Agnes Smedley Quotes

If you're female, and you want to express your femininity, you're actually demonized in the 'Free To Be... You And Me' generation.

It's definitely part of it, that the men were having fun and doing the interesting things but also, I don't know, I'm just thinking more about gender and how maybe in some way I am more of a boy than a girl.

Most men are very attached to the idea of being male, and usually experience a lot of fear and insecurity around the idea of being a man. Most women are very identified with their gender, and also experience a tremendous amount of fear and insecurity.

I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male - or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you'll see what I mean.

I have never felt oppressed by women or that feminism is a problem. I do think boys find it hard to like things seen as feminine. I want my son not to feel self-conscious he likes ballet and my daughter to carry on playing Han Solo; that's all.

I may have had the body and emotions of a woman, but I've always had the head of a man. I've lived my life like a man.

Men were only made into 'men' with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally 'a man' any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

I think the fallacy is to think that Women's Liberation meant that men and women would become interchangeable. That has not happened, and most men and women would not want it to happen.

Nature makes woman to be won and men to win.

Society says that men need to be bigger and stronger, and they must protect their women and so on.

When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other.

Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.

No lady is ever a gentleman.

I have never been a girlie girl and have always been a boys' girl with an equal amount of friends who were boys and girls.

A lot of times I can across as too masculine to men, and they couldn't handle me, they stayed away.

What I do know is that traditional gender roles are very real and flipping the norm is difficult for even the strongest, funniest, smartest men.

Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating.

For me, masculinity is about control, and femininity is more of an embrace, the art of listening. It's very inspiring to explore the shadows of masculinity and femininity, and the tensions between both, and the place of women in the world right now.

I get so many questions in interviews about feminism, and I think the second you start separating femininity and masculinity and giving one more power than the other, that's like - everyone is a person.

What we're doing is we're chipping away at what it is to be a woman and to be feminine. And what it is to be a man and be masculine. We're chipping away at that. I wish we could go back to 'Mad Men' days. I love those days. Men were men. And I love them.

No one has ever seen me as feminine.

All my life I've always been so ashamed of being feminine.

I've always thought feminism had a lot to say about both genders, as it is hard to talk about one without the other. I think men and women alike would benefit from men having a more fluid idea of what being a man is.

Dressing up like a woman does not make me less of a man.

We are all dually feminine and masculine. To give in to both of those things would strengthen us as human beings and there is such a drastic difference between men, and men who are terrified of their own femininity.