Gender quotes

“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”
― Bette Davis

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us
want to be in calm waters all our lives.” ― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her
criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her
understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so
they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and
husbands behind them.” ― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their
fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand
alone.” ― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of
that emancipation itself.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy.
Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage
of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in
their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true?
You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth
except by accident.”
― Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority
to Men

“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are
often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both
for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a
fiend.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men
when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male
friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any
men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman

1
(meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult
problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter
seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days
it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like
human beings also.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called
the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own
pleasure.” ― John Berger, Ways of Seeing

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman
selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost
novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her
brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had
put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them,
was often a woman.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”

― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming
round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most
ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”
― Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

“You must tell Lady Alanna that sometime. I'd do it from a distance.” ― Tamora Pierce, Emperor Mage

“It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around
your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women,
who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.”
― M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

“In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman
is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a
man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is
something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an
ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the
tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always
as a member of a class and not as an individual person.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

2
“It is extraordinarily entertaining to watch the historians of the past ... entangling themselves in what they
were pleased to call the "problem" of Queen Elizabeth. They invented the most complicated and
astonishing reasons both for her success as a sovereign and for her tortuous matrimonial policy. She was
the tool of Burleigh, she was the tool of Leicester, she was the fool of Essex; she was diseased, she was
deformed, she was a man in disguise. She was a mystery, and must have some extraordinary solution. Only
recently has it occrurred to a few enlightened people that the solution might be quite simple after all. She
might be one of the rare people were born into the right job and put that job first.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

“It's hard not to feel humorless, as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some
great and some small, and know you're not imagining things. It's hard to be told to lighten up because if
you lighten up any more, you're going to float the fuck away. The problem is not that one of these things is
happening; it's that they are all happening, concurrently and constantly.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry
her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women;
indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at
all.” ― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own
wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his
imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman
knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain
himself, it is not the water's fault.” ― John Gower, Confessio Amantis, Volume 1

“This is the underside of my world.

Of course you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You
don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t
want me to despise myself; you only want the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous
tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants,
things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling
daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come for comfort, women to wash your floors
and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need
the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who
are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women
who don’t hate you really, women who know their job and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you
sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be wretched and so full of venom in
this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little
outworn.

As my mother once said: the boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.

But the frogs die in earnest.” ― Joanna Russ, The Female Man

3
“[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring
them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces
white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of
pique.”
― Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority
to Men

“Yet if women are so flighty, fickle, changeable, susceptible, and inconstant (as some clerks would have us
believe), why is it that their suitors have to resort to such trickery to have their way with them? And why
don't women quickly succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in conquering
them? For there is no need to go to war for a castle that is already captured. (...)

Therefore, since it is necessary to call on such skill, ingenuity, and effort in order to seduce a woman,
whether of high or humble birth, the logical conclusion to draw is that women are by no means as fickle as
some men claim, or as easily influenced in their behaviour. And if anyone tells me that books are full of
women like these, it is this very reply, frequently given, which causes me to complain. My response is that
women did not write these books nor include the material which attacks them and their morals. Those who
plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without
taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors
are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence. But if women had written these books, I
know full well the subject would have been handled differently. They know that they stand wrongfully
accused, and that the cake has not been divided up equally, for the strongest take the lion's share, and the
one who does the sharing out keeps the biggest portion for himself.”
― Christine de Pizan, Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love

“I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”
― Madonna

“I have a rule of thumb that allows me to judge, when times is pressing and one needs to make a snap
judgment, whether or not some sexist bullshit is afoot. Obviously, it’s not 100% infallible but by and large it
definitely points you in the right direction and it's asking this question; are the men doing it? Are the men
worrying about this as well? Is this taking up the men’s time? Are the men told not to do this, as it's letting
the side down? Are the men having to write bloody books about this exasperating retarded, time-wasting,
bullshit? Is this making Jeremy Clarkson feel insecure?

Almost always the answer is no. The boys are not being told they have to be a certain way, they are just
getting on with stuff.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman