Quotes about male
page 8

Philip Larkin photo

“I think … someone might do a little research on some of the inherent qualities of sex – its cruelty, its bullyingness, for instance. It seems to me that bending someone else to your will is the very stuff of sex, by force or neglect if you are male, by spitefulness or nagging or scenes if you are female.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Letter to Monica Jones (1 November 1951) as quoted in "Philip Larkin's women" (23 October 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/23/martin-amis-philip-larkin-letters-monica
Context: I think … someone might do a little research on some of the inherent qualities of sex – its cruelty, its bullyingness, for instance. It seems to me that bending someone else to your will is the very stuff of sex, by force or neglect if you are male, by spitefulness or nagging or scenes if you are female. And what's more, both sides would sooner have it that way than not at all. I wouldn't. And I suspect that means not that I can enjoy sex in my own quiet way but that I can't enjoy it at all. It's like rugby football: either you like kicking & being kicked, or your soul cringes away from the whole affair. There's no way of quietly enjoying rugby football.

Julian (emperor) photo

“This Attis, therefore, the intelligible Power, the holder together of things material below the Moon, having intercourse with the pre-ordained Cause of Matter, holds intercourse therewith, not as a male with a female, but as though flowing into it, since he is the same with it.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon The Mother Of The Gods (c. 362-363)
Context: It is not Matter itself that is here meant, but the ultimate Cause of things incorporeal, which also existed before Matter. Moreover, it is asserted by Heraclitus: "Death unto souls is but a change to liquid." This Attis, therefore, the intelligible Power, the holder together of things material below the Moon, having intercourse with the pre-ordained Cause of Matter, holds intercourse therewith, not as a male with a female, but as though flowing into it, since he is the same with it.

Shirley Chisholm photo

“The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers — a great pity, on both counts.”

Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) American politician

For the Equal Rights Amendment (10 August 1970).
Context: The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers — a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.

Camille Paglia photo

“Feminism was always wrong to pretend that women could “have it all.” It is not male society but mother nature who lays the heaviest burden on woman.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. 89
Context: Feminism was always wrong to pretend that women could “have it all.” It is not male society but mother nature who lays the heaviest burden on woman. No husband or day care can adequately substitute for a mother’s attention. My feminist heroes are the boldly independent and childless Amelia Earhart and Katherine Hepburn, who has been outspoken in her opposition to the delusion of “having it all.”

Aristotle photo

“Flamboyant dishonor is an insult to the core values of the male group. Flamboyant dishonor is an openly expressed lack of concern for one's reputation for strength, courage and mastery within the context of an honor group comprised primarily of other men”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 60-61
The Way of Men (2012)
Context: Flamboyant dishonor is not a failure of strength or courage. Men who are flamboyant dishonorable are flagrant in their disregard for the esteem of their male peers. What we often call effeminacy is a theatrical rejection of masculine hierarchy and manly virtues. Masculinity is religious, and flamboyantly dishonorable men are blasphemers. Flamboyant dishonor is an insult to the core values of the male group. Flamboyant dishonor is an openly expressed lack of concern for one's reputation for strength, courage and mastery within the context of an honor group comprised primarily of other men... Flamboyant dishonor is a little bit like walking into that room full of men who are trying to get better at jiu-jitsu and insisting that they stop what they are doing and pay attention to your fantastic new tap-dancing routine. The flamboyantly dishonorable man seeks attention for something the male group doesn't value, or which isn't appropriate at a given time.

John Gibson Lockhart photo

“A male Horace Walpole.”

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) Scottish writer and editor

J. G. Lockhart, in Quarterly Review, June 1834, p. 430.

Marlene Dietrich photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous. (And there just aren’t that many episiotomy jokes, even in the male repertoire.) I am certain that this is also partly why, in all cultures, it is females who are the rank-and-file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor. One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman’s universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like. Oscar Wilde was the only person ever to make a decent joke about the death of an infant, and that infant was fictional, and Wilde was (although twice a father) a queer. And because fear is the mother of superstition, and because they are partly ruled in any case by the moon and the tides, women also fall more heavily for dreams, for supposedly significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, for romantic love, crystals and stones, lockets and relics, and other things that men know are fit mainly for mockery and limericks. Good grief! Is there anything less funny than hearing a woman relate a dream she’s just had?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

“And then Quentin was there somehow. And so were you, in a strange sort of way. And it was all so peaceful.” Peaceful?
"Why Women Aren’t Funny" https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2007/01/, Vanity Fair, (January 1, 2007).
2000s, 2007

Marjorie M. Liu photo
Isabel Quintero photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Newton Lee photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Joy Harjo photo
Gerda Lerner photo
Gerda Lerner photo
Dave Barry photo
Dave Barry photo
Eoin Colfer photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo

“I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as females with a relative lightness and, one could say, with an enviable superficiality, whose feelings and mental energies are directed upon all other things in life but sentimental love feelings. After all I still belong to the generation of women who grew up at a turning point in history. Love with its many disappointments, with its tragedies and eternal demands for perfect happiness still played a very great role in my life. An all-too-great role! It was an expenditure of precious time and energy, fruitless and, in the final analysis, utterly worthless. We, the women of the past generation, did not yet understand how to be free. The whole thing was an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labor power which was dissipated in barren emotional experiences. It is certainly true that we, myself as well as many other activists, militants and working women contemporaries, were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center. Nevertheless we would have been able to create and achieve much more had our energies not been fragmentized in the eternal struggle with our egos and with our feelings for another. It was, in fact, an eternal defensive war against the intervention of the male into our ego, a struggle revolving around the problem-complex: work or marriage and love? We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes. Thus despite everything the inevitable inner rebellion ensued, over and over again since love became a fetter. We felt enslaved and tried to loosen the love-bond. And after the eternally recurring struggle with the beloved man, we finally tore ourselves away and rushed toward freedom. Thereupon we were again alone, unhappy, lonesome, but free–free to pursue our beloved, chosen ideal …work. Fortunately young people, the present generation, no longer have to go through this kind of struggle which is absolutely unnecessary to human society. Their abilities, their work-energy will be reserved for their creative activity. Thus the existence of barriers will become a spur.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Pope Sixtus V photo

“Il far tutto il male che si può è uffizio del demonio; il non fare tutto il bene che si deve è azione da bestia.”

Pope Sixtus V (1520–1590) pope

Reported in Dante Leonardi, Spighe d'oro, Remo Sandron Editore, 1924.
Untranslated

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“Chi mal opra, male al fine aspetta.”

Ill doers in the end shall ill receive.
Canto XXXVII, stanza 106 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Dan Savage photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Andrea Dworkin photo

“A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography—calls that penetration violation.”

This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into ("violate") the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy.
Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

Andrea Dworkin photo

“Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through and fuse with the female and by claiming as his own all female characteristics - emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc.”

and projecting onto women all male traits - vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female - public relations. He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men.
Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 2 (hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Plautus photo

“Ne male loquare absenti amico.”

You should not speak ill of an absent friend.
Trinummus, Act IV, sc. 2, line 81.
Trinummus (The Three Coins)

Richard Dawkins photo

“I’ve seen a dog & bitch indulging in full 69. Males of many species including Drosophila lick female genitals before copulation.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/448240882710757376 (24 March 2014)
Twitter

Tracey Thorn photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Richard Feynman photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo

“The warlike duty of defense is also borne chiefly by males, and must often be an immense tax on the energies.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 608
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo

“Nature's sturdiest buds and her best-fed butterflies belong to this sex; her female spiders are large enough to eat up a score of her little males; some of her mother-fishes might parody the nursery-song, "I have a little husband no bigger than my thumb."”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 608
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

James Thurber photo
Céline Sciamma photo

“It’s a very bourgeois industry. There’s resistance to radicalism, and also less youth in charge. ‘A film can be feminist?’ They don’t know this concept. They don’t read the book. They don’t even know about the fact that ‘male gaze’ exists. You can tell it’s a country where there’s a lot of sexism, and a strong culture of patriarchy.”

Céline Sciamma (1978) French director and screenwriter

On the tepid reception of her film Portrait of a Lady on Fire in France in “Céline Sciamma: 'In France, they don’t find the film hot. They think it lacks flesh, it’s not erotic'” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/21/celine-sciamma-portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire in The Guardian (2020 Feb 21)

Kate Nash photo

“'Females of all description' is not a music genre. It's sexist. [There would] never be a 'males of all description' section because the rest of the shop and all other music genres are considered male. Female is not a genre. Don't categorise my sex.”

Kate Nash (1987) English pop singer and actor

Source: Kate Nash calls out 'sexist' record shop for 'females of all description' category, 1 September 2016, The Independent, Jess, Denham https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/kate-nash-calls-out-record-shop-for-sexist-labelling-after-spotting-females-of-all-description-a7219586.html,

Dotsie Bausch photo
Ken Ham photo

“First, just because God took a rib from Adam to make Eve would not mean that all of Adam's male descendants would have one less rib. Remember, it's our genes that determine how many ribs a person will have... Second, remember from your biology that ribs "regenerate."”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

In other words, Adam would've had his missing rib back quite quickly.
2000s, Did Adam have a Bellybutton?: And other tough questions about the Bible (2000)

Anna J. Cooper photo

“Our God is power; strength, our standard of excellence, inherited from barbarian ancestors through a long line of male progenitors, the Law Salic permitting no feminine modifications.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 53

Zoya Akhtar photo

“Who told me to, stay true to the story. Told me not to lose my femininity, because I am directing. So if I want to go to work in a skirt and lipstick, I should. I don't have to be male, to be the boss. And to never hook up with the actors. Best piece of Advise.”

Zoya Akhtar (1974) Indian film director

as an answer to the question: Whats the most useful advise you ever got from a fellow director?

From Mira Nair.

On the Sets, at 25 Min 06 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3deXjh9X0_U
Panel interview at MAMI(Mumbai Academy of Moving Image) Film Festival

Habib Bourguiba photo
Aparna Sen photo

“I think that the best of artists are androgynous in a sense. If a man is a very macho male, I don't know whether he'll make a very good director, he may make a very good craftsman. Or if a woman is a very sort of typically feminine woman, I don't think she will make a very good film. She has to have a bit of both.”

Aparna Sen (1945) Indian filmmaker, script writer and actress

Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, Rendezvous with Simi Garewal - Aparna Sen & Konkana Sen - 24 Mar 2014 (First Broadcast 2003), at 7 Min 51 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkkOKmyld5k

Diane Ackerman photo

“My muse is male, has the silvery complexion of the moon, and never speaks to me directly.”

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 6 “Synesthesia” (p. 299)

Warren Farrell photo

“The negative symptoms of the male culture are harnessed by the prescription drug culture.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 310

Warren Farrell photo
Warren Farrell photo

“The traditional male hero is about self-sacrifice, not self-actualization.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 97

Warren Farrell photo

“Your son may simultaneously feel that the male role is pressuring him to feel obligated to earn money someone else spends while he dies sooner.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 52

“A third belief about males has both descriptive and normative forms. It is the belief that males are, or at least should be, tough. They are thought to be able to endure pain and other hardships better than women. Whether or not they do take pain and other hardships “like a man,” it is certainly thought that they should. When it is said that they should take pain and hardships “like a man,” the word “man” clearly means more than “adult male human,” but rather one who stoically, unflinchingly bears whatever pain or suffering he experiences, including that which is inflicted on him precisely because he is a “man.””

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

This is true even when he is not a man, but rather a boy. Boys are taught early that they must act like men. Crying, they are told, is what girls do. They are discouraged from expressing hurt, sadness, fear, disappointment, insecurity, embarrassment and other such emotions. It is because males are thought to be and are expected to be tough that they may be treated more harshly. Thus, corporal punishment and various other forms of harshness may be inflicted on them but often not on females, who are purportedly more sensitive.
Source: The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys (2012), Chapter 3, part 1: Beliefs about Males

Graham Linehan photo
Elizabeth Blackwell photo

“There was no knowledge on my part about his specific actions, but… There was just energy. And that type of sinister, shadow energy cannot be concealed
..
When your primary male figure couldn't care less to show up, that can become a theme in your life where you’re trying to fill this gap with these different men”

Lisa Bonet (1967) American actress

9 March 2018 https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-gb/porter/article-33a55e73f6c7ac7b/cover-stories/cover-stories/lisa-bonet?cm_mmc=Twitter-_-Magazine-_-20180309&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&siteID=TnL5HPStwNw-I7e_rfvO9ni1Csr6IiWfpw&Skimlinks.com=Skimlinks.com interview regarding Bill Cosby

John Mulaney photo

“If you’re an adult male who sees no flaws in his father, you’re an insane person.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

John Mulaney & Nick Kroll Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psbIKH5tqiM, 15 October 2018

John Steinbeck photo
John Mulaney photo

“It's been proven that people will take information from a female voice, but they will only take a warning from a male voice. Now that's its own American gender nightmare that we don't have time to get into.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

John Mulaney Stand-Up Monologue - SNL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mSGwndFMp8, 03 March 2019

Kim Bora photo

“Growing up as a woman in Korea was tough, but was also a gift at the same time. If I were a Korean man, or a white male in the States, I would not have been able to make this film. You got to experience complex human emotions because you were going through a lot of things.”

Kim Bora (1981) South Korean director

As quoted in "Coming of Age in Korea: Kim Bora Discusses "House of Hummingbird"" in Mubi (27 April 2019) https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/coming-of-age-in-korea-kim-bora-discusses-house-of-hummingbird

Thokozani Khuphe photo

“It is worrying that 17 years after the Beijing Declaration, women have still not achieved the 50-50 representation with their male counterparts.”

Thokozani Khuphe (1963) Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe

Khupe challenges girl child to perform exceptionally well at school https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-local-byo-13737.html

Thokozani Khuphe photo

“We need a paradigm shift from a male-dominated economic mantra to an inclusive and transformational nation- building approach that can be enshrined in our people-driven constitution”

Thokozani Khuphe (1963) Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe

Source: Zimbabwe: Recognise Women's Role - Khupe http://www.peacewomen.org/content/zimbabwe-recognise-womens-role-khupe

“Whoredom and bastardy are defects with regard to a female slave, but not with regard to a male ; because the object in the purchase of female slave, is cohabitation and the generation of children...”

Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani (1117–1197) muhaddith, faqih and author (1135-1164)

Al-Hidayah (593 AH, 1197 CE), Charles Hamilton's translation, 1791
Source: Hidayah (Muslim law book), Hamilton, II, 409. https://archive.org/details/TheHedayaCommentaryOnIslamicLawsByShyakhBurhanuddinAbuBakrAlMarghinani/page/n249/mode/1up (Also quoted in Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Ch. 11)

Linah Mohohlo photo
Elizabeth Martinez photo

“One of the most serious obstacles to genuine diversification is that on most campuses the faculty remains lily-white and male”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (2017)

Mila Kunis photo

“I think there will always be a double standard between males and females, so I think that an actress is more likely to protect her public persona, so to speak, than an actor would be.”

Mila Kunis (1983) American actress

"Mila Kunis Says There Is A Double Standard For Males And Females In Hollywood" in Complex https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/07/mila-kunis-says-there-is-a-double-standard-for-males-and-females-in-hollywood (18 July 2012)

Isabella Rossellini photo

“Women executives have a different sensitivity. Male executives only understood makeup or fashion as an instrument of seduction, because that was addressed to them. They didn’t understand that we like to put on makeup or dress up just because it’s a game; it’s pleasurable.”

Isabella Rossellini (1952) Italian actress and filmmaker

On being asked to be the face of Lancôme after being fired by a male executive decades earlier in “Isabella Rossellini: ‘Ageing brings a lot of happiness. You get fatter – but there is freedom’” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/13/isabella-rossellini-ageing-brings-a-lot-of-happiness-you-get-fatter-but-there-is-freedom in The Guardian (2020 Oct 13)