Noelle Stevenson Quotes

I think we're socialized out of being women, and then we have to find our way back to it. That's hard to do.

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

Four of my children are daughters, and I've watched them devote themselves to reading books about how little girls learn to become women - how they learn to deal with boys and men, and the different hurdles females have to go over.

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

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

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

And also I think particularly as a female, you're taught to be defensive your whole life. You're taught not to be aggressive.

Many differences are rooted in biology and reinforced through culture, so it's important to acknowledge that. Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.

Women! I have no idea. I don't know anything about women at all. They're a complete mystery to me.

What does being a woman today mean? Is there a right way of doing it? Is there a wrong way of doing it? Different kinds of women, female friendships: It's all pretty funny, and worth making fun of.

I started to think of Grace of Monaco as a metaphor for women in general.

Women should not have to adopt masculine traits in order to succeed. You should be able to stay as a woman, and in tune with your femininity, and still be equal.

I was in fact pretty much - by the larger culture, by the local culture, by people around me, by people on TV - encouraged to imagine women as something slightly inferior to men.

Men are not conditioned to be less powerful than a woman. It will be the wise woman who realizes this and is sensitive to that issue.

I think human beings have a really broad spectrum of traits, and I almost feel implicated when we say, 'Men are like this, women are like this.' Nobody was telling me, 'Don't get dirty, don't play in the mud, girls don't do that.'

There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.

I was raised to be a girl Michelangelo.

Growing up with three boys in a heavily male-dominated world, I especially needed to express myself as a woman.

And I think a woman should find it a joy to be female because God made both male and female.

What does it mean, being a woman?

I don't know why femininity should be associated with weakness. Women should be free to express who they are without thinking, 'I need to act like a man, or I need to tone it down to be successful.' That's a very good way to keep women down.

You know, girls in general are scarier than Voldemort.

What we ought to see in the agonies of puberty is the result of the conditioning that maims the female personality in creating the feminine.

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.