Masculine Expectations Quotes

I have a theory about American men -- I think they think women are boys who don't know how to throw a ball very well. American women are forced into the role of being men without penises, of being men who haven't quite been able to make it. If women don't want to be pussycats, then they get forced into the role of being almost as good as men. Which is lousy.

Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat.

The sexes deceive themselves about one another: the reason being that at bottom they honor and love only themselves (or their ownideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wants woman to be peaceable--but woman is essentially, like the cat, not peaceable, however well she may have trained herself to assume the appearance of peace.

Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down - it keeps us from growing.

I don’t think there’s any such thing as male objectification…I think that word exists only with women because there are societal pressures for them to behave a certain way and to look a certain way. Someone put it to me once: Women are sex objects and men are success objects. That was really interesting to me.

When I saw him I thought I could curl up inside him and go to sleep and never wake up." "Men are no good for that, Masha. They'll always want you working, when you're not softening their fall into bed at the end of the day.

Sometimes, how you ingest this idea of masculinity as projected onto you by the world could be the difference of life and death.

If you're told to 'Man up,' you're essentially being told that being feminine is lesser.

I want my sons to escape the pressure to be a particular kind of masculine that is so damaging to men and to the people around them.

It strikes me that whatever advantages there are to being a boy--getting to stay out late and having other people wash your clothes and bring you plates of stuff--get undercut by having to play football.