Virginia Madsen Quotes

There are relatively few role models for young people. We are in a society that is ruled by men.

Every time a male coach berates his players by referring to them as “ladies” or tells them to “hike their skirts” while playing, we’re perpetuating an atmosphere where women are not men’s equals.

Cinematic icons of the police detective are more male role models than female.

I prefer the Telugu film industry, as women are respected more than they are in the Tamil film industry. In Tamil cinema, they care only about their hero, who is God.

I was used to being the only woman in everything... I didn't even think about it. Men were my role models - there's nothing wrong with that.

You can see in our churches most of the males are pastors. Most of the deacons are males. But if the woman withdrew her support from our churches, you'd have to close the doors.

I was raised by a formidable woman. She always pushed me to be competitive in a man's world. That's maybe one of the attractions to journalism in the beginning. It was a male profession, and I was comfortable in that.

I have never consciously exploited the fact that I am a woman. I wouldn't dare try that even if I knew how to. I have too much respect for my male colleagues to think they would be particualrly impressed.

It is of very doubtful value to enlist the gifts of a woman into fields that have been defined as male; it frightens the men, unsexes the women, and muffles and distorts the contribution women could make.

Visionary idealism is a male art form. The lesbian aesthete does not exist. But if there were one, she would have learned from the perverse male mind.

When I started working in a feminist feminine magazine all my life was about rebelling against male authority, which is authority in general is male, so it was rebelling against everything. Everything that was around me made me angry.

In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse.

Anyone who says that women do not have influence in men's decisions makes a vast and stupid mistake.

Each woman is made to feel it is her own cross to bear if she can't be the perfect clone of the male superman and the perfect clone of the feminine mystique.

A female's career as an actor is very different from a male's career as an actor. That's just the way it is. So, I'm fascinated by really strong male careers that have inspired me, and also really incredible male roles.

As women, you have to negotiate your way through a man's world.

As a woman who works in a male-dominated business - Hollywood, definitely, being one of them - I instinctually knew what that is like. You have to be strong and take care of yourself.

Women are penalized both for deviating from the masculine norm and for appearing to be masculine. When women try to establish their competence, they are scrutinized for evidence that they lack masculine (instrumental) characteristics as well as for signs that they no longer possess female (expressive) ones. They are taken to fail, in other words, both as a male and as a female.

Put any woman in an area run mostly by men and rumors will fly. Unless you make it very clear that you are off limits, there is also a certain competitiveness that sets in. Some men are either trying to run you out of town or get into your pants. They don't seem to know any other way to deal with a woman. If you're not a sexual object, you're a threat.

There are no dumb male questions. There are dumb males, but not dumb male questions.

Male domination is so rooted in our collective unconscious that we no longer even see it.

Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the cliché of Latino machismo, but the Mediterranean male character is more dull than the female character. Women are more surprising and they have fewer prejudices.

I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence.

Let the men do their duty & the women will be such wonders; the female life lives from the light of the male: see a man's female dependants, you know the man.

Ten minutes? That's the women. It's not for the men; not for the real game, mate.