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Sexism Quotes

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Sexism Quotes

“What has greatly help'd to confirm the Men in the prejudiced notion of Women's natural weakness, is the common manner of expression which this very vulgar error gave birth to. When they mean to stigmatise a Man with want of courage they call him effeminate, and when they would praise a Woman for her courage they call her manly. But as these, and such like expressions, are merely arbitrary and but a fulsome compliment which the Men pass on themselves, they establish no truth.”

FeminismSexismMisogynyPatriarchy18th Century18th Century FeminismGender Sterotypes
Book:Woman Not Inferior to Man
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“I think that God that we have created and allowed to shape our culture through, essentially Christian theology is a pretty villainous creature. I think that one of the things that male patriarchal figure has done is, allowed under it's, his church, his wing, all kinds of corruptions and villainies to grow and fester. In the name of that God terrible wars have been waged, in the name of that God terrible sexism has been allowed to spread. There are children being born all across this world that don't have enough food to eat because that God, at least his church, tells the mothers and fathers that they must procreate at all costs, and to prevent procreation with a condom is in contravention with his laws. Now, I don't believe that God exists. I think that God is creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.”

ChurchPowerAtheismCrimeTerribleComfortHorrorAtheistCorruptionTheologyLuxurySexismAbsurdityChristian TheologyAtrocityVillainous
Author:Clive Barker
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“When you're in a situation like that, when you have a man looming over you, it's as if every decision you made to lead to that moment - alone with a man you don't trust - flashes before your eyes. Something tells me men don't do that same thing. When they're standing there, threatening a woman, I doubt they count every wrong step they made to become the asshole they are. But they should.”

WomenVictimSexismAssaultHarassmentDouble StandardWomens EmpowermentVictim Blaming
Book:The Big Seven: Adventures In Search of Africa's Iconic Species
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“Most women are all too familiar with men like Calvin Smith. Men whose sense of prerogative renders them deaf when women say, "No thanks," "Not interested," or even "Fuck off, creep.”

CultureWomenFeminismCommunicationBehaviorMen And WomenGenderSexualitySexismMisogynyAssaultWomen S RightsSexual AbuseRapeDisrespectSaying NoPersonal ExperiencesGender RolesHarassmentSexual AssaultSurvivorsRape CultureVictimsWomen And MenSexual ViolenceVerbal AbusePersonal SpaceRapistsWomen S IssuesPredatorsMisogynistProblems In The WorldStreet HarassmentNot ListeningPersonal ExperienceCatcallingPredatory BehaviorProblems Of TodayPersonal AutonomyMen S BehaviorProblems With SocietyProblems With MenAssaultsAssailantsWomen S Experiences
Book:Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
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“The insidious reasons for a brown girl’s self-loathing won’t be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations—and what they mean about your worth—might not dawn on you while you’re playing cricket in the sand. What’s at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards.”

FeminismRacismSexismWestern CultureBeauty StandardsWestern IdealsWestern Influence
Book:Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir
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“She couldn't help but be aware of the man at her side as he picked up books and read the descriptions on the back. He held one up with a man staring off into the distance, hands on hips. "What about this one?" Sloane wrinkled her nose. "Oh, you mean men's fiction? I've read it, but it's not really my thing." He lifted a brow. "Men's fiction?" "You know how they have women's fiction because it could only be of interest to women? The same thing happens with men. But they don't call it men's fiction. It's just fiction, because of course both men and women, and all genders alike, are always enthralled by whatever men are doing as they seek to find themselves and the true meaning of life." "Sexism, in literature, you mean." "Yes!”

LiteratureSexismCall OutFiction Genres
Book:A Legend in the Baking
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“Do not all attempts, in our own cultural sphere at least, at escaping from the Judeo-Christian compound by means of a unilateral call to return to what it has repressed (rhythm, drive, the feminine, etc.), converge on the same Celinian anti-Semitic fantasy? And this is so because, as I have tried to explain earlier the writings of the chosen people have selected a place, in the most determined manner, on that untenable crest of manness seen as symbolic fact—which constitutes abjection.”

SexismAnti SemitismMonotheismAbjection
Book:Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection
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“And there’s one other matter I must raise. The epidemic of domestic sexual violence that lacerates the soul of South Africa is mirrored in the pattern of grotesque raping in areas of outright conflict from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in areas of contested electoral turbulence from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Inevitably, a certain percentage of the rapes transmits the AIDS virus. We don’t know how high that percentage is. We know only that women are subjected to the most dreadful double jeopardy. The point must also be made that there’s no such thing as the enjoyment of good health for women who live in constant fear of rape. Countless strong women survive the sexual assaults that occur in the millions every year, but every rape leaves a scar; no one ever fully heals. This business of discrimination against and oppression of women is the world’s most poisonous curse. Nowhere is it felt with greater catastrophic force than in the AIDS pandemic. This audience knows the statistics full well: you’ve chronicled them, you’ve measured them, the epidemiologists amongst you have disaggregated them. What has to happen, with one unified voice, is that the scientific community tells the political community that it must understand one incontrovertible fact of health: bringing an end to sexual violence is a vital component in bringing an end to AIDS. The brave groups of women who dare to speak up on the ground, in country after country, should not have to wage this fight in despairing and lonely isolation. They should hear the voices of scientific thunder. You understand the connections between violence against women and vulnerability to the virus. No one can challenge your understanding. Use it, I beg you, use it.”

ViolenceHealthAidsDiscriminationOppressionIsolationSexismSouth AfricaMisogynyAfricaUnited NationsDomestic ViolenceSexual AbuseRapeHivViolence Against WomenKenyaSexual AssaultRape CultureZimbabweSudanDarfurMarital RapeDemocratic Republic Of The Congo
Author:Stephen Lewis
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“If you can't tell from my rap lyrics already, yes I am a feminist. And when I'm saying "hoe" or "bitch" I am actually referring to men. ...That sounded bad, in someway. But at the end of the day, I'm sick of rappers using "bitches" and "hoes" as terms towards women. Feminists are NOT a hate group. Feminists are not all female. Nor has it got an anti-male agenda. It's about equality! I've had a weird, special bond with women since I was a kid. And it's just a shame really that I'm gay.”

ArtistQuotesFeminismPoetPoemRapBritishLiberationWriterActivistSexismRapperWomens RightsWomen S RightsScottishLgbt RightsMusiciansSongwriterSingerFeminism IdentityLgbtq CommunityMusician QuoteMusicians OpinionsLgbtq ActivismScott McgoldrickFeminism GenderMusician ActivistLgbtq SupportMarina And The DiamondsThe Whisky P
Author:Scott McGoldrick
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“Life for both sexes - and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement - is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority - it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney - for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination - over other people.”

FeminismFeministSexismWomen WritersMysogynyWomen AuthorsBloomsburyVirigina Woolf
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“White women can oscillate between their gender and their race, between being the oppressed and the oppressor. Women of color are never permitted to exist outside of these constraints: we are both women and people of color and we are always seen and treated as such.”

FeminismRacismSexismMisogynyWhitenessWomen Of ColorWhite Women
Book:White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color
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“Critics assert that Black Lives Matter is an anti-White terrorist group; the counterargument, "All Lives Matter," is little more than a racist dog whistle that attempts to both delegitimize centuries of claims of global anti-Black oppression and position those who exhibit tremendous pride in their Blackness as enemies of the state. Well, we are enemies of any racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic state that sanctions brutality and murder against marginalized people who deserve to live as free people.”

RacismSexismBlack Lives MatterXenophobiaBlmClassismAll Lives Matter
Book:Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets
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“Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.”

TraumaDenialSexismBiasSexual AbuseControversyCredibilityChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsIncestTraumatic ExperiencesSociety DenialDoubting MindRecovered MemoriesTrauma MemoryAuthoritarianPsychological TraumaRecovered MemoryDelayed Reaction
Author:Rachel E. Goldsmith
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“What a relief, Nadya thought; in that light he would not be able to tell that she had been crying. "You mean if it weren't for the blackout you wouldn't have come?" Dasha took up Shchagov's tone, flirting unconsciously, as she did with every unmarried man she met. "By no means, never. In bright light women's faces are deprived of all their charm; it reveals their spiteful expressions, their envious glances, their premature wrinkles, their heavy cosmetics." Nadya shuddered at the words "envious glances"—it was as if he had overheard their argument. Shchagov went on:" If I were a woman, I would make it a law that lights be kept low. Then everyone would soon have a husband." Dasha looked disapprovingly at Shchagov. He always talked that way, and she didn't like it. All his phrases seemed memorized, insincere.”

SexismSoviet Russia1968Dorm RoomCaptain ShchagovCasual MisogynyDormitory Life
Book:The First Circle
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“Blaming therapy, social work and other caring professions for the confabulation of testimony of 'satanic ritual abuse' legitimated a programme of political and social action designed to contest the gains made by the women's movement and the child protection movement. In efforts to characterise social workers and therapists as hysterical zealots, 'satanic ritual abuse' was, quite literally, 'made fun of': it became the subject of scorn and ridicule as interest groups sought to discredit testimony of sexual abuse as a whole. The groundswell of support that such efforts gained amongst journalists, academics and the public suggests that the pleasures of disbelief found resonance far beyond the confines of social movements for people accused of sexual abuse. These pleasures were legitimised by a pseudo-scientific vocabulary of 'false memories' and 'moral panic' but as Daly (1999:219-20) points out 'the ultimate goal of ideology is to present itself in neutral, value-free terms as the very horizon of objectivity and to dismiss challenges to its order as the "merely ideological"'. The media spotlight has moved on and social movements for people accused of sexual abuse have lost considerable momentum. However, their rhetoric continues to reverberate throughout the echo chamber of online and 'old' media. Intimations of collusion between feminists and Christians in the concoction of 'satanic ritual abuse' continue to mobilise 'progressive' as well as 'conservative' sympathies for men accused of serious sexual offences and against the needs of victimised women and children. This chapter argues that, underlying the invocation of often contradictory rationalising tropes (ranging from calls for more scientific 'objectivity' in sexual abuse investigations to emotional descriptions of 'happy families' rent asunder by false allegations) is a collective and largely unarticulated pleasure; the catharthic release of sentiments and views about children and women that had otherwise become shameful in the aftermath of second wave feminism. It seems that, behind the veneer of public concern about child sexual abuse, traditional views about the incredibility of women's and children's testimony persist. 'Satanic ritual abuse has served as a lens through which these views have been rearticulated and reasserted at the very time that evidence of widespread and serious child sexual abuse has been consolidating. p60”

FeminismMediaPrejudiceFeministManipulationSexismChild AbuseRidiculeAccusedSexual AbuseScornDisbeliefChild Sexual AbuseHystericalOffendersVictimsSociety DenialSatanic Ritual AbuseInsensitivityFalse MemoriesPedophiliaChild ProtectionSocial ActionStereotypingOrganized AbuseOrganised AbuseMoral PanicFundamentalistsPseudo ScienceSatanic PanicFalse AllegationsWomen S MovementHystericsZealotsAlleged RapistsPseudo ScientificVictimised Women
Book:Organised Sexual Abuse
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“The fact is, rape is utterly commonplace in all our cultures. It is part of the fabric of everyday life, yet we all act as if it’s something shocking and extraordinary whenever it hits the headlines. We remain silent, and so we condone it…Until rape, and the structures – sexism, inequality, tradition – that make it possible, are part of our dinner-table conversation with the next generation, it will continue. Is it polite and comfortable to talk about it? No. Must we anyway? Yes.” ‘To protect our children, we must talk to them about rape”

EducationSocietySexismRapeChild Sexual AbuseRape CultureSexual ViolenceSay No To Rape Jokes
Author:Desmond Tutu
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“His comments are not compliments, or even propositions. They are declarations of ownership. They are threats. They are the intrusive thumb of male privilege and patriarchal violence, reminding me of my place as I move around within public space. They are the put-down, the screw-you, the worthless-slur, the great derision that is a constant, omnipresent reminder that society allows male sexual violence to function commonly as a social norm. It is the constant reminder that I should always be scared. That I am never safe. That someone always wants to hurt me, and that society will always, always turn its face the other way, as seen by the normalcy with which men can publicly deride me with confidence and gusto in their threats.”

FeminismSexismWomens RightsRape CultureFeminism QuotesMetooSexism QuotesStreet HarassmentCatcalling
Author:Alice Minium
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“Deconstructed, I find its bits and pieces everywhere around me in the architecture of my social world. I find components of its violence in the sexism of your comments. I find it in the way you touch me without asking. I find it in the way you call that girl a whore. I find its bits and pieces of violence, the building blocks of sexual assault, in the psyches and vocabularies of my boyfriend, my professors, and my friends.”

FeminismSexismSexual AssaultRape CultureMetooStreet HarassmentCatcalling
Author:Alice Minium
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“For it is the silent men, far more than the loud mouthy men on Warwick Boulevard, who make this possible. It is the silent men at 711, the silent men at the YMCA, the silent men next to us in cars, the silent men lying next to us in our bedrooms, the silent men we call our best friends, our boyfriends, and our fathers. It is the silent men, not the loud ones- who permit foulmouthed men to chew me up and spit me out as I walk down the street. It is the silent men who could have stopped this, but who didn’t care to, because they were busy. It is the silent men who said 'Yes' to violence, and who, in their complicit silence, insisted that my world would be impenetrably loud.”

FeminismSexismSexual AssaultRape CultureMetooStreet HarassmentCatcalling
Author:Alice Minium
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“For a while, the rise of sociopolitical discourse both online and in physical spaces felt like slowly breaking these boundaries down one by one: we started to teach each other that everything we knew about gender, or being fat, or poor, or chronically ill, was decided by a system that had no intention of caring for us. But then the fear of being too much slowly began to reinfect all of our minds. We began to second-guess our ability to change the world, so settled with self-optimising instead.”

SexismHomophobiaAbleismSystemic ChangeFatphobiaSocial Barriers
Book:Poor Little Sick Girls: A Love Letter to Unacceptable Women
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“What do we find, here in America, in the field of 'politics?' We find first a party system which is the technical arrangement to carry on a fight. It is perfectly conceivable that a flourishing democratic government be carried on without any parties at all; public functionaries being elected on their merits, and each proposed measure judged on its merits; though this sounds impossible to the androcentric mind. 'There has never been a democracy without factions and parties!" is protested. There has never been a democracy, so far--only an androcracy.”

GovernmentLawDemocracySocietyFeminismGenderSexismRadical FeminismGender Critical Feminism
Book:The Man-Made World
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“Society' consists mostly of women. Women carry on most of its processes, therefore women are its makers and masters, they are responsible for it, that is the general belief. We might as well hold women responsible for harems--or prisoners for jails. To be helplessly confined to a given place or condition does not prove that one has chosen it; much less made it. No; in an androcentric culture "society," like every other social relation, is dominated by the male and arranged for his convenience.”

FeminismGenderSexismRadical FeminismGender Critical Feminism
Book:The Man-Made World
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“Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained. In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game.”

GovernmentLawSocietyFeminismCrimeGenderPunishmentSexismRadical FeminismGender Critical Feminism
Book:The Man-Made World
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“The connection between our archaic system of punishment and our androcentric culture is two-fold. The impulse of resistance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest natural origin, is expressed more strongly in the male than in the female. The tendency to hit back and hit harder has been fostered in him by sex-combat till it has become of great intensity. The habit of authority too, as old as our history; and the cumulative weight of all the religions and systems of law and government, have furthermore built up and intensified the spirit of retaliation and vengeance. They have even deified this concept, in ancient religions, crediting to God the evil passions of men. As the small boy recited; 'Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord'--'I will repay.”

GovernmentLawSocietyFeminismCrimeGenderPunishmentSexismRadical FeminismGender Critical Feminism
Book:The Man-Made World
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