Ann Maxwell Quotes

Especially with girls, people always want to put them in little brackets.

People try to make women a very specific thing so that we like them.

One of the main problems of our time is that men are deprived of their human qualities that are wrongly called feminine, and women are deprived of their human qualities that are wrongly called masculine.

When you write, you are not either sex. But when you're read you are definitely gendered.

Some boys accepted me, some didn't. And my family had comments made to them. Brazil is still a very macho society, and sports are mainly for boys, so people would say to them: 'What is this girl doing? Why is she always out there in the soccer games with the boys?'

I think there are a lot of rules for women. We have a lot of expectations and a lot of rules for women. So we're expected to march in a straight line, and when we don't, all hell breaks loose.

Little girls as children, I think, are expected to behave better. If a boy's naughty at school, he's a little bit cheeky and mischievous. If a girl's naughty, she's trouble.

In the end, I do think it's insulting to men and women to insist that they fit a certain profile. I never understood that.

Both men and women are really vast and boundless and yet in many films we're told that they're not. We're told they can only be one thing - like handsome and charming and that's it. Nothing more.

Why can't a woman be more like a man?

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

I've always been told that women know everything. Is that not accurate?

A woman who places a high priority on performance and excellence is seen as imperial. A man is seen as demanding and tough.

You would never say to a man, 'do you like playing strong men?' You just wouldn't say that.

While the requirements of a good leader and a good man are similar, the requirements of a good leader and a good woman are mutually exclusive. A good leader must be tough, but a good woman must not be. A good woman must be self-deprecating, but a good leader must not be.

You should never be put into a mold based on your gender.

There are certain expectations placed on writers if other people have put a value on their gender. I'm aware of the hundreds of tiny differences that happen when people are seeing your gender before they see something else.

It's not at all a far jump to think that overall perceptions of gender - and what is and is not important in gender roles - would carry over from life to fiction.

I find when I'm perceived as male in society, there is an enormous amount of pressure, but it comes with respect, so it's a balance.

There's still a narrower band of acceptable behavior for women than men.

History suggests that opposite gender debates, unfortunately, are accompanied by a host of expectations. Each candidate must tread carefully or risk running afoul of the gender stereotype they are subconsciously expected to conform to.

You see what happens today. Women act like men and want to be treated like women.

Alaska decided to go help Dolores with dinner. She said that it was sexist to leave the cooking to the women, but better to have good sexist food than crappy boy-prepared food.

In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed to men and forbidden to women.

And that is a hard route for a woman to come through. There's still a lot of roles that have to be conformed to. It's quite an old fashioned environment in a lot of ways.