#gender

[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two ... but, more generally, from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who had graciously told me of their most private and intimate thoughts, hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realise how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behaviour and character of women. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#books #character #clichés #conduct #double-standards

…gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white. ↗

— Kate Bornstein

#rainbow #sanity #gender

Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#fiction #gender #on-fiction #problems #women

Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#eating-disorder #eating-disorders #mirrors #poetry #self-esteem

I don't want to sound pompous, but I really think your gender doesn't necessarily dominate your sexual activity. ↗

— John Lone

#dominate #gender #i #necessarily #pompous

Do not ghettoize society by putting people into legal categories of gender, race, ethnicity, language, or other such characteristics. ↗

— Preston Manning

#characteristics #ethnicity #gender #into #language

I'm not convinced that what are traditionally considered to be male energies or qualities or female energies or qualities really have as much to do with gender as many people think they do. ↗

— Andrew Cohen

#convinced #energies #female #gender #i

I'm suspicious of any man or woman who approaches their own liberation with any kind of gender bias. ↗

— Andrew Cohen

#approaches #bias #gender #i #kind

I don't think anyone should pick a candidate for any office based solely on gender. That would be, I believe, a mistake. ↗

— Jim Nussle

#anyone #based #believe #candidate #gender

The Labour party has done more than any other to address gender inequalities, through legislation and other means, and to increase women's representation in politics, which has led to recent increases in the number of female politicians. ↗

— Lucy Powell

#any #done #female #gender #increase