Ani DiFranco Quotes

It's tragic that you can define a whole movement in music by gender alone. People are like, 'Oh, look, another quirky girl.'

I'm interested in what happens to people when they get into that publicity machine. We tend to think things have changed, but there's still a deep sexism underlying the way women are treated publicly.

It can be frustrating when you're put in a category with others. Women do get lumped together in this reductive grouping, and you think, 'Gosh, that rarely happens with the boys.' I'm sure people don't say to Eddie Redmayne, 'How do you feel about Andrew Garfield?'

When I started out rapping, I became very frightened by the idea that people were trying to pigeonhole me. That's usually what happens to most female rappers. They fit in a box and there's a prototype or person they're compared to.

I don't like being put in the same category as people because we have the same genitals and boobs. Nobody is going to write "Lily Allen vs. Ed Sheeran." It just doesn't happen.

They said I was a married mother of two but the record sounded like an indie album and they didn't know how to market it! This country is incredibly sexist, as is the music and media industry.

Men make angry music and it's called rock-and-roll; women include anger in their vocabulary and suddenly they're angry and militant.

A woman my age is not supposed to be attractive or sexually appealing. I just get kinda tired of that.

Women's director! Well, I'm very pleased to be considered a master of anything, but remember, for every Jill there was a Jack. People like to pigeonhole you - it's a shortcut, I guess, but once they do, you're stuck with it.

When I started out, there were three things that made film people look at me with condescension, I was young, I was black, and I was female. I have won a certain respect, but I think the film community still sees directing as a male job.

Hollywood can be hard on women, but it did not cause my problems.

Women artists are still treated differently from men.

I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting.

A woman's experience is different from a man's in virtually every respect, including how she is treated by the media.

The latest wrinkle is on wrinkles. There is a widespread belief that women can't grow old in television news.

There are so many times that, as a woman in the music industry, you're asked questions no male musician would ever be asked.

As I plotted 'Blueprints,' I realized that ageism against women is most obvious in the field of entertainment - and that I needed a TV show in my book.

As a female, you are often being asked by directors to be warmer, softer, flirt more, smile more etc... None of those things are bad, and obviously we are capable of a variety of human behavior, but it gets really old having to play into somebody's stereotype or ideal.

The music business is very hard on women over 22. You really have to prove yourself every time you make a record. Are you as vibrant as you used to be? Are you as sexy? So I really want to prove that a woman in her 30s can be all those things and more.

I feel like women are asked their age more than men.

Perhaps British TV companies don't want women my age on screen. I don't know.

I think the art world is one of the last bastions of this kind of sexism where there is a mythology about a woman not being able to be both and artist and a mother: that some very important creative crystal inside a woman would be shattered by the idea of having a child.

If there's ever a woman who's smart, funny, or witty, people are afraid of that, so they don't write that. They only write parts for women where they let everything be steamrolled over them, where they let people wipe their feet all over them.

I've always been so confused about being a girl. Not in a Bruce Jenner way, just... there's that expectation where you walk into a room, and it's like, Is it OK to be a woman?' Or, you know, you're looking for your keys in the back of a cab, and sometimes the driver can treat you like you've had a lobotomy.

I don't generally give interviews unless I have to promote a play and had sworn years ago, having been bitten once too often, never to be interviewed by a woman again.