288 Quotes About Gender-roles

My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

Valerie stood with the other women, watching the men go. She couldn't help bristling at this division of the sexes. Her fingers itched to hold a weapon, too, to do something, to kill something with her anger.

Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.

We raise our children, especially girls, to ignore their spontaneious reactions-we teach them not to rock the societal boat...By the time she is thirty, the valient little girl's "Ick!"-her tendency to respond, to rock the boat, when someone's actions are really mean, may have been exciese from her behavior, and perhaps from her very mind.

We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A—”“Do I really have to find a word for it?” Kyle interrupts. “Can’t it just be what it is?”“Of course,” I say, even though in the bigger world I’m not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own.We pause for a moment. I wonder if that’s all—if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, “You see, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”“Nobody does,” I assure him.

In the midst of these fine gentlemen with their great names and their ancient traditions of respectability, the two women sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, triumphant and supreme in the tranquil abuse of their sex, and their open contempt for the male. And the gentlemen applauded them.

Being a woman was a trap. Something would bring you down before you were twenty-three. The only time the world shows you any favor, or cuts you any slack, is during that very brief period of courtship where the world is trying to fuck you for the first time.

You are not required to be small.You are not required to be pleasant.You are not required to be conventional.You are not required to be accommodating.You are not required to be submissive.You are not required to be merciful.You are not required to be quiet.

Playing with polarity in the bedroom is extremely useful for keeping the spark alive, but as a model for living, it does not do the current cultural realities justice. It reduces our vast human potential to gender roles that are entirely outdated, if they have ever actually been true.