Quotes about gender

A collection of quotes on the topic of gender, women, people, men.

Quotes about gender

“All sort of boundaries, be their gender, age, socio-economic status, physical or mental disabilities have to be eliminated.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Education for All People and Education for Life

Age

“Anyone who wishes to be proud must be proud only in your gender that you were born with without transgressing the gender of others.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”

Judith Butler book Gender Trouble

"Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)

Sex

“Those who judge human beings according to generic characteristics only reach the boundary, beyond which people begin to be beings whose activity is based on free self-determination…. Characteristics of race, tribe, ethnic group and gender are subjects for special sciences…. But all these sciences cannot penetrate through to the special nature of the individual. Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), Hudson (1894)/1995.

People, Law, Nature, Freedom

“Mansplaining is a sexist term designed to silence men via gender shaming.”

Markus Persson (1979) Swedish video game programmer

[Hansen, Steven, Minecraft billionaire feels oppressed by women, https://www.destructoid.com/minecraft-billionaire-feels-oppressed-by-women-363094.phtml, 12 November 2017, Destructoid, 2016-05-23]

Men, Silence

“I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

Baby, Personality, People, Nature

“Sometimes, you just can't help yourself but to learn quickly when being taught by the opposite gender.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Help, Learning

“Can I help you with something?"
Clary turned instant traitor against her gender. "Those girls on the other side of the car are staring at you."
Jace assumed an air of mellow gratification. "Of course they are," he said, "I am stunningly attractive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Cars, Girl, Help

“my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender”

Ntozake Shange for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

Source: for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

Soul, Understanding

“That is the corrosive paradox of gender feminism's misandrist stance: no group of women can wage war on men without at the same time denigrating the women who respect those men.”

Christina Hoff Sommers (1950) American author and philosopher

Source: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women

Women, Men, War, Time

“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Turns Fifty

Age, Religion

“Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is badly out of balance, in favor of men.”

Isabel Allende book Inés of My Soul

Source: Inés of My Soul

Women, Men, World, Courage

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_we_should_all_be_feminists#t-1300116 We should all be feminists

Imagination, Problem

“America is the world’s oldest constitutional democracy; that means we’re going to stand up for democracy -- it’s a part of who we are. And we do this not only because we think it’s right, but because it’s been proven to be the most stable and successful form of government. In recent decades, many Asian nations have shown that different nations can realize the promise of self-government in their own way; they have their own path. But we must recognize that democracies don’t stop just with elections; they also depend on strong institutions and a vibrant civil society, and open political space, and tolerance of people who are different than you. We have to create an environment where the rights of every citizen, regardless of race or gender, or religion or sexual orientation are not only protected, but respected.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

People, World, Religion, Way

“One of the things you want to do with a conception like compassion is that you want to start thinking about it like a psychologist, or like a scientist, because compassion is actually definable. The easiest way to approach it is to think about it in Big-5 terms, because it maps onto Agreeableness, which you can break down into Compassion and Politeness. The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way. We don't want to be thinking for a second that compassion isn't a virtue that can lead to violence, because it certainly can. The other problem with compassion - this is why we have conscientiousness - there's five canonical personality dimensions. Agreeableness is good if you are functioning in a kin system. You want to distribute resources equally for example among your children, because you want all of them to have the same chance, and even roughly the same outcome. That is, a good one. But the problem is that you can't extend that moral network to larger groups. As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it. You'll feel like, 'Oh wow, this person has actually given me good information, even though you will feel like a slug after they have taken you apart.' That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance. I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet. And so, we've introduced women into the political sphere radically over the past fifty years. We have no idea what the consequence of that is going to be. But we do know from our research, which is preliminary, that agreeableness really predicts political correctness, but female gender predicts over and above the personality trait, and that's something we found very rarely in our research. Usually the sex differences are wiped out by the personality differences, but not in this particular case. On top of that, women are getting married later, and they're having children much later, and they're having fewer of them, and so you also have to wonder what their feminine orientation is doing with itself in the interim, roughly speaking. A lot of it is being expressed as political opinion. Fair enough. That's fine. But it's not fine when it starts to shut down discussion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Life, Women, Children, People

“The struggle for [gender] equality in education and professions was won decades ago. What is really fascinating is this extraordinary alliance between radical leftist feminism and corporate multinational business which is probably the most sinister and cynical alliance since the Nazi-Soviet pact.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

2013-11-04
The best of Peter Hitchens
Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVztwcnvIS4&feature=youtu.be&t=13m19s
On gender equality

Education, Business

“Terrorists will never be able to defeat the United States. Their only hope is to terrorize us into changing who we are or our way of life. That’s why we Americans will never give in to fear. And it’s why this weekend we remember the true spirit of 9/11. We’re still the America of heroes who ran into harm’s way; of ordinary folks who took down the hijackers; of families who turned their pain into hope. We are still the America that looks out for one another, bound by our shared belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.
In the face of terrorism, how we respond matters. We cannot give in to those who would divide us. We cannot react in ways that erode the fabric of our society. Because it’s our diversity, our welcoming of all talent, our treating of everybody fairly — no matter their race, gender, ethnicity, or faith — that’s part of what makes our country great. It’s what makes us resilient. And if we stay true to those values, we’ll uphold the legacy of those we’ve lost, and keep our nation strong and free.
God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Upholding the Legacy of Those We Lost on September 11th (September 2016)

Life, God, Pain, Fear

“I’d suggest that peace with justice begins with the example we set here at home, for we know from our own histories that intolerance breeds injustice. Whether it’s based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation, we are stronger when all our people — no matter who they are or what they look like — are granted opportunity, and when our wives and our daughters have the same opportunities as our husbands and our sons.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Brandenburg Gate Speech (June 2013)

People, Peace, Religion, Justice

“Which American values can, even remotely, be called Islamic? Democracy? Freedom? Equality? Secularism? Gender equity? Freedom of thought? The right to free expression? The right to critique any holy cow? Does even one of these values exist in a single Islamic state…? Is even one of these values extended to all Muslim citizens of an Islamic state?…What would be the fate of Hindus working in Saudi Arabia if they should advocate the replacement of the word "Islamic" with "Islamic-Hindu" in all references to the kingdom’s heritage?”

Varsha Bhosle (1956–2012) Singer, Columnist

Quoted from Varsha Will Live On http://www.ibtl.in/column/1304/varsha-will-live-on/ Rediff.com http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jun/02varsha.htm

Fate, Democracy, Freedom

“We know that our economies attract more trade and investment when citizens are free to start a new business without paying a bribe. We know that our societies are more likely to succeed when all our people -- regardless of color, or class, or creed, or sexual orientation, or gender -- are free to live and pray and love as they choose. […] And, increasingly, civil society is a source of ideas -- about everything from promoting transparency and free expression, to reversing inequality and rescuing our environment.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)

Love, People, Color, Idea

“I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be — what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into — you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Howard University commencement address (May 2016)
Context: Racism persists. Inequality persists. Don’t worry — I’m going to get to that. But I wanted to start, Class of 2016, by opening your eyes to the moment that you are in. If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be — what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into — you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now. If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, “young, gifted, and black” in America, you would choose right now.
I tell you all this because it's important to note progress. Because to deny how far we’ve come would do a disservice to the cause of justice, to the legions of foot soldiers; to not only the incredibly accomplished individuals who have already been mentioned, but your mothers and your dads, and grandparents and great grandparents, who marched and toiled and suffered and overcame to make this day possible. I tell you this not to lull you into complacency, but to spur you into action — because there’s still so much more work to do, so many more miles to travel. And America needs you to gladly, happily take up that work.

Faith, History, Time

“The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Twenty Year Vision for America (2004)
Context: As with science and technology, there could be a dark side of globalization, in which progress for some means poverty for others, as jobs and opportunities ebb and flow, securities and currencies fluctuate in value, and the tension between private profit and public good persists. But surely these are risks that we can manage in a world with an America more attuned to its larger purpose and responsibilities.
The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.
Our goal for the next twenty years should be to finally recognize that our differences are our greatest strength. That's true not only here in America, but in all parts of the world, where we've allowed historic rifts to poison the well of opportunity. They've arisen from the natural prides and passion of humanity. Only when we recognize that — when we respect the human spirit — will we be a great nation and a great world. These are the steps we must take in the next twenty years, as we reach out for the newest frontiers.

People, World, Color, Imagination

“Objectification may well be the most singly destructive aspect of gender hierarchy”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7
Context: Being female in this world is having been robbed of he potential for human choice by men who love to hate s. One does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice Objectification may well be the most singly destructive aspect of gender hierarchy, specially as it exists in relation to intercourse.

“Gender discrimination has had a twofold destructive effect on society. Firstly, it has opened society to slavery; second, all other forms of enslavement have been implemented on the basis of housewifisation”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution, p.69

“The people of today are incapable of accomplishing most of their dreams because they are living according to the liking of the opposite gender.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

People, Dreams

“I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Fools

“All genders?' whispered Nudge. 'Aren't there just the two'
I shrugged. 'No idea. Maybe they've created others.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Idea

“I find myself looking into people's eyes more than I ever did before. And I realize, that's where we stop being a certain gender or color. Just look right into the center of the eye.”

David Levithan book Another Day

Source: Another Day

People, Color

“My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Women, Men, Problem

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Problem

“Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.”

Leslie Feinberg (1949–2014) activist and author known for authoring Stone Butch Blues

Source: Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

“Gender preference does not define you. Your spirit defines you.”

P. C. Cast book Awakened

Awakened

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

Kate Bornstein (1948) American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist

“The boys at school are so degenerate that it makes one feel pessimistic about the future of the male gender in general.”

Regina Doman (1970) American writer

Source: The Shadow of the Bear

School, Feeling, Boy, Future

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Thinking

“I am trying to unlearn many lessons of gender I internalized while growing up. But I sometimes still feel vulnerable in the face of gender expectations.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Feeling

“Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)”

Cornel West book Race Matters

Source: Race Matters

People

“Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful.”

Rebecca Solnit book Men Explain Things To Me

Source: Men Explain Things to Me

Women, Men, Game, Time

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

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Men, War, Change

“Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl.
'Because you are a girl' is never reason for anything.
Ever.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

Source: Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Girl, Idea

“Marriage should be between a spouse and a spouse, not a gender and a gender.”

Hendrik Hertzberg (1943) American journalist

Marriage

“Patriarchy has no gender.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

“It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

Source: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Sex, Personality

“Love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Variant: In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals.
Source: Every Day

Love

“In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love for a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard, when it’s so obvious.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People, Understanding

“What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender?”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

Children

“No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Love, Family, Parent

“I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to lady crack pipe or good sir dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Fools, Sex

“Judaism, Christianity’s parent sect, is the most powerful of protests against nature. The Old Testament asserts that a father god made nature and that the differentiation into objects and gender was after the fact of his maleness. Judeo-Christianity, like Greek worship of the Olympian gods, is a sky-cult. It is an advanced stage in the history of religion, which everywhere began as earth-cult, veneration of fruitful nature.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 8

God, Religion, History, Nature

“To assume someone because of their age or gender, that they don't pose a threat, would be wrong.”

Sean Spicer (1971) American political strategist and former White House Press Secretary and Communications Director for President…

' White House Tells Dissenters in State Department: 'Get With the Program' or Quit http://time.com/4653958/white-house-dissent-state-department-response/', Time, January 30 2017 (defending the detention of a five year old child)

Age

“The major obstacle and most difficult challenge in pursuit of a genuinely loving and caring relationship is to overcome the seductive powers and the addiction to the content approach to entering, creating, and maintaining it. The elusive golden thread of understanding lies in the how, and not the what. Specifically, as gender polarization in a relationship decreases, the experience of it improves. Without that rebalancing, even the most perfect content will unravel increasingly. Once the process is balanced, the magic of having ideal content is no longer necessary. The rebalancing process which creates a relationship free of polarizing gender defenses is clearly difficult and threatening initially in the same way that giving up an addiction seems to be. Once achieved however, a relationship free of distortion, false illusions, resentment, and hopelessness truly becomes possible.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

What Men Still Don't Know About Transforming Their Relationships, pp. 194–198
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love, Way, Understanding, Perfection

“The ultimate test on the way to establishing an ideal civilization encouraging ideal human behavior was to look bravely beyond gender, color, ethnic origin, religious difference, and class distinctions to discover and honor the value of each unique individual.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Civilization and Human Nature, p. 4).
Book Sources, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003)

Color, Way, Behavior

“Yet it is perhaps worth mentioning that the masculine tenor of God-talk is particularly problematic in English. In Hebrew, Arabic and French, however, grammatical gender gives theological discourse a sort of sexual counterpoint and dialectic, which provides a balance that is often lacking in English. Thus in Arabic al-Lah (the supreme name for God) is grammatically masculine, but the word for the divine and inscrutable essence of God—al-Dhat—is feminine.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

God

“Ideally there should not be a men’s movement but a gender transition movement; only the power of the women’s movement necessitates the temporary corrective of a men’s movement. And this creates a special challenge for men: There are few political movements filled with healthy people, yet few healthy changes have occurred without political movements.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part IV: Where do we go from here, p. 356.

Women, Men, People, Change

“I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

Robyn Ochs (1958) American activist

Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World

People, Sex, Way, Time

“Mrs. Pidgeon: That little girl whose mother is in the, um, "threesome." Why do you say she's confused about her gender? She seems perfectly normal to me.
Sparrow: Mom, she's a boy.
Mrs. Pidgeon: Oh. Well then, I'm not quite so worried about that revealing top. I was going to speak to her mother.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

"Replicants," supplement in Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life Forms TWOF (2003).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Girl, Boy, Moms

“Wikipedia needs to recruit women, yes, but, more importantly, it needs to recruit feminists. And feminists can be of any gender.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wadewitz, Adrianne. (July 26, 2013) "Wikipedia's gender gap and the complicated reality of systemic gender bias" https://www.hastac.org/blogs/wadewitz/2013/07/26/wikipedias-gender-gap-and-complicated-reality-systemic-gender-bias. HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance Collaboratory. — reprinted and cited in: Woo, Elaine (April 23, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz dies at 37; helped diversify Wikipedia" http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-adrianne-wadewitz-20140424,0,1077455.story. Los Angeles Times.

Women

“[Conchita Wurst] She is an incredible singer and entertainer. But what made her win so meaningful was the way she turned her victory in the Song Contest into an electrifying moment of human rights education. Conchita is promoting respect for diversity. This is a core value of the United Nations Charter, along with our commitment to tolerance. She confounds people's preconceived ideas of gender and sexuality - and she appeals to them to accept her as she is. That is a powerful message. I am delighted she is using her talent and the Eurovision platform to take this message to a global audience.”

Ban Ki-moon (1944) 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations

3 November 2014; Remarks at Meeting with Conchita Wurst http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2014/unissgsm573.html

People, Education, Way, Idea

“Survival—of the species of the culture of the faith—has a biological dimension. What would have befallen our Hominid ancestors had they implemented gender parity in their hunter-gatherer societies—sometimes the women hunt while the men forage and mind the kids, and vice versa?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Emasculated West Primed For A Muscular, Muslim Takeover http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263677/emasculated-west-primed-muscular-muslim-takeover-ilana-mercer," FrontPage Magazine, July 29, 2016. 2010s, 2016

Women, Men, Faith

“A significant gender pay gap still persists. That's why we cannot be passive as we acknowledge Equal Pay Day, which marks the day when a woman's earnings catch up to what her male peers earned in the previous year. To millennials, it's startling to see that women still earn just 77 cents to the dollar of what men earn.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CNN, (April 17, 2012).
Articles

Women, Men

“Even allegedly gender-neutral words like “sexist” imply slights only against women.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women

“Intersectionality is a concept, not a theory. It is a description of how different forms of oppression--racism, sexism, LGBTQ oppression and all other forms--interact with each other and become fused into a single experience. … Intersectionality is another way of describing "simultaneity of oppression," "overlapping oppressions," "interlocking oppressions" or any number of other terms that Black feminists used to describe the intersection of race, class and gender.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Way

“Much violence against women originates in emotional territory that they already command. By midlife and early old age, as the hormones of both genders change, women are in total, despotic control of their marriages.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 46

Women, Marriage, Age, Change

“There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy than connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality. The reader I seek is a tautology, for he/she is simply…the person who wants to read what I have written.”

Will Self (1961) English writer and journalist

The Guardian, May 9, 2007. http://books.guardian.co.uk/whyiwrite/story/0,,2075745,00.html#article_continue

Age, Idea, Reading, Personality

“The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

As quoted in "Government and Racism" http://archive.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul381.html (18 April 2007). 2000s, 2006-2009

Color

“Being trans in some ways is very similar to being an atheist, in that some people don’t grasp it. People that come from different backgrounds just [say], “What do you mean you don’t believe in God?” They don’t get you. To them [religion] is just so obvious, and I feel like I keep on having that with gender, also. Some people just have in their mind very firm ideas of gender, and they just can’t get it into their head.”

Abby Stein (1991) Trans activist, speaker, and educator

Source: Interview with Friendly Atheist, December 7, 2015 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/12/07/a-descendant-of-the-founder-of-hasidic-judaism-just-came-out-as-an-atheist-trans-woman/.

God, People, Religion, Way

“A just and lasting peace demands apologies and forgiveness. … A just and lasting peace embraces gender equality. … A just and lasting peace calls for economic reforms.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

Peace, Forgiveness

“Within the gendered institution of prostitution, race and class create a hierarchy with indigenous women at its lowest point.”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

"Prostitution in Vancouver: Violence and the Colonization of First Nations Women" in Transcultural Psychiatry 42 (2005), p. 242 - 271; co-written with J Lynne and A Cotton

Women

“In the artist/theorist tradition of Robert Smithson, Joseph Nechvatal is a pioneer in the field of digital image making who challenges our perceptions of nature by altering conventional notions of space and time, gender, and self… Nechvatal successfully plunged into the depths where art, technology and theory meet.”

Joe Lewis (artist) (1953) American photographer

"Joseph Nechvatal at Universal Concepts Unlimited," in: Art in America Magazine, March 2003. pp.123-124.

Art, Nature, Time

“One of the things that 'queer' can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically.”

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009) American academic

Tendencies (Duke University Press, 1993), p. 8

“Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

Source: Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory (1982) Signs Vol. 7, No.3, p. 533

Women, Men, Sex

“In contrast to earlier gay law reform and equality-oriented movements, the 1970s LGBT liberation movement did not seek to ape heterosexual values or secure the acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities within the existing sexual conventions. Indeed, it repudiated the prevailing sexual morality and institutions - rejecting not only heterosexism (heterosexual supremacism) but also male machismo, with its oppressive predisposition to rivalry, toughness and aggression; the extreme expressions of which are the rapist, queer-basher, racist murderer and war criminal.
The "radical drag" and "gender-bender" politics of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the early 1970s glorified and promoted male gentleness. A conscious, if sometimes exaggerated, attempt to renounce the oppressiveness of masculinity and male privilege, it rejected straight macho values; identifying them with the subordination of women and LGBT people. The GLF was truly revolutionary because it attempted to subvert male-female gender roles and straight patriarchy. It denounced the ethos of masculine competitiveness, domination and violence; instead affirming the worthwhileness of male sensitivity and affection between men and, in the case of lesbians, the intrinsic value of an eroticism and love independent of maleness.
These ideas led me to propose that without the construction of a cult of machismo and a mass of aggressive male egos, neither sexual, gender, class, racial, speciesist nor imperialist oppression are possible.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Machismo Underpins War and Tranny http://www.petertatchell.net/masculinity/machismo-underpins-war-and-tyranny.htm, Official Website

Love, Women, Men, War

“Wadewitz said to attract more women editors, attitudes within the Wikipedia community need to change. This became clear when she revealed her gender, after writing anonymously for several years.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Wholf, Tracy (May 18, 2014). "'Wikipedian' editor took on website’s gender gap" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/wikipedian-editor-took-wikipedias-gender-gap/. PBS NewsHour (PBS). Retrieved May 19, 2014. About

Women, Communication, Change

“It's always good to see gender set-asides and affirmative action—in particular, the delusion that women are just as qualified as men to be soldiers, security guards, firefighters and cops—hurt those who inflict it on non-believers.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“All the President's Women,” http://praag.org/?p=16336 PRAAG.org, October 10, 2014. 2010s, 2014

Women, Men, Hurt

“In my opinion, the national anthem is a symbolic song about our country. It represents honoring the many brave men and women who sacrifice and have sacrificed their lives each and every single day to protect our freedom. Sitting or kneeling down during the national anthem is a disgrace to those people who have served and currently serve our country. Sitting down during the national anthem on September 11th is even more horrific. Protest all you want and use social media all you want. However, during the nearly two minutes when that song is playing, I believe everyone should put their hands on their heart and be proud of our country for we are all truly blessed. Recent history has shown that it is a place where anyone no matter what race or gender has the potential to become President of the United States. We live in the most special place in the world and should be thankful. After the song is over, I would encourage everyone to please use the podium they have, stand up for their beliefs, and make America a better place. The rebuilding of battery park and the freedom tower demonstrates that amazing things can be done in this country when we work together towards a common goal. It is a shame how quickly we have forgotten this as a society. Today we are more divided then ever before. I could never imagine multiple people sitting down during the national anthem on the September 11th anniversary. The lessons of 911 should teach us that if we come together, the world can be a better and more peaceful place #neverforget.”

Kate Upton (1992) American model and actress

Kate Upton on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BKO8_ZGA87r/?taken-by=kateupton&hl=en (September 11, 2016)

Women, Men, People, World

“He hated to leave, but he loved his work. He was a man, and men needed to work. More sexism! More masculine tunnel vision! More need for gender-sensitivity workshops!”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Ten Little Indians (2003)

Love, Men, Hate

“Then there are the phones designed for East Asian sensibilities. The same region that brought us the selfie stick also brought us Oppo, a company whose phone’s principal selling points include a high-quality camera and custom software that automatically airbrushes photos with faces in them. The ad campaigns emphasize a particularly performative form of femininity, since, in a nice touch, the software makes a guess about the gender of the subject—everyone gets smoother skin, but only the ladies get their lips reddened. Despite successful rollouts in Thailand and Korea, Oppo has not made much of a dent in markets outside East Asia. Their U. S. launch was a bust.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream (2015)

Photo, Success

“On same-sex marriage It’s a question of human rights, gender equality and equality.”

Alexander Stubb (1968) Finnish politician

Source: Majority of party leaders would support gay marriage http://yle.fi/uutiset/majority_of_party_leaders_would_support_gay_marriage/7654727, Yle.fi, 27 November 2014.

Marriage, Sex, Question

“Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality … is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

"Why the world needs introverts," The Guardian, March 13, 2012.

Personality

“Mankind is a sexual and tool-using species. So it's never old news to deal with the intersection of human desire and ingenuity. As biohacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and the plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, we explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Interview in 'Kill Screen', 2012 https://killscreen.com/articles/stories-about-orcs-and-rape-man-behind-arse-elektronika/

Literature, Science

“We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis). These black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and non-white feminists who address a larger audience.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 10.

Women, People, Imagination, Understanding

“We don't have a clue what it is to be male or female, or if there are intermediate genders. Male and female might be fields which overlap into androgyny or different kinds of sexual desires. But because we live in a Western, patriarchal world, we have very little chance of exploring these gender possibilities.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

As quoted in "Eve Experts" at Real World Multimedia (2004) https://web.archive.org/web/20040318235408/http://www.realworldmultimedia.com/legacy/eve/info/experts/k_acker.html

World, Chance

“That is no easy thing for a General to say in public, and yet I have now said it publicly in Australia many times. It involves Liz Broderick, and it marked a watershed for me. I invariably recount it when I am asked to explain why I have placed so much emphasis on gender issues within the Army and why I committed a large part of my effort as Chief of the Australian Army to championing change.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Effort, Change, Time, Parting

“Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women.
There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that women were less susceptible to radiation damage than men. They were smaller on average, requiring less space, less food, less air. And sociological studies pointed to the idea that they did better when crammed together in tight spaces for long periods of time.
This was controversial, as it got into fraught topics of nature vs. nurture and whether gender identity was a social construct or a genetic program.
But if you bought into the idea that boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something that every parent who had ever raised a boy had to take seriously—then it was difficult to envision a lot of them spending their lives in tin cans.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Scouts"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Women, Men, People, Food

“There's been a revolution in the fields of anthropology and archaeology over the past thirty years, and increasingly people are coming to understand that life before agriculture and domestication — of animals and ourselves — was in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, gender equality, and health.”

John Zerzan (1943) American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author

Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization (2002)

Life, Wisdom, People, Health

“Anna’s reaction is more complex than you might imagine, and it’s at such a moment you appreciate the woman in the writer-director’s chair. Women, I suspect, are more likely than men to view sex from the over-all perspective of what we may call their lives. In a country like Saudi Arabia, whose citizens express discomfort about men and women even attending movies together, I have little doubt which gender is more concerned.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/humpday-2009 of Humpday (22 July 2009) Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Women, Men, Sex, Imagination

“In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against our ideas of God were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Opening sentence, p. 1
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

God, Hope, Sex, Idea

“We were not going to understand gender inequality or [other inequalities] unless we understood the interpersonal processes that mediated and enacted institutional structures and larger patterns of inequality.”

Cecilia L. Ridgeway (1947) American sociologist

Ridgeway (2013) Meet the 2013 ASA President: Cecilia Ridgeway http://www.asanet.org/cecilia-ridgeway. 2013

Understanding

“Appropriate patterns of reproductive, gender, and sexual conduct are all products of specific cultures and all can be viewed as examples of socially scripted conduct. Western societies now have a system of gender and sexual learning in which gender differential scripts are learned prior to sexual scripts, but take their origins in part from the previously learned gender scripts… There are two important points: The first is that both gender and sexuality are learned forms of social practice, and the second is that looking to "natural differences" between women and men for lessons about sexual conduct is an error.”

John Gagnon

"The Explicit and Implicit Use of the Scripting Perspective in Sex Research", Annual Review of Sex Research, Vol. 1, (1990), 5

Women, Men, Error, Nature

“on genders of nouns: Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

Sex

“But I… don't believe that gender is just binary, and I never have, so that's what pulls me to sometimes politically identify as a lesbian, because I'm a feminist, and I feel like women are still so suppressed. I don't feel like we've come that far. But I also feel like there are people all along the spectrum, so in that sense, I feel like I would be more bisexual or just, you know, open-ended.”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Interview with The L Words Daniela Sea https://web.archive.org/web/20121012071650/http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/TV/2006/1/sea3.html", AfterEllen (3 January 2006).

Women, People, Feeling, Sense

“People use religion, dogma, community as an excuse to justify their own intolerance, or their own phobia from something that doesn't fit into their conceived notions of gender and of identity.”

Abby Stein (1991) Trans activist, speaker, and educator

On Popsugar, June 5, 2017 https://www.popsugar.com/news/Meet-Transgender-Activist-Abby-Stein-43598113 2017

People, Religion, Communication

“I don’t think that maternal and child health is a global priority. The health and welfare of mothers and their children received unprecedented international attention in 2010, but not all Governments were involved and other issues subsequently knocked this issue off the top slot. For those Governments who did make specific policy and resource commitments, the role of civil society is to work hard to get them to deliver. However, to see a truly seismic shift in the life chances of mums-to-be and their babies, Governments — rich and poor — must tackle inequality, especially gender but also income.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

In an interview with Devex — Jo Cox: A maternal health advocate extraordinaire https://www.devex.com/news/jo-cox-a-maternal-health-advocate-extraordinaire-76186 (12 October 2011)

Life, Children, Health, Thinking

“I’ve only known a vegan life and have been constantly teaching others of the joys and benefits of being a vegan … As an adult, I THANK my Mother profusely for being extremely honest with me as a kid and for never hiding the truth about milk, “meat”, animal experimentation … There is speciesism and that is about as cruel as it gets because it sets the stage and practice for cruelty amongst human beings. … Discrimination is discrimination—as abuse is abuse … regardless of an animals human or nonhuman form, gender, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation or level of intelligence/knowledge it should be our birthright to LIVE our lives peacefully and harmoniously without inflicting pain on others. People who inflict intentional pain without moral or ethical regard for other human or nonhuman animals are just reminders of how much further we have to go until oppression is completely eradicated.”

Seba Johnson (1973) Olympic skier

"Interview with Seba Johnson" http://www.theghostsinourmachine.com/interview-with-seba-johnson/, The Ghosts in Our Machine (2014).

Life, Pain, People, Truth

“I don’t really feel like the gender of character is what causes someone to identify with them. It’s the situation they’re in, it’s the way they deal with danger, the way that they deal with fears. And so I feel like it’s a slightly larger question in terms of what makes us identify with someone.”

Brian Selznick (1966) American children's illustrator and writer

Inventions of Brian Selznick: Latest book makes unusual trilogy http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/book-blog/inventions-of-brian-selznick-latest-book-makes-unusual-trilogy/article_6651a90e-726b-50e3-b999-20b579c00bfd.html (September 20, 2015)

Fear, Way, Feeling, Question

“[O]ur top schools are obsessed with race, class, and gender but apparently not rigorous in cross-examining the fables and pop fads of their students.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The Deflation of the Academic Brand (2018)

School

“Religious beliefs are counterfactual insofar as they are anomalous (e. g., God is gendered but sexless; Saturn devours his own children; lambs lie with lions), implausible (e. g., Athena bursts forth from Zeus's head; the Zai:rean Nkundo hero Lianja springs fully armed from the leg of his mother; Lao-Tse either emerges with his white beard from the left side of his mother, who bore him for eighty years, or is born immaculately of a shooting star), and, most significantly, counterintuitive (e. g., the Judea-Christian God is a sentient and emotional being with no body; Greek, Hindu, Maya, and Egyptian deities are half-human half-beast; the Chinese monkey god can travel thousands of kilometers at one somersault).”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 4
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

God, Children, Lie, Travel

“I've questioned issues of gender and sexuality since I was a teenager, and I did some experimenting.”

Chloë Sevigny (1974) American film actress

"Angelina Jolie tops Bi-Sexual Scorecard" http://www.nationalledger.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=6&num=9928 by Jennifer Cox, The National Ledger (2006-11-18)

Question

“How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?
Men — I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.”

Emma Watson (1990) British actress and model

UN Speech on the HeForShe campaign (2014)
Context: In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly many of the things she wanted to change are still true today.
But what stood out for me the most was that less than 30 per cent of the audience were male. How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?
Men — I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.

Men, World, Feeling, Change

“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.”

Judith Butler book Gender Trouble

"Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" (1990)