Popular quotes about Gender! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 5
Gender is used as a control mechanism that's just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you're free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that's the tricky part.
Kate BornsteinI've been exploring gender performativity in the Gulf since I was a teenager. I'm not a gender anthropologist, but I feel like there's an extreme binary between femininity and masculinity in the Gulf. From a young age, I knew I didn't want to be part of it. Gender is a huge gray area, and the problem with defined roles is that they cover up undefined ones.
AyshaySome trans people thought that in claiming that gender is performative that I was saying that it is all a fiction, and that a person's felt sense of gender was therefore "unreal." That was never my intention. I sought to expand our sense of what gender realities could be. But I think I needed to pay more attention to what people feel, how the primary experience of the body is registered, and the quite urgent and legitimate demand to have those aspects of sex recognized and supported.
Judith ButlerThere may be countries [where] there's no gender inequality in schooling, even in higher education, but [where there is] gender inequality in high business. Japan is a very good example of that. You might find cases in the United States where at one level women's equality has progressed tremendously. You don't have the kind of problem of higher women's mortality as you see in South Asia, North Africa, and East Asia, China, too, and yet for American women there are some fields in which equality hasn't yet come.
Amartya SenI'd say my relation to being a woman is, I mean being a woman is whatever you want because the concept of gender is not really real, you know? And so for me it's about being comfortable in myself. It's about allowing myself to express who I am in any way that I want to, whether that be through my clothing, the way I present myself to the world, whether that be through like my gender identity and my pronouns. It's just really about allowing yourself to really be expressive and creative.
Amandla StenbergThere was no real gender definition in the sense of how you treat people in those days with gender differences. You avoided them. My parents always told me that you do not make fun of anybody, and so I didn't see anything funny about it.
David C. DriskellThe 2010 global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum shows that countries with better gender equality have faster-growing, more competitive economies.
Michelle BacheletMMI brothers were very resistant to women such as Lynn Shiflet and others who emerged as leaders within the OAAU, so one of the tensions that occurred was around gender equality and gender leadership inside of Malcolm's X entourage.
Manning MarableGender equality, historically has been predominantly a women's movement for women. But I think the impact of gender inequality and how it's affecting men hasn't really been addressed.
Emma WatsonThe United States are such a large place. And there are some states and some cities where the questions of gender or sexuality would not be asked, or where scholars or academics are working in small little corners of the universities trying to raise these questions and being told that either that they're strange or not appropriate or being actively opposed. There are other places where there is very active scholarship going on. Certainly on gender.
Judith ButlerStopped as attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the form of gender; moving as a relation between people, it takes the form of sexuality. Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization of inequaltiy between men and women.
Catharine MacKinnonI'm not sure how to put this, but I didn't want things like gender transition to be, like, the money shot in talking about bodily change. The truth is that we are all changing all the time to each other. Anybody who's been in a relationship for more than a year, more than five years, knows this.
Maggie NelsonSometimes people go off in a slightly different direction of wanting to be different, of wanting to be special, of wanting to be more, and I think that those people are often - not always, but often - genuinely different in some way. Perhaps their gender orientation is not acceptable or popular, not the norm. Or, their physical design is literally, in some way, setting them apart. Or, in many cases, they feel the burden of their ordinariness so dreadfully that they strive to find some way of being unique. I think that can be a very positive thing, but it also can be negative, destructive.
Katherine DunnDining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.
M. F. K. FisherGender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.
John DarnielleGirls can be athletic. Guys can have feelings. Girls can be smart. Guys can be creative. And vice versa. Gender is specific only to your reproductive organs (and sometimes not even to those), not your interest, likes, dislikes, goals, and ambitions.
Connor FrantaSame-gender attraction did not exist in the pre-earth life and neither will it exist in the next life. It is a circumstance that for whatever reason or reasons seems to apply right now in mortality, in this nano-second of our eternal existence.
Lance B. WickmanA huge amount of what feminists are fighting for would have major positive impact for men as well as women. Take the male suicide rate, for example. In part, the problem arises from the idea that men are tough and manly, that 'boys don't cry' and it's embarrassing for them to talk about their feelings. So men are less likely to reach out for help and support with mental health issues. But that gender stereotype, which exists alongside the converse notion that women are over-emotional, 'hysterical', or 'hormonal', is one feminists are fighting hard to debunk.
Laura BatesIf you are in the closet and fall in love with someone of the same gender, it doesn't automatically remove the shame and fear that's kept you locked away. The love you are experiencing encourages you to face the reality that this is who you really are and also has the power to set you free. The richness, beauty and depths of love can only be fully experienced in a climate of complete openness, honesty and vulnerability. Love, the most powerful of human emotions, is calling you to freedom and wholeness.
Anthony Venn-BrownIn language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English?
Marlene DietrichIs 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 HarbachSizing was also important to me; I wanted to make sure that nobody felt alienated or felt like they weren't thought about in the process of this brand. I wanted to make sure that everyone felt included, which brings us to the gender neutral pieces - the idea of wearing what you want and whatever makes you feel comfortable and confident. I think that's the overall feeling of the Daya collection.
ZendayaThere are still traces of discrimination against race and gender, but it's a lot different than when I started out. It just comes quietly, slowly, sometimes so quietly that you don't realize it until you start looking back.
Eddie Bernice JohnsonThere is a tendency under capitalism system to reduce everything to a kind of commodity fetish, and this order tends to promote extremely conventional and uniform expressions of gender and sexuality in order to promote certain products and lifestyle choices that are commercialized. This necessarily entails a capitulation to heteronormativity, or in the case of the new gay movement, a "homonormativity" that doesn't stray far from the heterosexual paradigm. Anyone who questions these normative values and conventions is subject to disapproval, hostility, or even violence.
Bruce LaBruceAs a kid, you get to the stage where you realise the gender barriers that exist in society and what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do.
Andrej PejicI never go anywhere and encourage people to get married to someone of the same gender or to have abortions - the issue never comes up.
Cindy SheehanI will do comedy until the day I die: inappropriate comedy, funny comedy, gender-bending, twisting comedy, whatever comedy is out there.
Sandra BullockHijras earn a living by egging, sex work, badhai or blessing. There are now transgenders in social work, the fashion industry, who have PhDs. I say, "Study, study, study." You need not wear a sari, and even our ancestors said you need not wear feminine attire to be part of the third gender. When I started bar dancing, nobody else was doing it. When I joined the social sector in 1999, there were no nonprofit organizations working for the rights of hijras in India. But I had to do it, I wanted my dignity.
Laxmi Narayan TripathiI think it is inevitable that leftist forces in the US would be divided, if not balkanized, to some extent. Among the full range of people who are committed to social and economic equality and ecological justice - i.e. to some variant of a leftist vision of a decent society - it will always be the case that some will be more focused on egalitarian economic issues, others around the environment and climate change, others on US imperialism, militarism and foreign policy, others on race and gender equality, and still others on sexual identity.
Robert PollinIf someone is identifying themselves based on their orientation toward a person of the same gender, then that seems to me to be a self-evident disorder.
Scott LivelyMy favorite actor on the planet is Gena Rowlands and she plays women who, to me, somehow defy gender. They are women, they are feminine, they are masculine, they are everything. There's something exciting about that. I don't know how to articulate it exactly. I guess it's busting out of the archetypes a little bit and not feeling restricted.
Tatiana MaslanyI 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 wear non-gender-specific clothes. I just look silly in girls' clothes. I'm quite tall, and they're never the right cut for me - T-shirts and stuff are always too low-cut or too short. I've worn boys' clothes forever because girls' stuff never felt right for me.
LadyhawkeAlmost everything about American society is affected by World War II: our feelings about race; our feelings about gender and the empowerment of women, moving women into the workplace; our feelings about our role in the world. All of that comes in a very direct way out of World War II.
Rick AtkinsonCreating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education.
Thomas SowellI think that why the research and the data are so important is because you become so used to seeing the world one way that you don't even notice anymore. [Gender inequality] has this invisibility.
Emma WatsonIn some states, a very small number of states, it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of their gender identity, transgender identification. In the vast majority, it is perfectly legal.
Allyson RobinsonI aspire to be able to appreciate and review a director based on their accomplishments and based on who they are and what they bring to the material, regardless of their gender.
Jodie FosterThe good news for somebody who is struggling with same-gender attraction is this: It is that 'I'm not stuck with it forever.' It's just now. Admittedly, for each one of us, it's hard to look beyond the 'now' sometimes. But nonetheless, if you see mortality as now, it's only during this season.
Lance B. WickmanSomething happens in the middle when women are in their 30s, and we can start with an array of things that happen, whether it is - you hope this doesn't exist any longer - but overt discrimination; whether it's subtle gender discrimination, which absolutely does exist among men and women; whether it's the fact that it gets hard to juggle at that point children, housework, etc. But people still have to go home and cook the dinner and clean the dishes and get the beds made and so on. And so, for a whole bunch of reasons, women tend to fall out in their 30s still today.
Sallie KrawcheckThe Brazilian national identity is not one of Joรฃo Gilberto Noll primary concerns. This does not mean social critique is absent: race, gender, and class relations are considered in Quiet Creature. And these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country. Some critics have commented that understanding the specific Brazilian political context of the novel is helpful for reading Quiet Creature. This may be true, but it's not prerequisite for understanding it.
Adam MorrisBones tell me the story of a person's life - how old they were, what their gender was, their ancestral background.
Kathy ReichsI have simply taken some of the same questions and reposed them in new ways. But, you see, I must live. Right? I mean I can't stay the same for everyone to be consumed as the author of "Gender trouble". I have to continue to live and that means I have to "reposer les questions".
Judith ButlerAs I started to pursue the subject more deeply I realized that walking was this wonderful meandering path through everything I was already interested in - gender politics, public space and urban life, demonstrations and parades and marches. The relationship between walking and thinking and between the mind and the body.
Rebecca Solnit