Sex Differences Quotes & Sayings

Although there are certain needs, such as hunger, thirst, sex, which are common to man, those drives which make for the differences in men's characters, like love and hatred, the lust for power and the yearning for submission, the enjoyment of sensuous pleasure and the fear of it, are all products of the social process. The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed and biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man. In other words, society has not only a suppressing function - although it has that too - but it has also a creative function. — Erich Fromm

Through all the relationship stuff I've gone through in the past few years, I know there are fundamental differences in how men and women view sex and how they view their futures. — Aaron Eckhart

They were married before they were friends, which is another way of saying:
Their marriage was the occasion of their friendship.
They were married before they noticed many small differences in background, aspiration, education, ambition. ( ... )
Noting such differences, Leah was in some sense disappointed in herself that they did not cause real conflict between them. It was hard to get used to the fact that the pleasure her body found in his, and vice versa, should so easily overrule the many objections she had, or should have had, or thought she should have had. — Zadie Smith

Historically, it appears that society has capitalized on what is at most a degree of difference between the sexes in order to institutionalize the polarization of aggression. — Freda Adler

There are two differences between an orgy and a sex club. First, at a sex club it's considered bad form to introduce yourself to someone before you start putting parts of his body in your mouth. At an orgy you are allowed to offer your name as long as you do so with an obvious sense of irony. — Joel Derfner

In the metaphysical elements of aesthetics the various nonmoral feelings are to be made use of; in the elements of moral metaphysics the various moral feelings of men, according to the differences in sex, age, education, and government, of races and climates, are to be employed. — Immanuel Kant

The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex! DR. STEPHEN T. COLBERT, D.F.A. — Christopher Ryan

Ladies, you have a ton of power if you just understand the fundamental differences between men and women and unaffectedly play by the rules. — Julieanne O'Connor

I don't like jokes about sex or bodily functions or drug use or the difference between New York and L.A. I never do any of that. — David Letterman

Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn't look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I'd still be in Savannah. — Clarence Thomas

The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious. — Cordelia Fine

The sex difference in Agreeableness puts the debate about sex discrimination in society into an interesting light. The media tends to decry the fact that the prevalence of women chief executives of large corporations is very much lower than 50 per cent. But is this really evidence that discrimination is operating? It could equally well be the case that there is no discrimination, but that fewer women want to emphasize status gain at the expense of social connectedness. Given the known relationships between Agreeableness and career success, and the known sex differences in Agreeableness, you could actually work out the expected number of women in top positions if the market is blind to sex. It would not be zero, but it would be not be 50 per cent either. — Daniel Nettle

Some have a difficult time with feminism. 'Why not a human liberation movement?' they say. The answer is that the power differences between the sexes, races, and classes are still so extreme that invoking humanism, at this time, dangerously denies that fact. — Loraine Hutchins

No matter how great the differences are between men and women, the differences among members of the same sex are usually equally great if not greater. — Joyce Brothers

It don't make no difference what is is, a woman'll buy anything she thinks a store is losin' money on. — Kin Hubbard

One of the most robust sex differences in personality research is the finding that women are higher in Agreeableness than men are. The difference is over half a standard deviation, which means that although there is plenty of overlap between the sexes, the average man scores lower than 70 per cent of women. Women have an advantage on theory of mind tasks too. Moreover, there is evidence that the difference is deep in our biology. When women are given testosterone experimentally, it reduces empathetic behaviour.19 — Daniel Nettle

Should men and women be equal in all things? Absolutely. But I'm old-fashioned in that I like the differences between the sexes. My male characters are neither Neanderthals nor Prince Charmings. They're flawed. — Sandra Brown

I've known several men who believe women are only interested in relationships for money and comfort, and they aren't capable of really loving. And I've known women who insist men only want sex and don't know how to love. White people used to insist that blacks weren't capable of 'noble' emotions, that they were little more than animals. The same was said about Jews, Native Americans, you name it. It's an ancient argument. People keep dredging it up, trying to prove to themselves that people they don't understand are alien and don't warrant being treated well. And it is always - always - wrong. Despite our differences, all people are basically built from the same template. We are all equally admirable and equally flawed. — Jamie Fessenden

No science is ever frightening to Christians. Religious people don't need the science to come out any particular way on IQ or AIDS or sex differences any more than they need the science to come out any particular way on evolution ... If evolution is true, then God created evolution. — Ann Coulter

You are an adult and you don't understand me and what are the differences between the adult and the kids?
The kids are dreamming to have sex and the adult's already are one step forward, adults take drugs... and from there and kids start, adults kill and then the children start to kill...
So far everything was build by the adults, I see it. An adult has written a book about sex, about the stuff, an adult has created a website and other stuff of pornography.... It hasn't thought by someone this, when you are small and if you don't see it you don't do it!?
You can't do it, without knowing it... can you?
It's now habbit because you have saw it, once, twice, tripple and some fake thoughts even not fake but false thoughts have been planted in your mind and you start doing it... — Deyth Banger

Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation. — Audre Lorde

Sex and race, because they are easy and visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends. — Gloria Steinem

They looked identical to Billy - because their sex differences were all in the fourth dimension. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I guess the biggest difference from the things I've done in the past is that my work will be more narrative-driven adult films or vignettes, not just "gonzo" scenes, which are straight sex, no storyline. — Sasha Grey

Human beings are not animals, and I do not want to see sex and sexual differences treated as casually and amorally as dogs and other beasts treat them. I believe this could happen under the ERA. — Ronald Reagan

If a man brags about his sex life he's a stud, but if a woman brags about her sex life she's a slut. — Anthony Liccione

Insistence on having a sexual orientation in sex is about defending the status quo, maintaining sex differences and the sexual hierarchy; whereas resistance to sexual orientation, regimentation is more about where we need to be going. — John Stoltenberg

Even the new feminist research on sex-role socialization and sex differences has sometimes had the unfortunate consequence of creating a new set of stereotypes about what women feel and how women behave. Despite the large amount of overlap between the sexes in most research, the tendency to label and polarize and thus to exaggerate differences remains in much reporting of data, which may, for example, report the mean scores of male and female populations but not the degree of overlap. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Except for their genitals, I don't know what immutable differences exist between men and women. Perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences; probably there are a number of irrelevant differences. But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both sexes, answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices. — Naomi Weisstein

Let the revolting distinction of rich and poor disappear once and for all, the distinction of great and small, of masters and valets, of governors and governed. Let there be no other differences between human beings than those of age and sex. Since all have the same needs and the same faculties, let there be one education for all, one food for all. — Francois-Noel Babeuf

(E)ach generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup
if any. — Robert A. Heinlein

How much more generous it would be if, instead of writing parables about childhood wounds, psychologists were to accept that some differences between the sexes just are, that they are in the nature of the beasts, because each sex has an evolved tendency to develop that way in response to experience. — Matt Ridley

One question on hospital admittance forms really gets me. "Sex: Male or Female?" Do I want to be in a hospital where they can't tell the difference? — Ronnie Shakes

The end goal of feminist revolution must be ... not just the elimination of male privilage but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. — Shulamith Firestone

always normal man want sex,respect and understanding normal women wantsex, love and feeling the problem is when the thinking about differences we think about seduces — Adel

My stress on the truth in sexual stereotypes and on the biologic basis of sex differences is sure to cause controversy. — Camille Paglia

The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hinderances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. — John Stuart Mill

This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism. — Gloria Steinem

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. — Karl Marx

The differences between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature. — Margaret Mead

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die! — John Cage

I don't want my life to not be the way I expected.
I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid.
I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgement, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies.
I am afraid of me.
Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me.
I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said 'No, I don't understand.' You're brave because you are here. — Emily Trunko

In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity of local differences, and respect. Respect, I think, always implies imagination - the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls. (pg. 181, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community) — Wendell Berry

Standardized personality differences between the sexes are of this order, cultural creations to which each generation, male and female, is trained to conform. — Margaret Mead

I remember taking an anthropology class in college and the professor was explaining that there is little 'sexual dimorphism' in humans. He meant that there are few outward, observable differences between makes and females. At the time I was confused, so I raised my hand. 'I feel like it's very easy to tell men and women apart,' I said.
'That's due to culture,' he answered. — Brandon Stanton

Mr. Darwin ... has failed to hold definitely before his mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and to evolution. — Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has always had a reputation as a man who cares for women, and even a libertine ... There is a vast difference between [that] reputation ... and the charge which he is the object, which is a serious, very serious crime or sex crime. This is something very different. — Elisabeth Guigou

I do not deny certain kinds of biological differences. But I always ask under what conditions, under what discursive and institutional conditions, do certain biological differences - and they're not necessary ones, given the anomalous state of bodies in the world - become the salient characteristics of sex. — Judith Butler

I can't tell the difference between the best and the worst 'cause I realize not everybody wants to have sex in the middle of a demolition derby race in the car. — John Waters

Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense. — Herbert Spencer

Normative statements about "women's roles" and girls' and women's behaviour being "appropriately feminine" were replaced with more neutral statements about what women and girl versus boys and men do and think and say they want. In this way, conventionally gendered behaviour was taken out of the context of prescription and presented as simple description. This had the possibly unanticipated consequence, though, of taking these behaviours out of the context of the social world. The descriptive approach significantly deemphasised the role of norms, social structures, and modelling in developing gendered traits. Instead, disembodied as "naked facts" of sex differences, they began to look more and more like simple reflections of male and female behaviour. — Rebecca M. Jordan-Young

In 1974 I nearly got into a fistfight with some early academic feminists in a restaurant when I casually alluded to a hormonal element in sex differences. It was utterly unacceptable at that time to think or say such a thing ... If you have any doubts about the effect of hormones on emotion, libido and aggression, have a chat with a transexual, who must take hormones medically. He or she will set you straight. — Camille Paglia

The studies about differences between the sexes that you see kind of get propped up in the media are more often than not denigrating women in some way, saying that women really don't have any spatial understanding, and that's why they can't park. — Jessica Valenti

Shower sex sucks," Meryn announced loudly.
Elizabeth leaned forward dying to know what prompted that statement. "What happened?"
"Slippery surfaces and not the good kind, one." Meryn started ticking off reasons on her fingers. "Water not a natural lubricant, two. Height differences, three. And I got a freaking charley horse right when..." Aiden covered her mouth at that point.
Ahh. So someone had fun and someone didn't. Poor Meryn. — Alanea Alder

Our laboratory is a place that celebrates diversity and is totally open to all differences, not just sex but also age, ethnicity, religion and other traditions. — Fabiola Gianotti