Gender Relationships Quotes

“He disapproved, he didn't believe in girls drinking, he was full of the conventions of a generation older than himself. Of course one drank oneself, one fornicated, but one didn't lie with a friend's sister, and 'decent' girls were never squiffy.”
― Graham Greene, England Made Me

“There are women who have forgotten that to be a woman doesn't simply mean humiliation, doesn't simply mean bitterness. I haven't forgotten it yet," she added, "in spite of you.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Occasionally,
mothers from ordinary
homes, much like our
own, feed on the viscid
shame their daughters
are forced to secrete
from glands formed
in the favor of men.”
― Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

“The rooster crows, but the hen delivers the goods.”
― Anonymous

“She was very big and she was disquietingly fluid--fluid without, however, being able to flow. I felt a hardness and a constriction in her, a grave distrust, created already by too many men like me ever to be conquered now.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Captain Ramsay was kind-hearted, he would try very hard to be complimentary; his grey eyes would try to express admiration, polite admiration as they rested on Stephen. His voice would sound softer and more confidential, the voice that nice men reserve for good women, protective, respectful, yet a little sex-conscious, a little expectant of a tentative response. But Stephen would feel herself growing more rigid with every kind word and gallant allusion. Openly hostile she would be feeling, as poor Captain Ramsay or some other victim was manfully trying to do his duty.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“One night he said abruptly: Stephen won't marry—I don't want her to marry; it would only mean disaster.'

And at this Anna broke out in angry protest. Why shouldn't Stephen marry? She wished her to marry. Was he mad? And what did he mean by disaster? No woman was ever complete without marriage—what on earth did he mean by disaster He frowned and refused to answer her question. Stephen, he said, must go up to Oxford. He had set his heart on a good education for the child, who might some day become a fine writer. Marriage wasn't the only career for a woman. Look at Puddle, for instance; she'd been at Oxford—a most admirable, well-balanced, sensible creature. Next year he was going to send Stephen to Oxford. Anna scoffed: 'Yes, indeed, he might well look at Puddle! She was what came of this higher education—a lonely, unfulfilled, middle-aged spinster. Anna didn't want that kind of life for her daughter.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“But Violet Antrim, who had also been staying with the Peacocks, had arrived home full of importance. She walked in on Stephen one afternoon to announce her engagement to young Alec Peacock. She was so much engaged and so haughty about it that Stephen, whose nerves were already on edge, was very soon literally itching to slap her. Violet was now able to look down on Stephen from the height of her newly gained knowledge of men—knowing Alec she felt that she knew the whole species.

'It's a terrible pity you dress as you do, my dear,' she remarked, with the manner of sixty, 'a young girl's so much more attractive when she's soft—don't you think you could soften your clothes just a little? I mean you do want to get married, don't you! No woman's complete until she is married. After all, no woman can really stand alone, she always needs a man to protect her.'

Stephen said: 'I'm all right—getting on nicely, thank you!'

'Oh, no, but you can't be!' Violet insisted. 'I was talking to Alec and Roger about you, and Roger was saying it's an awful mistake for women to get false ideas into their heads. He thinks you've got rather a bee in your bonnet; he told Alec that you'd be quite a womanly woman if you'd only stop trying to ape what you're not.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“And I can't say how many stories I now see that deal seriously with the question of how we'd all be better off in a world without men.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables