just keep working. I keep posing certain questions and I think there are times when people think "What happened to the Judith Butler I used to know?" or "She's not doing gender trouble. Does that mean she refuses it or she's disavowed it?" And I would say no. I have not refused or disavowed anything.
Judith ButlerYou can hardly open a newspaper without seeing that a woman has been killed by a man for clearly gender-related reasons.
Gloria SteinemThe old languages - at least the ones I know - don't have gender. They don't have gendered pronouns. There's no "he" and "she." A human being is a human being.
Gloria SteinemIf we think about sexual life for a gender life, it seems to me that we have to allow for certain kinds of changes or certain kinds of ways of reconceptualizing ourselves.
Judith ButlerIs there a gender gap in the music industry? It is true that there are more professional male music creators than female. For some reason, it's taking a lot longer in music than in literature and the visual arts to reach equilibrium. It was almost acceptable by the 19th century for female writers to be published, yet it's only in the last couple of decades, since about 1980, that historical female composers have really emerged.
Barbara HarbachFor a man to say, "I have to leave work now because I need to do something with my kids," it's sometimes viewed as a career killer. He doesn't have the right drive. So when they depart from their gender roles, they face some of the same restrictions.
Gloria SteinemIn this society these days, women are widely accepted in all kinds of cross-gender areas. So yeah, it's time!
Danica PatrickDefining and celebrating the New Father are by far the most popular ideas in our contemporary discourse on fatherhood. Father as close and nurturing, not distant and authoritarian. Fatherhood as more than bread winning. Fatherhood as new-and-improved masculinity. Fathers unafraid of feelings. Fathers without sexism. Fatherhood as fifty-fifty parenthood, undistorted by arbitrary gender divisions or stifling social roles.
David BlankenhornThe idea that feminism is a 'battle of the sexes' about blaming all men and setting up a 'gender war' is a handy, controversial media hook. But it doesn't reflect reality.
Laura BatesI think there's so many things happening, whether it's gender inequality or immigration, there's just so many issues happening around the world where not doing anything makes you guilty.
Lilly SinghAll women have a complicated relationship to beauty, but as a transgender woman it's a bit more complicated. There's a lot of pressure to appear feminine. When I was younger, I was most insecure about my size, my angular features, my feet, my hands . At the end of the day, it's about being comfortable in your own skin, and being able to walk down the street and not have people question your gender - and, for me, being perceived as a woman.
Andrej PejicDefining men as the perpetrators of all violence is a viciously immoral judgment of an entire gender. And defining women as inherently nonviolent condemns us to the equally restrictive role of sweet, meek, and weak.
Katherine DunnThe more you lecture those running the companies on how they need to give more breaks to women or other minority groups and be more open-minded to their work products and perhaps question themselves on a double standard, the more some of those people shut down to your messaging. I'm not saying it's right; I'm just saying you can very easily get labeled as someone who sees everything through a prism of race or gender or what have you. So we have to walk a fine line. It's sad but it's the truth.
Megyn KellyIndividual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts.
Bell HooksWhen I hear Obama speak he just seems really sincere and he just seems like somebody who actually has his heart and his motivation in the right place. Forget about color or race or gender or whatever, he's got his heart in the right place.
Adam YauchThe United Nations defines violence against women as any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.
UnknownWomen are expected to identify gender as a starting point. Ethnicities are expected to identify that as a location. Is it ever possible for the artist to imagine a state of absolute freedom? That was my call to arms.
Kehinde WileyNow my mom designs to resign so she runs for US senate, and now at 67 my mom just launched a new company called Women's Leadership Live, she is the cofounder and CEO, and it's all about empowering women to be successful in business however they define success. When you have a role model like that you really don't ever look at gender as an issue and it's about owning your place and taking charge of your role, regardless of what you look like.
Stephanie McMahonI do a lot with characters' sense of identity. I also like challenging stereotypes, gender roles, things like that. Give me a stereotype or a genre expectation and the first thing I want to do is stand it on its head. In the Nightrunner books I wanted to see if I could create a believable gay hero, one who wasn't someone's sidekick or a victim.
Lynn FlewellingI hope one day it won't matter who you're in love with. Gender is just a word. LOVE is beautiful. labels are for assholes. don't ever stop being yourselves.
Jeffree StarHow about we get rid of separate bathrooms for boys and girls? Gays and straights share the bathroom with zero issues. We need to put an end to the sexist pooping policies of yesterday. The only way to achieve gender equality is to start crapping in front of each other.
Daniel ToshMy theory of everything is that we are training kids to have gender bias against girls, therefore when you are an adult, you don't see it. We think it's normal.
Geena DavisAs a designer, everything is always about aesthetics mixed in with functionality and having that visual appeal. But you learn fast as a new parent with an infant that if itโs not deeply practical as well, then forget about it. Style wise, I wanted to design items that would work well in any nursery - regardless of gender.
Nate BerkusA lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.
Dan SavageI do like Canadian poetry. Christian Bรถk, Anne Carson, Carmine Starnino, and Don McKay are a few of the Canadian poets whose work has been important to me. But I'm not sure that I do see poetry as a world apart. Some of my metaphors are based in the fantastic, but I try to be true to life as I understand it. That understanding is affected by my Canadianness, my Americanness, my whiteness, my gender, my age, my education, my experience...everything about me affects my view of reality. But I try to wrestle against those partialities, not embrace them.
James ArthurIt's that deep-seeded societal gender norm that women, for some reason, aren't elite athletes, when we are. We really are. I think we fight against that a bit.
Becky SauerbrunnAh, well, do I wish that we lived in a world where gender didn't figure so prominently? Of course. Do I even think about myself as a woman when I go to make art? Of course not.
Judy ChicagoI didn't realize that I wasn't moving in a gender-equal world - I had a sense of it, but I didn't start to really see evidence of it, I think, until I hit puberty. Media even before that age is already creating all these biases.
Emma WatsonRight now, if there's a gender gap problem, it's not Ronald Reagan with women; it's with Walter Mondale with men.
Patrick CaddellStudies have been done showing that there really are gender differences, that women do bring more congeniality and compromise to the table.
Kitty KelleyI'm more concerned with the work people do than their gender. When I was younger, I was pretty judgmental. Things had to be a certain way. Now I just want to see the work. It doesn't matter who does it.
Patti SmithFeminism is rooted in racial rights and gender rights, and all of those things intersect, and to say that that's not something you can stand behind - it confuses me. I think it's a really great word.
Mackenzie DavisIt doesn't really matter what a person decides to do, or how radically a person plays with gender. What matters, I think, is how aware a person is of the options. How sad for a person to be missing out on some expression of identity, just for not knowing there are options
Kate BornsteinIf you watch [The] Search for Signs of Intelligent Life [in the Universe], or The Incredible Shrinking Woman, or 9 to 5, there is a lot of gender politics at the forefront of Lily Tomlin work, which was kind of thrilling for me to be watching as a 10-, 11-, 12-year-old kid.
Tina FeyGrowing up in a Jewish matriarchal world inside the patriarchal paradise of Salt Lake City, Utah, gave me increased perspective on gender issues, as it also did my gay brother and my lesbian sister. Our younger sister is the perfect Jewish-American wife and mother, and is fiercely proud of that fact.
Roseanne Barr