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Masculinity Quotes

Browse 534 quotes about Masculinity.

Masculinity Quotes

“I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness).”

Men Littles Ideas Whole America Opinion Imagine Ill Versions Contrast Coats Manhood Masculinity Femininity Fitting Pitiful

Book:Sunrise with Seamonsters

Source: Sunrise with Seamonsters

“The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity. Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.”

Men Clear Crisis Threat Distinction Patriarchy Masculinity Critique

Book:The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

Source: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

“We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind.”

“Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.”

Ifs Men Wells Stills Age Beautiful Young Sex Women Embrace Fats Old Age Appeals Preserves Weary Masculinity Sex Appeal

Book:August: Osage County (TCG Edition)

Source: August: Osage County (TCG Edition)

“Surely we have had enough of confusing maleness with "usefulness" and other human virtues. If men had a more modest view of what their masculinity ought to entail, perhaps they could move on from debilitating feelings of loss to tackling their real economic and political problems.”

Ifs Men Humans Real Enough Feelings Problem Moving Political Loss Views Virtue Economic Ought Modest Masculinity Confusing Usefulness Had Enough Tackling Maleness

Author:Ellen Willis

“In order to live as we were designed to live, we must be in pursuit not simply of manhood but of godly masculinity. That begins by being men who are rightly related to God, who understand what it means to fear him, and who respond to that fear by being alert, standing firm in the faith, and being men of courage.”

Men Mean Order Standing Pursuit Firm Related Manhood Masculinity Godly Being Me Stand Firm

Book:The Christian Husband: God's Vision for Loving and Caring for Your Wife

Source: The Christian Husband: God's Vision for Loving and Caring for Your Wife

“The most gentle people in the world are macho males, people who are confident in their masculinity and have a feeling of well-being in themselves. They don't have to kick in doors, mistreat women, or make fun of gays.”

People World Wells Feelings Fun Doors Gay Males Well Being Gentle Kicks Masculinity Macho Mistreat

Author:Clint Eastwood

“I live part-time in a cabin in Colorado up in the mountains and part-time on a ranch in central Texas - but do I really know how to go brand a cow, or do I really know how to go rappelling down a cliff? No. I do the recreational, half-assed version of all these manly activities and then try to keep that kind of Zen masculinity, like, "I'm a man of nature."”

Knows Men Trying Kind Half Know How Activity Mountain Versions Brands Texas Cows Masculinity Cliffs Manly Colorado Cabins Part Time Rappelling

Author:David Gordon Green

“Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.”

Men Masculinity Armchairs Mausoleum

Author:V. S. Pritchett

“Femininity and masculinity are social constructs. Female and male are biological. We don't have to learn to be men or women but we do have to learn to be ladies and gentlemen.”

Men Social Female Males Gentleman Constructs Masculinity Femininity Be A Man Ladies And Gentlemen Females And Males

Book:Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

Source: Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

“Men, also, have in them enormous capacities that they have to repress and fear in themselves, living up to this obsolete and brutal man-eating, bear-killing, Ernest Hemingway, crewcut Prussian sadistic, napalm all the children in Vietnam, bang-bang you're dead, image of masculinity, the image of all powerful masculine superiority that is absolute.”

Men Children Powerful Bears Eating Capacity Absolutes Killing Enormous Vietnam Brutal Superiority Masculinity Masculine Bangs Obsolete Sadistic Napalm

Author:Betty Friedan

“[Warfare is] maleness in its absurdest extremes. Here is to be studied the whole gamut of basic masculinity, from the initial instinct of combat, through every form of glorious ostentation, with the loudest accompaniment of noise.”

Men Whole Form Instinct Extremes Noise Glorious Combat Warfare Masculinity Initials Ostentation Maleness

Book:Collected Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Short Stories, Novels, Poems and Essays: The Yellow Wallpaper, What Diantha Did, Women and Economics, The Crux, Moving the Mountain, Herland and other works from the prominent American feminist, sociologist and novelist

Source: Collected Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Short Stories, Novels, Poems and Essays: The Yellow Wallpaper, What Diantha Did, Women and Economics, The Crux, Moving the Mountain, Herland and other works from the prominent American feminist, sociologist and novelist

“Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility.”

Writing Ideas Hands Stuff Black Bird Obvious Critical Chains Aggressive Frightening Bees Homosexual Underestimate Masculinity Leather Emily Blake Dizzy Visibility Baudelaire Spenser

Author:Camille Paglia

“while there are 'women writers' there are not, and have never been, 'men writers.' This is an empty category, a class without specimens; for the noun 'writer' - the very verb 'writing' - always implies masculinity.”

Men Writing Class Empty Sexism Categories Masculinity Verbs Nouns

Book:(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities

Source: (Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities

“Bisexuality is almost a necessary factor in artistic production; at any rate, the tinge of masculinity within me helped me in my work.”

Rate Productions Factors Artistic Homosexuality Masculinity Bisexuality

Book:The diary and letters of Kaethe Kollwitz

Source: The diary and letters of Kaethe Kollwitz

“Patriarchy values the hard over the soft; the tough over the tender; punishment, vengeance, and vindictiveness over compassion, negotiation, and reconciliation. The 'hard' qualities are linked to power, success, and masculinity - and exalted. The 'soft' qualities are identified with weakness, powerlessness, and femininity - and denigrated.”

Hard Values Quality Compassion Weakness Tough Punishment Patriarchy Linked Masculinity Negotiation Femininity Vengeance Reconciliation Exalted Powerlessness Vindictiveness

Author:Starhawk

“the gender of God, God's presumed masculinity, has functioned as the ultimate religious legitimization of the unjust social structures which victimize women.”

God Religion Social Religious Ultimate Structure Gender Having Fun Sexism Unjust Masculinity Social Structure

Book:Women and the Word: The Gender of God in the New Testament and the Spirituality of Women

Source: Women and the Word: The Gender of God in the New Testament and the Spirituality of Women

“Theres a great sense of achievement, testosterone, fun, being able to live out your masculinity when you play an action role or an action-adventure or a real tough-guy role.”

Real Play Able Action Guy Fun Roles Adventure Achievement Tough Masculinity Testosterone Tough Guy

Author:Gerard Butler

“I celebrate masculinity when I'm onstage.”

Celebrate Masculinity

Author:Bryan Callen

“What Women's Lib might achieve if their 'consciousness raising' - or in plain English, brainwashing- campaign succeeds is a society whose members have identical roles but are perpetually at war with themselves; a society of males made neurotic by suppressed masculinity, of females made miserable by having masculine roles thrust upon them that contradict their feminine impulses.”

“You can't have a discussion about bullying unless you also have a discussion against our culture's obsession with masculinity.”

Culture Obsession Discussion Bullying Masculinity

Author:RuPaul

“Hip-hop was started as a very egocentric, testosterone, machismo-driven art form. The way that people are trying to take away that masculinity that is a such an intrinsical part of hip-hop music.”

People Way Trying Art Form Hip Hop Driven Hips Hops Masculinity Testosterone Egocentric Machismo Hip Hop Music

Author:Macklemore

“The more people, as you know, are able to be on whatever spectrum of femininity and masculinity they are on at that moment, that opens the door for women to not have to be the opposite of what the supposed traditional male is.”

People Knows Moments Able Doors Opposites Males Traditional That Moment Masculinity Femininity Spectrum

Author:Kathleen Hanna

“Elite athletes learn entitlement. They believe they are entitled to have women serve their needs. It's part of being a man. It's the cultural construction of masculinity.”

Men Needs Believe Athlete Construction Elites Entitled Masculinity Entitlement Elite Athletes

Author:Jackson Katz

“If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.”

Ifs Enough Culture Black Smart Rap Masculinity Caricatures Gangsta Black Culture Kkk Gangsta Rap

Author:Jackson Katz

“I just think that culturally, women - we're all human beings - but at least we don't have our masculinity to prove.”

Thinking Humans Human Beings Prove Masculinity

Author:Gloria Steinem

“Some men develop their own singularity. Football makes men conform to stereotypes: the warrior or the hunter. Football produces a certain kind of masculinity - the drunk kind, the king who will yell the worst nationalist's ideas. In front of those, it is very difficult to be a dignified woman.”

Men Kind Ideas Certain Difficult Worst Fronts Produce Football Kings Drunk Warrior Stereotype Conform Hunters Masculinity Singularity

Author:Orlan

“I took the standpoint that the profession of technologist, a man who masters matter, is a masculine profession, if not the only masculine profession there is.”

Ifs Men Matter Technology Masters Profession Mastery Masculinity Masculine Standpoint

Book:Homo Faber

Source: Homo Faber

“Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people's crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translateinto concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.”

Source: Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier

“I have known a number of Don Juans who were good studs and who cavorted between the sheets without a psychiatrist to guide them. But most of the busy love-makers I knew were looking for masculinity rather than practicing it. They were fellows of dubious lust.”

Numbers Known Fellows Busy Guides Lust Makers Sheets Masculinity Psychiatrist Dubious Don Juan Promiscuity Juan Studs

Book:A child of the century

Source: A child of the century

“We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.”

Needs Long Grows Violence Soldier Disappear More Time Thick Long Ago Rats Masculinity New Yorkers Texan Grimace Blowhards Alaskans

Book:Walking the Dead Diamond River

Source: Walking the Dead Diamond River

“Becoming Father the Nurturer rather than just Father the Provider enables a man to fully feel and express his humanity and his masculinity. Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.”

Men Feels Humanity Father Can Do Becoming Masculinity Masculine Providers Fathering

Author:Frank Pittman

“In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has hadless authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.”

Men Years Two Home Lasts America Past Used Father Parent Term Generations Skills Authority Hundred Defined Primaries Making Money Masculinity Involvement Over The Past Fathering

Author:Frank Pittman

“To insult a friend implies that you respect his masculinity enough to know he can take it without acting like a crybaby. The swapping of insults, like the fighting between brothers, becomes the seal of the male bonding.”

Knows Enough Fighting Acting Brother Males Insult Masculinity Seals Bonding Swapping Crybabies

Author:Frank Pittman

“Our ability to fall in love requires enough comfort with our masculinity to join it with someone's femininity and feel enhanced. .. . If our mother made us feel secure and proud in our masculinity, then we want to find that again in our wife. If we are really comfortable with our mother, we can even marry a woman who is a friend rather than an adversary, and form a true partnership.”

Ifs Want Feels Made Enough Form Mother Fall Ability Wife Proud Comfort Comfortable Falling In Love Secure Partnership Masculinity Femininity Adversaries

Author:Frank Pittman

“Family life in Western society since the time of the Old Testament has been a struggle to maintain patriarchy, male domination, and double standards in the face of a natural drift towards monogamous bonding. Young men have been called upon to prove their masculinity by their willingness to die in warfare, and young women have been called upon to prove their femininity by their willingness to die for their man. Women have been asked to appear small, dumb, and helpless so men would feel big and strong, brave, and clever. It's been a trick.”

“Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how tobe men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.”

Men World Real Shows Father Boys Alive Function Prime Masculinity Absent Our Father

Author:Frank Pittman

“Masculinity varies from time to time and place to place. But it doesn't exist just in the mind of a single guy: it is shared withthe other guys. It is a code of conduct that requires men to maintain masculine postures and attitudes (however they are defined) at all times and in all places. Masculinity includes the symbols, uniforms, chants, and plays that make this the boys' team rather than the girls' team.”

Men Mind Play Guy Girl Attitude Boys Team All Time Symbols Defined Code Uniforms Masculinity Masculine Vary Other Guys Posture Single Guy

Author:Frank Pittman

“The men who are messing up their lives, their families, and their world in their quest to feel man enough are not exercising truemasculinity, but a grotesque exaggeration of what they think a man is. When we see men overdoing their masculinity, we can assume that they haven't been raised by men, that they have taken cultural stereotypes literally, and that they are scared they aren't being manly enough.”

Thinking Men World Feels Enough Taken Havens He Man Exercise Assuming Raised Scared Quests Stereotype Masculinity Exaggeration Manly Grotesque Messing Up

Author:Frank Pittman

“The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.”

Knows Men Wells May Children Passion Wealth Secret Boys Fame Lays Sake Deny Toys Wiser Masculinity Tempted Great Passion

Author:Frank Pittman

“Our father has an even more important function than modeling manhood for us. He is also the authority to let us relax the requirements of the masculine model: if our father accepts us, then that declares us masculine enough to join the company of men. We, in effect, have our diploma in masculinity and can go on to develop other skills.”

Ifs Men Important Enough Father Company Accepting Effects Goes On Skills Authority Models Function Relax Requirements Manhood Masculinity Masculine Modeling Our Father Diploma

Author:Frank Pittman

“As a guy develops and practices his masculinity, he is accompanied by an invisible male chorus of all the other guys, who hiss orcheer as he attempts to approximate the masculine ideal, who push him to sacrifice more of his humanity for the sake of his masculinity, and who ridicule him when he holds back. The chorus is made up of all the guy's comrades and rivals, his buddies and bosses, his male ancestors and his male cultural heroes--and above all, his father, who may have been a real person in his life, or may have existed only as the myth of the man who got away.”

“What we men share is the experience of having been raised by women in a culture that stopped our fathers from being close enough to teach us how to be men, in a world in which men were discouraged from talking about our masculinity and questioning its roots and its mystique, in a world that glorified masculinity and gave us impossibly unachievable myths of masculine heroics, but no domestic models to teach us how to do it.”

Men World Enough Culture Father Talking Teach Share Models Roots Raised Myth Questioning Masculinity Masculine Discouraged Be A Man Our Father Mystique

Author:Frank Pittman

“At the heart of the matter of masculine excess is a great longing for the love and approval of a father, a man who can tell another man that his masculinity is splendid enough and he can now relax.”

Men Heart Matter Enough Father Longing Relax Excess Approval Masculinity Masculine Splendid Another Man

Author:Frank Pittman

“Most of us have felt barriers between ourselves and our fathers and had thought that going it alone was part of what it meant to be a man. We tried to get close to our children when we became fathers, and yet the business of practicing masculinity kept getting in the way. We men have begun to talk about that.”

Men Way Children Father Felt Our Children Barriers Meant To Be Masculinity Be A Man Our Father

Author:Frank Pittman

“... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R's, a littlemusic and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.”

Source: The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters

“Defining and celebrating the New Father are by far the most popular ideas in our contemporary discourse on fatherhood. Father as close and nurturing, not distant and authoritarian. Fatherhood as more than bread winning. Fatherhood as new-and-improved masculinity. Fathers unafraid of feelings. Fathers without sexism. Fatherhood as fifty-fifty parenthood, undistorted by arbitrary gender divisions or stifling social roles.”

“Identity is marketed in national capitalism as a property. It is something you can purchase, or purchase a relation to. Or it is something you already own that you can express: my masculinity, my queerness . But identity need not be simply a caption for an image of an unchangeable concrete self. It is also a theory of the future, of history.”

Needs Self Identity Theory Capitalism Relation Property Concrete Masculinity Unchangeable Caption

Author:Lauren Berlant

“I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don't understand how certain kinds of links are forged between gender and sexuality in the minds of those who want masculinity to be absolutely separate from femininity and heterosexuality to be absolutely separate from homosexuality.”

Ifs Thinking Want Mind Kind Able Certain Gender Sexuality Operations Links Homosexuality Masculinity Femininity Trans Homophobia Forged Phobia Heterosexuality Gender And Sexuality

Author:Judith Butler

“The men who espoused unpopular causes may have been considered misguided, but they were rarely attacked for their morals or their masculinity. Women who did the same thing were apt to be denounced as harlots or condemned for being unfeminine - an all-purpose word that was used to describe almost any category of female behavior of which men disapproved.”

Men May Has Beens Used Purpose Causes Women Moral He Man Behavior Female Sexism Categories Masculinity Misguided Harlots

Author:Margaret Truman Daniel