Male Privledge Quotes

How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values?

The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes".

And this bugs me; because if authors can stretch their imaginations far enough to envisage the presence of modern-minded men in the fake Middle Ages, then why can't they stretch them that little bit further to put in modern-minded women, or modern-minded social values? It strikes me as being extremely convenient that the one universally permitted exception to this species of "authenticity" is one that makes the male heroes look noble while still mandating that the women be downtrodden and in need of rescuing.

-Comment at Staffer's Book Review 4/18/2012 to "Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency ~ Foz Meadows

Male, female, gay, straight, legal, illegal, country of origin - who cares? You can either cook an omelet or you can't. You can either cook five hundred omelets in three hours - like you said you could, and like the job requires - or you can't. There's no lying in the kitchen. The restaurant kitchen may indeed be the last, glorious meritocracy - where anybody with the skills and the heart is welcomed. But if you're old, or out of shape - or were never really certain about your chosen path in the first place - then you will surely and quickly be removed. Like a large organism's natural antibodies fighting off an invading strain of bacteria, the life will slowly push you out or kill you off. Thus it is. Thus it shall always be. The ideal progression for a nascent culinary career would be to, first, take a jump straight into the deep end of the pool. Long before student loans and culinary school, take the trouble to find out who you are. ~ Anthony Bourdain

My climb to political success was no elevator ride, and it has not always been pretty, but I persevered as one of a handful of women in the male-dominated world of politics. ~ Dalia Grybauskaite

It was one of God's jokes that such a dumb mind had been put in such an eloquent body. ~ Charlaine Harris

One of the things that's important for anybody adapting source material that is primarily a male buddy picture is to find ways to latch on to strong female characters in the piece and bring them to the forefront and celebrate their point of view alongside the men; otherwise, it becomes a sausage party, and it's a singular point of view. ~ Bryan Fuller

I am the Love that Dare not Speak its Name ~ Alfred Bruce Douglas

There is an emotional promiscuity we've noticed among many good young men and women. The young man understands something of the journey of the heart. He wants to talk, to "share the journey." The woman is grateful to be pursued, she opens up. They share the intimacies of their lives - their wounds, their walks with God. But he never commits. He enjoys her... then leaves. And she wonders, What did I do wrong? She failed to see his passivity. He really did not ever commit or offer assurances that he would. Like Willoughby to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.

Be careful you do not offer too much of yourself to a man until you have good, solid evidence that he is a strong man willing to commit. Look at his track record with other women. Is there anything to be concerned about there? If so, bring it up. Also, does he have any close male friends - and what are they like as men? Can he hold down a job? Is he walking with God in a real and intimate way? Is he facing the wounds of his own life, and is he also demonstrating a desire to repent of Adam's passivity and/or violence? Is he headed somewhere with his life? A lot of questions, but your heart is a treasure, and we want you to offer it only to a man who is worthy and ready to handle it well. ~ Stasi Eldredge

When I'd RSVPed for tonight, I hadn't expected to be the youngest by three-plus decades. To be honest, I hadn't expected anything. I didn't have the mental capacity. The excitement over my first house party overwhelmed me and kept my thoughts abuzz for three
weeks.
Jim and Valerie suggested Harry and Jackie invite me. Understandably, Harry and Jackie were skeptical about bringing a single male into their close-knit group, but Valerie vouched for me, which persuaded Jackie. I leapt at the invitation - any single male would have - but now, learning about the most recent medications to assist smooth menopausal transition, I was seriously rethinking my decision. ~ Daniel Stern

The erotic economy of homosexual relations continues to be traced for our culture in the enduring equation of homosexuality with male homosexuality, of male homosexuality with sodomy, and of sodomy with anal intercourse, and, in particular, with the so-called "passive" or receptive position in anal intercourse. ~ Lee Edelman

I like naked women. I'm a bloke. I'm supposed to like them. We're born like that. We like naked women as soon as we're pulled out of one ... When man invented fire, he didn't say, "Hey, let's cook." He said, "Great, now we can see naked bottoms in the dark" ... The story of male achievement through the ages, feeble though it may have been, has been the story of our struggle to get a better look at your bottoms. ~ Steven Moffat

Phyllis Diller came through a mine field of male comedians when she arrived on the comedy scene and she defused them all. She won her place in the Hall of Comedy as the First Lady. I will miss her. ~ Tim Conway

Devlin was as sleek and muscular as the black-and-gold tiger she had seen on exhibition at the park menagerie. Divested of his clothes, he seemed even larger, his broad shoulders and long torso looming before her. The texture of his flesh was heavy and tough, covered with skin that seemed hard but silken at the same time. His midriff was scored with rows of muscle. She had seen statues and illustrations of the male body, but nothing had ever conveyed this sense of warm, living strength, this potent virility. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I'm a romantic and will only marry for love where there's respect and compatibility. I'd like to be with someone if the right person came along. I really like male company. I like the male mind. ~ Cherie Lunghi

Most of my friends are male. Men are more fun. ~ Kylie Bax

The male victims were born in the forties and fifties, a generation for whom therapy was mostly an alien concept. In the police files, gender roles are rigid and unambiguous. Detectives ask the women where they shop and the men about the locking mechanisms on the doors and windows. They drape blankets over the women's shoulders and ferry them to the hospital. The men are asked what they saw, not what they felt. Many of the male victims had military experience. They had toolsheds. They were doers and protectors who'd been robbed of their ability to do and protect. Their rage is in the details: one husband chewed the bindings off his wife's feet. ~ Michelle McNamara

You're Piers Brandon, the Marquess of Granville, diplomat and secret agent in the Crown's service." She ran a fingertip down the noble slope of his nose. "And I'm Char - "
Her words were lost in a gasp.

With the speed and strength of a whip, he had her turned on her back, sprawled beneath him on the tufted carriage seat.
"You will be Lady Charlotte Brandon, the Marchioness of Granville, diplomat's wife and mother of my heir."
.......
"You'll be mine," he murmured. "I swear it, Charlotte. I will make you mine. ~ Tessa Dare

Why is it that women are the only ones who will write perfect men into fiction? It's strange. If a man portrayed his fictional men as archangels, the feminists would throw back their heads and howl, "UNFAIR!" but we women will create our own Mr. Darcy's and Mr. Knightley's and defy anyone who would point out their unrealistic points. The men aren't the ones crazy about Pride and Prejudice. Obviously they don't find perfect men realistic and honest enough to bother reading about. We don't write perfect women characters, do we? No. Our women all have bad tempers, or resentful hearts, or scabby pasts, or hidden fears--things that make them real. It's because we're easy on ourselves and aren't trying to boast perfection because we know we don't measure up. Then why do we hold men to a different standard?..... I'd caution all writers to make sure that your male "hero" in your story has his own flaws. You don't want a one-dimensional character. You don't want a perfect man that will drive away other men from reading the book.

Look to the men in your life. The men around you. Look to your brothers and fathers and pastors and neighbors. Your uncles and the guy down the street. Goodness--look to Taylor the Latte Boy if you must, but let's cast aside the Perfect-Man syndrome. ~ Rachel Heffington

...he was a lonely straight male, and a lonely straight male had no equivalently forgiving Theory of Masculinism to help him out of this bind, this key to all misogynies:
To feel as if he couldn't survive without a woman made a man feel weak;
And yet, without a woman in his life, a man lost the sense of agency and difference that, for better or worse, was the foundation of his manhood. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Now, now," my father said. "Let's just get the bags."
This was typical. My father, the lone male in our estrogen-heavy household, had always dealt with any kind of emotional situation or conflict by doing something concrete and specific. Discussion of cramps and heavy flow at the breakfast table? He was up and out the door to change oil on one of our cars. Coming home in tears for reasons you just didn't want to discuss? He'd go make you a grilled cheese, which he'd probably end up eating. Family crisis brewing in a public place? Bags. Get the bags. ~ Sarah Dessen

Faintly he smiled, but his voice was hard. "Lass, you do not want what I have." As if to prove it, he overturned his hand and dragged a calloused thumb roughly across her bottom lip.

All the breath came out of her in a hot rush. "Oh."
~From THE KING'S OUTLAW, part of the Captured by a Celtic Warrior anthology ~ Kris Kennedy

I found that women entrepreneurs earn 50% less than their male counterparts. ~ Warren Farrell

It shall be an offence for any man, either a husband or other person of the male sex, married or otherwise, being over the age of twelve years, to throw any item of clothing having been worn by the said person for whatever length of time, upon the floor of any bathroom or any room adjacent to and connected to a bathroom, without good cause. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

For millennia, medicine has functioned on the assumption that male bodies can represent humanity as a whole. As a result, we have a huge historical data gap when it comes to female bodies, and this is a data gap that is continuing to grow as researchers carry on ignoring the pressing ethical need to include female cells, animals and humans, in their research. That this is still going on in the twenty-first century is a scandal. It should be the subject of newspaper headlines worldwide. Women are dying, and the medical world is complicit. It needs to wake up. ~ Caroline Criado Perez

He looked at me the way the male spider gazes at his beloved. He knows he's going to get eaten afterwards, but it'll be worth it. "Deal," he said. ~ K.J. Parker

got a close look at Doc Jane's red Crocs, Ehlena's blue ones, and his brother's knees as the male immediately crouched down next to him. ~ J.R. Ward

THE MALE JOURNEY t some point in time, a man needs to embark on a risky -journey. It's a necessary adventure that takes him into uncertainty, and it almost always involves some form of difficulty or failure. On this journey the man learns to trust God more than he trusts a sense of right and wrong or his own sense of self-worth. ~ Richard Rohr

You wouldn't believe it, but apart from a few drunks, a few sex murderers and other men who get into the papers where they are designated as criminals of passion, no normal man with normal drives has the obvious idea that a normal woman would like to be quite normally raped. Part of it is that men aren't normal, but people are incapable of even imagining all the ramifications of the male disease, so accustomed have they become to men's mistakes in judgment and their phenomenal lack of instinct. ~ Ingeborg Bachmann

If he didn't walk away when I voiced what I wanted: him.
Not the High Lord, not the most powerful male in Pyrthian's history. Just ... him. The person who had sent music into that cell; who had picked up that knife in Amarantha's throne room to fight for me when no one else dared, and who had kept fighting for me every day since, refusing to let me crumble and disappear into nothing. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Guys constantly talk about pornography in two ways: as revenge and as reassurance. When you live in a world in which beautiful, sexy women are all around you, in the same classes, on the same athletic field, competing for the same jobs, then the pornographic world - the world in which women thrill to male sexual desire - reassures men that although they may feel "one down," they're still entitled to women's bodies. ~ Michael Kimmel

It is well within the order of things that man should listen when his mate sings; but the true male never yet walked who liked to listen when his mate talked. ~ Anna Wickham

Rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts; ~ Thomas Hardy

Vanessa was deprived of her hormones in prison and thus retained several male characteristics that would have been less evident otherwise, most notably her voice. While she spoke in a high, little-girl voice most of the time, she could switch at will to a booming, masculine Richard-voice. She loved to sneak up behind people and scare the crap out of them this way, and she was very effective at quieting a noisy dining hall, roaring, "Y'all hush up!" Best of all were her Richardian encouragements on the softball field, where she was a sought-after teammate. That bitch could hit. ~ Piper Kerman

Romance is different when two people approach each other from the space of knowledge rather than absolute mystery. No matter how well we get to know someone else, there is always a realm of mystery. Old ideas about romantic love taught females and males to believe that erotic tension depended on the absence of communication and understanding. This misinformation about the nature of love has helped to further the politics of domination, particularly male domination of women. Without knowing one other, we can never experience intimacy. ~ Bell Hooks

Don't make me slap your pussy. ~ Jacintha Topaz

The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Often, I'll read a script and the female character's an extension or serves some sort of purpose in terms of the male character's narrative and it just isn't fully formed. But they will be very beautiful. Whether a secretary or a doctor or a vet, they will be very beautiful. ~ Andrea Riseborough