Gender quotations

Page 3

◆ When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.

- Bette Davis99

◆ Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.

- Virginia Woolf98

◆ …gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.

- Kate Bornstein98

◆ It really is something ... that men disapprove even of our doing things that are patently good. Wouldn't it be possible for us just to banish these men from our lives, and escape their carping and jeering once and for all? Couldn't we live without them? Couldn't we earn our living and manage our affairs without help from them? Come on, let's wake up, and claim back our freedom, and the honour and dignity that they have usurped from us for so long. Do you think that if we really put our minds to it, we would be lacking the courage to defend ourselves, the strength to fend for ourselves, or the talents to earn our own living? Let's take our courage into our hands and do it, and then we can leave it up to them to mend their ways as much as they can: we shan't really care what the outcome is, just as long as we are no longer subjugated to them.

- Moderata Fonte98

◆ If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine--why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'?

- May Sarton98

◆ The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.

- Jeffrey Eugenides98

◆ If you want to see a man come to his senses, try something like, Do you happen to carry a rubber in your wallet? Did I mention I'm not on the pill?

- Catherine Ryan Hyde98

◆ As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.

- Jeanette Winterson98

◆ Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.

- Virginia Woolf98

◆ I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand -- they only. Know this at last.

- Charlotte Bront?98

◆ The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I've ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I've spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.

- Randall Munroe98

◆ I'm not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all.

- Scott Lynch98

◆ There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women.

- Joanna Russ98

◆ Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?

- Neal Stephenson98

◆ Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course.

- Natalie Angier98