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Gender Norms Quotes

Browse 29 quotes about Gender Norms.

Gender Norms Quotes

“Both men and women experience pressure to conform to social standards of attractiveness. Men to look strong and be tough, women to look pretty and soft. Men to be masculine, women to be feminine. Men get judged for being "too feminine", women get criticized for being "too masculine". Gender policing affects us all.”

MenSocietyFeminismToughPressureFeministGenderSexualityFeminineMasculinityMasculineSocial IssuesManlySocial NormsGender StereotypesSoftGender NormsGender IssuesMan EnoughGender PolicingGenre PolicingPrett
Book:Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women
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“Marginalised masculinities describes a group of men who are marginalised and excluded from all the benefits of male privilege because of race or class. For example, although working-class men may embody a kind of toughness and stoicism that is prized, they do not benefit as greatly from that privilege as those in the middle and upper classes do. ... 'working-class men are the male equivalent of the "dumb blond" - endowed with physical virtues but problematized by intellectual shortcomings'.”

ClassGenderWorking ClassMasculinityGender RolesGender StereotypesGender Norms
Book:Counselling Skills for Working with Gender Diversity and Identity
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“In a study of children's toy and television preferences, researchers Isabelle Cherney and Kamala London found that, when left alone, half of boys ages five through thirteen picked "girl" and "boy" toys equally - until they thought they were being watched. They were especially concerned about what their fathers would think if they saw them. Over time, boys' interests in toys and media become more rigidly masculinized and codified, whereas girls' stay relatively open ended and flexible.”

ChildrenGender RolesGender Norms
Book:Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger
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“Many girls think of the 'feelings' of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.”

SocietyFeminismSelf ActualizationGender Norms
Book:Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
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“A core part of...'orthodox masculinity' has its bedrock in not doing, saying or being anything that might be seen as feminine... The first rule of being a man is 'no sissy stuff'. Instead, these sexist and misogynistic constructs at the heart of orthodox masculine gender performance are understood as helping shore up the theory of men's 'natural' dominance over effeminate men and women. Men who fail to live up to the standards set...are excluded or marginalised to the extent of their transgression. The fear of the loss of power and male privilege lies in the rejection of masculinity's apparent binary and complementary opposite, femininity.”

PowerPrivilegeGenderPatriarchyMasculinityFemininityGender RolesGender NormsEffeminacy
Book:Counselling Skills for Working with Gender Diversity and Identity
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“To fight against these falsehoods, though, one needed to be able to see past the present-day and very male-oriented distortion lens to the underlying truth. Beyond question, Molly Valle could do this. A woman whose surface appearance, eyeglasses and conservative clothes, fit the schoolmarm stereotype to a T. Yet she had sloughed off that exterior and society’s restrictions as effortlessly as she had her clothes, and during their lovemaking, she had not only kept up with him but often passed ahead of him. With other women, he had seen the embers of passion but never the flame. Tonight, he had witnessed the bonfire.”

InsatiableGender NormsExpectations Vs RealitySexual HealthDon T Judge A Book By Its CoverAppearances Are DeceivingForce To Be Reckoned WithLooking Down On OthersLove Fever
Book:The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen
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“Just because she saw that the vagaries of capitalism, patriarchy, gender norms, or consumerism contributed to facial dysphoria didn't mean she had developed immunity to them. In fact, a political consciousness honed on queer sensitivity simply made her feel guilty about not having managed to change her deeply ingrained beauty norms. Call her a fraud, a hypocrite, superficial, but politics and practice parted paths at her own body.”

GenderBody ImageGender DysphoriaGender NormsBeauty NormsFacial Dysphoria
Book:Detransition, Baby
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“When I was pushed to the brink of loneliness and gender agony as a third grader, when I didn’t know how to communicate with the adults in my life about what was going on, I channeled my anger at my own body, my own existence. When the world made who I was feel impossible, I began to see my own body as an impossibility. For years of my life, I told myself this was normal. That kids just thought about killing themselves sometimes. That every third grader had experienced that. In order to move on with my life, I had to normalize it.”

SuicideSuicidal ThoughtsGender IdentityGender DysphoriaGender Norms
Book:Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
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“To every guy who tries to say that we have already achieved equality for the sexes, if this were true, you wouldn't be told to "man up", "be a man", "stop being a p*#%y", "harden the fuck up", "toughen up", "boys don't cry", "don't be such a girl", "stop being a wimp". As long as this type of language still exists in our society, then gender equality, my friends, has in fact not been achieved after all.”

SocietyFeminismToughFeministEqualitySexismMasculinityBe A ManGender EqualityAlpha MaleSexistGender StereotypesGender NormsGender EquityToughen Up
Book:Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women
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“But as for the rest of you, sisters, when anyone says to you, this, that or the other is natural, then fight. Nature does not know best; for the birds, for the bees, for the cows; for men, perhaps. But your interests and Nature’s do not coincide. Nature our Friend is an argument used, quite understandably, by men.”

FeminismGender RolesFeminist QuotesGender InequalityGender DifferencesFeminist LiteratureGender NormsFeminist Philosophy
Book:Praxis
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“You don’t have to look a certain way to be a tomboy. Don’t let anyone tell you that, ever, and please don’t find that here in my words. Tomboy thrums in your heart. It’s in your head. It’s what is holding your spine in place. It can’t be hidden by a haircut. It’s not about nail polish or not. It’s running right now in your veins. If it is in you, you already know. Tomboy blood is so much bigger than the outside of you.”

ConformityGender NormsTomboyBinary Gender
Author:Ivan E. Coyote
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“…This lack of morality is not limited to rank. In Alaba, for example, even the simplest social structures are ignored. Alabans claim that concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ do not apply, and insist they have either five or six genders, depending on how they are counted, between which these heathens will move depending on their whims. As a tonal language, the same sound with different inflections carries different meanings, so a Naridan must be very careful to avoid misrepresenting himself: for example, ‘mè’ is ‘high masculine’, used by those in whom the fire of manhood burns strongly, while ‘mê’ is ‘low masculine’, for in Alaban society it is no great shame for a man to admit to womanly character. The largely uninflected ‘me’ is the gender-neutral formal, but ‘mé’ is ‘low feminine’, favoured by women who lack the qualities appropriate for their gender, and ‘mē’ is ‘high feminine’, the only appropriate usage for any Naridan lady of decency. Even stranger is ‘më’, used only by those who insist they have no gender, even in the most informal settings. Such immorality is hardly unsurprising in a land that has provided succour to exiled pretenders since the Splintering. Needless to say, Naridans should resist these pernicious local customs and only use the ‘high’ forms for themselves when visiting this land, lest they cause themselves considerable embarrassment.”

FantasyRepresentationFantasy FictionGender StereotypesLanguage BarrierGender NormsSocial Structures
Book:The Black Coast
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“The moment you become aware of your automatic behaviours, judging and expecting another human being to live and behave within the stereotypical gender boxes, you cannot go back to being unconscious. This is when you know you are changing”

Inspirational QuotesMotivational QuotesGender EqualityGender StereotypesGender DifferencesMindful LeadershipGender NormsLeadership Mindset
Book:The Story of Boxes, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Secret to Human Liberation, Peace and Happiness
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“A woman’s honour is usually tied with curbing her sexuality; similarly a man’s masculinity is about flaunting it. While a woman must protect her honour by keeping her legs closed, quite literally, a man must demonstrate his manhood by putting on a show of his sexuality. How can the one physical act that bridges the gap between men and women be so disparate in its meaning for the two sexes?”

SexualityGender DifferencesGender Norms
Book:Dear Men: Masculinity and Modern Love in #MeToo India
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“There is so much more we need to learn and understand. Therefore to be open to learning, understanding, and questioning our social constructed gender box is, in my view, the absolute first step.”

Gender RolesGender StereotypesGender NormsGender Equality Quotes
Book:The Story of Boxes, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Secret to Human Liberation, Peace and Happiness
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“Iris Marion Young discusses how some girls learn to “throw like girls”; they learn not to get themselves behind an action, exhibiting what she calls “inhibited intentionality.” She describes how girls often “lack confidence in their capacity to do what needs to be done.” She notes, “We decide beforehand—usually mistakenly—that the task is beyond us and thus give it less than our full effort.”Decisions we make about our capacities are not always our own. We receive messages all the time that tell us who can do what (and who cannot). If you are told you can’t do it, that girls can’t do it, you might doubt whether you can do it; you might not put all of yourself into it. And then when you don’t manage it, you don’t pull it off, the judgment that you are not capable is confirmed. Gender norms sometimes work through a reversal of sequence: we assume we do it because we can, or don’t because we can’t, but often we can do it because we do it, or we can’t because we don’t. Over time, girls learn to inhabit their bodies with less confidence, assuming what they cannot do as a restriction of a horizon of possibility.”

FeministGender NormsKilljoy
Book:The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way
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“Long before we had writing or farms or post-digital strike helicopters, we had each other. We lived together and changed each other, and so we needed to say “this is who I am, this is what I do.” So, in the same way that we attached sounds to meanings to make language, we began to attach clusters of behavior to signal social roles. Those clusters were rich, and quick-changing, and so just like language, we needed networks devoted to processing them. We needed a place in the brain to construct and to analyze gender.”

GenderTransGender RolesGender NormsGender Performance
Author:Isabel Fall
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