{"quotes":[{"text":"In reaction against the age-old slogan, 'woman is the weaker vessel,' or the still more offensive, 'woman is a divine creature,' we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that 'a woman is as good as a man,' without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.","author":"Dorothy L. Sayers","tags":["classification","clichés","dignity","discrimination","double-standards","empowerment","feminism","gender","individuality","misogyny","self-determination","social-norms","stereotypes","women"],"id":2459,"author_id":"Dorothy+L.+Sayers"},{"text":"The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.","author":"Jane Austen","tags":["charms","clichés","desirability","disdain","education","empowerment","equality","folly","foolishness","girls","ignorance","imbecility","inferiority","men","perception","prejudice","reason","stereotypes","stupidity","women"],"id":8047,"author_id":"Jane+Austen"},{"text":"She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.","author":"Jane Austen","tags":["attachment","clichés","concealment","empowerment","feminism","ignorance","intelligence","irony","knowledge","preconceptions","prejudice","sarcasm","stereotypes","vanity","women"],"id":9722,"author_id":"Jane+Austen"},{"text":"Is it possible to say 'It was a beautiful morning at the end of November' without feeling like Snoopy?","author":"Umberto Eco","tags":["clichés","originality","stereotypes","writing"],"id":28371,"author_id":"Umberto+Eco"},{"text":"[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two ... But, more generally, from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who had graciously told me of their most private and intimate thoughts, hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realise how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behaviour and character of women.","author":"Christine de Pizan","tags":["behaviour","books","character","clichés","conduct","double-standards","empowerment","expectations","feminism","gender","hypocrisy","impartiality","inequality","insults","men","misogyny","morality","preconceptions","prejudice","reality-check","slander","social-norms","stereotypes","women"],"id":42025,"author_id":"Christine+de+Pizan"},{"text":"It's okay to write a cliché in a first draft; it sets a marker that you can get far, far away from in the rewrites.","author":"Stewart Stafford","tags":["clichés","first-drafts","originality","rewrites","rewriting","writing","writing-advice","writing-advice-process","writing-process"],"id":46107,"author_id":"Stewart+Stafford"},{"text":"[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight.","author":"Christine de Pizan","tags":["attacks","beliefs","clichés","convictions","dignity","double-standards","feminism","gender","hypocrisy","insults","men","misogyny","preconceptions","prejudice","repartee","self-esteem","self-importance","slander","stereotypes","wit","women"],"id":53673,"author_id":"Christine+de+Pizan"},{"text":"Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.","author":"Dorothy L. Sayers","tags":["abilities","clichés","double-standards","empowerment","equality","feminism","feminist","gender","greatness","human-nature","husbands","hypocrisy","integrity","men","men-and-women","misogyny","penina-mezei","skills","stereotypes","strong","wives","women"],"id":55617,"author_id":"Dorothy+L.+Sayers"},{"text":"My Lady, you certainly tell me about wonderful constancy, strength and virtue and firmness of women, so can one say the same thing about men? (...)Response [by Lady Rectitude]: 'Fair sweet friend, have you not yet heard the saying that the fool sees well enough a small cut in the face of his neighbour, but he disregards the great gaping one above his own eye? I will show you the great contradiction in what the men say about the changeability and inconstancy of women. It is true that they all generally insist that women are very frail [= fickle] by nature. And since they accuse women of frailty, one would suppose that they themselves take care to maintain a reputation for constancy, or at the very least, that the women are indeed less so than they are themselves. And yet, it is obvious that they demand of women greater constancy than they themselves have, for they who claim to be of this strong and noble condition cannot refrain from a whole number of very great defects and sins, and not out of ignorance, either, but out of pure malice, knowing well how badly they are misbehaving. But all this they excuse in themselves and say that it is in the nature of man to sin, yet if it so happens that any women stray into any misdeed (of which they themselves are the cause by their great power and longhandedness), then it's suddenly all frailty and inconstancy, they claim. But it seems to me that since they do call women frail, they should not support that frailty, and not ascribe to them as a great crime what in themselves they merely consider a little defect.","author":"Christine de Pizan","tags":["clichés","constancy","double-standards","empowerment","feminism","firmness","frailty","gender","hypocrisy","inequality","men","misogyny","morality","preconceptions","prejudice","sin","slander","social-norms","stereotypes","strength-of-character","vice","virtue","women"],"id":85147,"author_id":"Christine+de+Pizan"},{"text":"[T]he more clamour we make about 'the women's point of view', the more we rub it into people that the women's point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is -- at least in my job. The line I always want to take is, that there is the 'point of view' of the reasonably enlightened human brain, and that this is the aspect of the matter which I am best fitted to uphold.","author":"Dorothy L. Sayers","tags":["brain","clichés","double-standards","empowerment","equality","feminism","gender","intellect","intelligence","misogyny","perspective","point-of-view","prejudice","stereotypes","women"],"id":91606,"author_id":"Dorothy+L.+Sayers"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":46,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}