gender stereotypes Quotes

“Ah thought you would ‘preciate good treatement. Thought Ah’d take and make somethin’ outa yuh. You think youse white folks by de way you act.”

“Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me how surprised He was ‘bout y’all turning out so smart after Him makin’ yuh different; and how surprised y’all is goin’ tuh be if you ever find out you don’t know half as much ‘bout us as you think you do. It’s so easy to make yo’self out God Almighty when you ain’t got nothin’ tuh strain against but women and chickens.” “You getting’ too moufy, Janie,” Starks told her. “Go fetch me de checker-board and de checkers.”

If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women’s weapons, water-drops, Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags, … No, I’ll not weep. I have full cause of weeping, but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

“So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake. There was a suppressed murmur when she picked up a basket and went to work. She was already getting to be a special case on the muck. It was generally assumed that she thought herself too good to work like the rest of the women and that Tea Cake “pomped her up tuh dat.” But all day long the romping and playing they carried on behind the boss’s back made her popular right away. It got the whole field to playing off and on. Then Tea Cake would help get supper afterwards.”

“Tea Cake made her shoot at little things just to give her good aim. Pistol and shot gun and rifle. It got so the others stood around and watched them. Some of the men would beg for a shot at the target themselves. It was the most exciting thing on the muck. Better than the jook and the pool-room unless some special band was playing for a dance. And the thing that got everybody was the way Janie caught on. She got to the place she could shoot a hawk out of a pine tree and not tear him up. Shoot his head off. She got to be a better shot than Tea Cake. ”

″“Better in body perhaps—” I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word. “My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”″

″[Jennie] is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!”

“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?”

“John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.”

“There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!”

“Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.”

“Studies now show that working-class boys like me do much worse in school because they view schoolwork as a feminine endeavor.”

“I know you’re teasing me. And you should know I’m not easily humiliated. You may hunt for my food, and pound me every time we fight, and protect me when we’re attacked, if you like. I’ll thank you for it.”

′ “Does anyone teach girls of the inn to protect themselves?” she asked. “Do you carry a knife?” “Our father protects us, and our brother,” the girl said, simply. Katsa wondered if other girls in Sunder, and across the seven kingdoms, carried, knives; or if they all looked to their fathers and brothers for every protection.′

“You’re not an unnatural woman, Katsa. You can fight as other women can’t, but you’re not so different from other women. You’ll want babies. I’m certain of it.”

“So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this person in between me and what I want to do?’ If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.”

“This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with one another. ‘You’re up for a promotion. If they go for a woman, it’ll be between you and Barbara.’ Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone.”

“Now father and son could rest. There was a woman coming to the house. Never again would Wang Lung have to rise summer and winter at dawn to light the fire. He could lie in his bed and wait, and he also would have a bowl of water brought to him, and if the earth were fruitful there would be tea leaves in the water. ”

“My promise was the price I had to pay for being born. That’s all you need to know.”

“I only feel my life unspeakably empty. No one to live for anymore.”

“One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.”

“Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have!”

″‘For woman is yin,’ she cried sadly, ‘the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.‘”

″[Woman’s] sensibility had been educated for centuries by the influences of the common sitting room. People’s feelings were impressed on her; personal relations were always before her eyes. Therefore, when the middle-class woman took to writing, she naturally wrote novels.”

“Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance [...] But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten, and flung about the room.”

“Much of traditional religious imagery has represented women as inferior, even evil. It is only an enlightened spiritual worldview that reveals both men and women in all our true glory.”

“So I said, ‘Yes, I will go,’ though in my heart I will never understand why we women are always assigned the task of peacemaking. ‘I will go, but I will not forgive Ann Putnam. You cannot ask me to do that, husband’ I told him. And I wonder, now that I am here, how I can look on her face again without seeing the faces of all whom she destroyed. ”

“To be found alone with a man is shocking—a reason for a quick and necessary wedding. But to be found with a Gypsy! If I were to tell, Felicity would be ruined for life.”

″[…] A man wants a woman who will make life easy for him. She should be attractive, well groomed, knowledgeable in music, painting, and running a house, but above all, she should keep his name above scandal and never call attention to herself.”

“The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders.”

Lysistrata: “But if the women gather together here—the Boeotian women, the Peloponnesian women, and ourselves—together we’ll be able to rescue Greece.” Calonice: “But what can mere women do that’s intelligent or illustrious? We sit around the house looking pretty, wearing saffron dresses, and make-up, and Cimberic gowns, and pleasure-boat slippers.” Lysistrata: “Exactly! That’s exactly what I think will rescue Greece: our fancy little dresses, our perfumes and our slippers, our rouge and our see-through underwear!”

“That’s quite a different story. When a man comes home he can quickly find a girl to marry, even if he’s a graybeard. But a woman’s prime is brief; if she doesn’t seize it, no one wants to marry her, and she sits at home looking for good omens.”

“It’s shocking, you know, that they’re lecturing the citizens now, and running their mouths—mere women!—about brazen shields. And to top it off they’re trying to make peace between us and the men of Sparta, who are no more trustworthy than a starving wolf.”

“If you live long enough, you’ll get many surprises, yes sir! Well, Strymodorus, who in the world ever thought we’d hear that women, the blatant nuisance we’ve reared in our homes,now control the Sacred Image and occupy my Acropolis, And to top it all, with bolts and bars close off the citadel gates?”

“Honey, they’ll be along. You know, it’s a lot of trouble for wives to get out of the house: we’re giving hubby a hand, or waking up a slave, or putting the baby to bed, or bathing it, or feeding it a snack.”

“Well, sir, you shouldn’t lift your hand against your neighbors just anytime you feel like it. If you do, you’re going to end up with a black eye. You see, I’d rather be sitting modestly at home like a maiden, bothering no one here, stirring not a single blade of grass. But if anyone annoys me and rifles my nest, they’ll find a wasp inside.”

Magistrate: “You’ll manage the money?” Lysistrata: “What’s so strange about that? Don’t we manage the household finances for you already?” Magistrate: “That’s different.” Lysistrata: “How so?” Magistrate: “These are war funds!”

“What do you think you’re doing, you naughty girl, listening to those other women and giving me a hard time and hurting yourself as well.”

Cinesias: “And what a long time it’s been since you’ve celebrated Aphrodite’s holy mysteries. Won’t you come home?” Myrrhine: “I certainly will not, not until you men agree to a settlement and stop the war.”

“Muslim women should dress traditionally and wear a scarf, even though he always wore western gear.”

“Her sixth, to stab herself; her seventh, to sentence The lash to Baba: —but her grand resource Was to sit down again, and cry—of course”

“I’m a philosopher; confound them all! Bills, beasts, and men, and—no! not womankind! With one good hearty curse I vent my gall”

“I remained on the ladder, looking at the figurine in my hand. You’re wrong, Aunt Josie, I thought. It’s not pride I’m feeling. It’s another sin. Worse than all the other ones, which are immediate, violent, and hot. This one sits inside you quietly and eats you from the inside out like the trichina worms the pigs get. It’s the Eighth Deadly Sin. The one God left out. Hope.”

“It wasn’t like this when Mamma was alive. Somehow she provided good meals all through the winter and still managed to have meat left in the cellar come spring. I am nowhere near as capable as my mother was, and if I ever forget it, I have Lou to remind me. Or Pa. Not that he says the sorts of things Lou does, but you can tell by the look on his face when he sits down to eat that he isn’t fond of mush day in and day out.”

″‘Go round cringing like a dog, Matt,’ he said, ‘and folks will treat you like one. Stand up like a man, and they’ll treat you like a man.’ That was fine for Weaver, but I wondered sometimes, How exactly do you stand up like a man when you’re a girl?”

“My eyes latch on to one line again: “I said no so many times, dear”...and then I gasp out loud, because I have said no a few times myself, dear, and I finally understand why Grace was so upset: She was carrying a baby—Chester Gillette’s baby. That’s why she had to give up her position and go home. That’s why she was so desperate for him to come and take her away. Before her belly got big and the whole world found out.”

″[Oscar] [h]ad none of the Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldn’t have pulled a girl if his life depended on it. [..] Had no knack for music or business or dance, no hustle, no rap, no G. And most damning of all: no looks.”

“In September he headed to Rutgers New Brunswick, his mother gave him a hundred dollars and his first kiss in five years, his tío [uncle] a box of condoms: Use them all, he said, and then added: On girls. ”

“So what do people see when they read that well-behaved women rarely make history? Do they imagine good-time girls in stiletto heels or do-good girls carrying clipboards and passing petitions? Do they envision an out-of-control hobbyist or a single mother taking down a drunk in a bar? I suspect that it depends on where they stand themselves.”

“It was as if being a woman was a disease that you didn’t wish to catch. As long as you didn’t associate with the other women, you could imply to the majority, the men: I’m not like those other ones.”

“For Elizabeth, cooking wasn’t some preordained feminine duty. As she’d told Calvin, cooking was chemistry. That’s because cooking actually is chemistry.”

“She was learning that if she pretended to be weak and frightened, and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief, she could turn aside all manner of pressing questions.”

“The world of Kentucky Chess was astonished this weekend by the playing of a local girl, who triumphed over hardened players to win the Kentucky State Championship. Elizabeth Harmon, a seventh-grade student at Fairfield Junior, showed “a mastery of the game unequaled by any female” according to Harry Beltik, whom Miss Harmon defeated for the state crown.”

“I thought of stuffing the picture into my pants pocket, but it wouldn’t fit. Only when I got to know Bisa Bea better did I learn the truth. She doesn’t like girls in pants or shorts, not even nice ones. She thinks they’re boys’ clothes. Sometimes she has the strangest ideas.”

″‘I can think a little bit, too,’ said Kat. ‘Can’t I go?’ ‘No,’ said Vrouw Vedder. ‘Girls shouldn’t think much. It isn’t good for them. Leave thinking to the men.‘”