Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations. Masculinity pertains to male dominance as femininity pertains to female subordination.

Sheila Jeffreys
About This Quote

It is hard to be a man. It is hard to be an independent person because other people are always telling you what to do. You are not supposed to be emotional or express your feelings. You are supposed to be strong, not weak.

If you show weakness, then the world will crumble around you. However, it is easy to be a woman. The world will always forgive you for being weak and it is easier to be emotional.

Source: Unpacking Queer Politics

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  1. Radical feminist theorists do not seek to make gender a bit more flexible, but to eliminate it. They are gender abolitionists, and understand gender to provide the framework and rationale for male dominance. In the radical feminist approach, masculinity is the behaviour of the male...

  2. Women incorporate the values of the male sexual objectifiers within themselves. Catharine MacKinnon calls this being "thingified" in the head (MacKinnon, 1989). They learn to treat their own bodies as objects separate from themselves. Bartky explains how this works: the wolf whistle sexually objectifies a...

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  5. ...women's bodies are "inferiorised, stigmatized .. . within an overarching patriarchal ideology. For example, biologically and physiologically, women's bodies are seen as both disgusting in their natural state and inferior to men's'' (2001, p. 141).

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