Ang Lee Quotes

I grew up in a culture in which it was a sin for a woman to speak out.

The problem is with men. I know I shouldn't say this, but they've shrouded and hidden women to hide their incompetence.

Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it. Nature says women are human beings, men cry out no!

Sometimes I feel as if four thousand years of silencing women, of the fear of women who were burned in oil or eviscerated in front of their daughters, is imprinted deep within me and has altered my DNA.

God as 'He,' as a patriarchal thing, is offensive to me. It's standard fare for America, 'He, He, He.' Every time I hear that it's like another blow against females. It's very radical talk at this point for females to say this kind of stuff, but nationwide I still hear females referring to God as 'He.'

The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong.

I've worked for over 11 years in the Muslim world, and the one thing that I feel like I've learned - who's to say if it's true or not true, it's just my experience - is that men don't like to see really strong, aggressive women in that area of the world.

Women are so powerful they're scary, and the incentive to squash this has been going on for so long that some of us actually believe we're subordinate.

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.

When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?

The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world. Just because we got rid of the father of the nation in Egypt or Tunisia, Mubarak or Ben Ali, and in a number of other countries, does not mean that the father of the family does not still hold sway.

There is a sense that women are more anchored than men in our society.

Forever behind a woman is the mediaeval English common law which places upon her the stigma of inferiority and bondage

Till you lift womanhood itself, you will never arrest--nay, you will never importantly diminish the dreadful curse, the great sin of great cities.

You—the outside world—will be told that it is our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, and Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman.

It's really hard to have your voice heard in a man's world. People are always comparing women and bringing them down - that, I'm completely against. We have an obligation as women to not pit ourselves against each other, because men are going to do it for us.

There's no doubt that the patriarchy that we live in also controls the movie industry. The heads of the studios are men, and it's reflected in the scripts they buy and the work that gets made.

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.

The feminist movement is not about success for women. It is about treating women as victims and about telling women that you can't succeed because society is unfair to you, and I think that's a very unfortunate idea to put in the minds of young women because I believe women can do whatever they want.

I'm out about my misogyny. Most men are misogynists, and most women are feminists. I work with a lot of women. They have their finger on the pulse of things. But women do things to other women that men would never do to other men.

We are used to women's narratives being defined through the male perspective. I challenge that as a concept.

Misogyny is at the reptilian brain stem of a lot of right-wing politics.

When a woman shouts, she isn't usually praised for it. She's condemned as aggressive and coarse.

I feel, in our culture, the girl with any sort of power is called 'difficult' or various words that are demeaning just because she has a voice, has confidence, and stands for her rights. It is sad, but it is the truth of our country.

Women are against women, and men are against women. Like, women have to rise above so much to get ahead. I feel guilty that sometimes I hate being a woman. I hate it because there's so much weight on your shoulders at all times. Maybe I'm just really sensitive.