Judith Butler Quotes

Human kind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?

To confound the tyranny of man there should exist for a century a third sex, both male and female, and stronger than men. This new sex would prove with the lash that men as well as women are made for its pleasure; and then you would hear men protesting against the tyranny of the hermaphrodite sex and admitting that strength should not be the sole rule of right. Just why do they refuse to grant the women the independence which they would demand from the third sex?

Differences between male and female should not serve as a subterfuge for denying the human and civil rights that belong to us all … Women, like their male counterparts, should be judged by the law as individuals, not as a class of inferior beings.

I hope to stop discrimination against young transgender people.

What I want is a world where neither gender nor sex are destiny. Where no child is ever told there's anything they can't do, or must do, 'because you're a boy' or 'because you're a girl.' It's not a world where anything is 'taken' from anyone - it's one where everyone's possibilities are enlarged.

If I can use my platform to affect change in gender, as I can in race, then I think I can have an impact.

I think it is absurd to give such tremendous importance to the distinctions between men and women. When I meet someone I regard that person as a human being. I do not say "This is a man; this is a woman."

I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone

I don't think about being male or female, I just behave naturally. I think in terms of excellence in science, not gender.

No matter whether one feels one's gendered and sexed reality to be firmly fixed or less so, every person should have the right to determine the legal and linguistic terms of their embodied lives. So whether one wants to be free to live out a "hard-wired" sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization - and with full institutional and community support.

Whether one wants to be free to live out a "hard-wired" sense of sex or a more fluid sense of gender, is less important than the right to be free to live it out, without discrimination, harassment, injury, pathologization or criminalization - and with full institutional and community support. That is most important in my view.

Nowadays everybody's a feminist - male, female, trans. Gender's so passé they don't even care anymore. They know what equal rights are, they know what it's about, and everybody is standing toe-to-toe strong about it and really fighting.

Women are the only ones who will be able to eliminate the patriarchy, and when that happens all of us will win, men as much as women.

The most important thing is to have a more open and honest dialogue about gender issues.

My theory is that men are no more liberated than women.

I don't want to play sex roles any more. I'm tired of being known as the girl with the shape.

We should all have greater freedoms to define and pursue our lives without pathologization, de-realization, harassment, threats of violence, violence, and criminalization. I join in the struggle to realize such a world.

Maybe it's a great blow for feminism that we now have men mocking one another about their makeup. I mean, let's - can we enjoy that? That's kind of great.

I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist.

It's my view that gender is culturally formed, but it's also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation.

There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

I want my books to force readers to recognise the fact that a woman is a human being just like them.

I was a me-ist. I believed in the right to do whatever I wanted to do regardless of gender. Still do.

I am a humanist not a feminist. There's a big difference.

I feel like a feminist is gender equality.