901 Quotes About Gender

...at the heart of sexism is the construction of gender polarization, in which femininity and masculinity are assumed to be clearly delineated and any transgression of this pattern warrants punitive measures.

Women are thus being allowed to enter the professions at precisely the time when these professions are being devalued and high-flying men are going elsewhere

our contemporary ideas about manliness, reflected in action movies and westerns, generally prohibit so-called real men from displaying high emotion, with the exception of anger. John Wayne doesn’t cry. By contrast, Achilles, the epitome of manliness in Homer’s Iliad, weeps openly and at length over the loss of his friend Patroclus.

This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue. We will never dismantle misogyny as long as domination is eroticized. We will also never stop racism. Nor will we mount an effective resistance to fascism, which is the eroticization of domination and subordination–fascism is in essence a cult of masculinity. Those are all huge spin-outs from the same beginning. The result is torture, rape, genocide, and biocide.

The bonding of women that is woman-loving, or Gyn/affection, is very different from male bonding. Male bonding has been the glue of male dominance. It has been based upon recognition of the difference men see between themselves and women, and is a form of the behaviour, masculinity, that creates and maintains male power… Male comradeship/bonding depends upon energy drained from women.

Masculinity is part of a binary and requires its opposite, since, in the absence of femininity, masculinity would have no meaning.

And in most queer communities, regardless of one's sex or identity, people who are more masculine in gender expression are almost always viewed as more valid and attractive than their feminine counterparts.

There is a resemblance between men and women, not a contrast. When a man begins to recognize his feeling, the two unite. When men accept the sensitive side of themselves, they come alive.

jThe notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.