17 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Gender

Orson Scott Card quotes on gender

140. The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce.

308. Such fools they were in Battle School, to let so few girls in. It left the boys completely helpless against a woman when they returned to Earth.

316. Nafi knew the rule: when a man acts like a child, he's boyish, and everyone's delighted; when a boy acts the same way, he's childish, and everyone tells him to be a man

388. Maybe we're like the baboons. When we're stable and civilized, the women decide things, establish the households, the connections between them, create the neighborhoods and the friendships. But when we're nomadic, living lives on the edge of survival, men rule, and brook no interference from the women. Perhaps that's what civilization means - is the dominance of the female over the male/ and wherever that lapses, we call the result uncivilized, barbarian ... Manly.

395. I acted like a human male. When I act like a human male it doesn't make me less human, it just makes me less female. Don't you ever tell me again that just because I don't act like a woman wants me to act, that makes me an animal.

444. Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me

446. Friends, a man and a woman. It was possible

461. After discussions like this, the boys would turn around and talk about how girls weren't reasonable, they were emotional, you couldn't even have an intelligent conversation with them - but it was the boys who fled from the evidence and constantly shifted their arguments to fit what they wanted to believe. And it was [she] who was ruthlessly realistic, refusing to deny her own feelings or the facts that she observed around her. And refusing to deny that she reached her conclusions first, because of her inmost desires, and only afterward constructed the arguments to support them. Only boys were so foolish that they actually believed their arguments were their reasons

520. A woman's wisdom is her gift to women. Her beauty is her gift to men. Her love is her gift to god

546. Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continued to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them

549. This is why so many knights have died. This is why troy fell, for a woman like this

576. That was the way communication was among women, most of the time; few women realized it, but they all depended on it. 'Women's intuition' wasn't intuition at all, it was heightened observation, unconscious registration of subtle clues

615. You only got away with that because you're a woman

739. You have just described the relationship between males and females. Two completely different species, completely unintelligible to each other, living side by side and thinking they're really the same. The fascinating thing is that the two species persist in marrying each other and having babies, sometimes of one species, sometimes of other, and the whole time they can't understand why they can't understand each other.

786. He may be white, but he's still a man. Men always think they know the right thing, and so they don't listen

804. There are 2 kinds of women a man can marry. The kind that's stronger than he is, and the kind that's weaker. I've lived with both, Charlie. It's hard to live with a strong woman, because she can make you afraid sometimes, and sometimes you feel like you aren't in control of your life. But let me tell you, boy, it's a damn sight better than living with a weak woman, because many a man isn't as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was better than his wife

917. What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that woman all told each other long ago but men never get it.