No subscription or hidden extras
Read through the most famous quotes by topic #gender
Nowadays, all a man can do to be original is to cite the earliest known quote on that subject. Women, though, have no problem being original. In fact, women are always being original. I constantly have to tell my wife to stop talking so much nonsense. ↗
The abject is evident in the bizarre bodily changes found in films as different as Videodrome (1983) and M Butterfly (1993), both of which focus on mutating or deviant men. Cronenberg’s work at this level achieves a rupture of the categories constituting gender difference: as Williams has it, in these films ‘mutation signals a more pervasive postmodern gender-fuck at work: women conceive without men (The Brood), and men turn themselves into women’. In the ‘fisting’ scene in Videodrome, for example, when Harlan thrusts his arm into Renn’s vagina slit what is attempting is a form of rape. However, the vagina dissolves his arm, and he is left with a bleeding stump, prefiguring the stump of a hand and dissolved ankle which Stathis Borans is left with at the end of The Fly. In Crash (1996), the complexities of this order of conceptualization are developed further, as the question of the boundaries between the inner and outer, the private and the public, of which the male body has been the focus, finds the automobile a new kind of expression. ↗
A text by a minority writer is effective only if it succeeds in making the minority point of view universal. ('The Universal and the Particular')" ... In claiming the lesbian point of view as universal, she overturns the concepts to which we are accustomed. For up to this point, minority writers had to add "the universal" to their points of view if they wished to attain the unquestioned universality of the dominant class. Gay men, for example, have always defined themselves as a minority and never questioned, despite their transgression, the dominant choice. This is why gay culture has always had a fairly wide audience. [From the Foreword "Changing the Point of View" by Louise Turcotte] ↗
This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial. ↗
…I am certain of this one truth: men can achieve closeness without intimacy, while women can achieve intimacy without closeness. For example, Bobbie knows every intimate detail of her dental hygienist’s private life. She doesn’t have a close relationship with her, but she knows more about the woman who cleans her teeth twice a year than I do about most of the guys I play basketball with every week. And still I feel a closeness with every one of them. Maybe it’s because I don’t know too much. ↗
While mass-media images of biological "males" feminizing themselves have the subversive potential to highlight ways conventionally defined femininity is artificial (a point feminists make all the time), the images rarely function this way. Trans women are both asked to prove their femaleness through superficial means and denied the status of "real" women because fo the artifice involved. After all, masculinity is generally defined by how a man behaves, while femininity is judged by how a woman presents herself. Thus, the media is able to depict trans women donning feminine attire and accessories without ever allowing them to achieve "true" femininity or femaleness. Further, by focusing on the most feminine of artifices, the media encourages the audience to see trans women as living out a sexual fetish. But sexualizing their motives for transitioning not only belittles trans women's female identities; it also encourages the objectification of women as a group. ... Thus...[this type of message] sexualizes the very concept of female identity and reduces all women (trans or otherwise) to mere feminine artifacts [ex. applying make-up, perfume, putting on jewelry]. ↗
All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot. ↗
