gender

"As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began, And on a simple village green; Who breaks his birth's invidious bar."

"Before becoming someone’s wife, I need to be a daughter first. I owe it to the one who gave me birth and life."

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

"If a true Christian mother weigh well these things, she will indeed understand with a sense of deep consolation that of her the words of Our Savior were spoken: "A woman...when she hath brought forth the child remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world;" and proving herself superior to all the pains and cares and solicitudes of her maternal office with a more just and holy joy than that of the Roman matron, the mother of the Gracchi, she will rejoice in the Lord crowned as it were with the glory of her offspring. Both husband and wife, however, receiving these children with joy and gratitude from the hand of God, will regard them as a talent committed to their charge by God, not only to be employed for their own advantage or for that of an earthly commonwealth, but to be restored to God with interest on the day of reckoning."

"The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships. The fulfillment of this duty has always posed problems to the conscience of married people, but the recent course of human society and the concomitant changes have provoked new questions. The Church cannot ignore these questions, for they concern matters intimately connected with the life and happiness of human beings."

"There are two most powerful days in your life: the day you're born, and the day you discover why."

"The birth of a child that a woman says was unplanned—either mistimed or unwanted—at the time of its conception is a clear indication of a mismatch between reproductive intentions and outcomes. DHSs ask every woman who had any live births during the past 5 years to think back to the time she became pregnant and to say if she had wanted to become pregnant then, did not want to until later, or did not want to have any (more) children at all. Because interviewers refer to the child by name when asking about each pregnancy, women may redefine pregnancies that were unwanted at the time they occurred as having been wanted (perhaps less so for those that were mistimed). Even so, despite this almost certain bias, the proportions of births that women say were unwanted at conception range from 5% or fewer in 13 sub-Saharan African countries and in Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, up to 20% or more in Malawi, Yemen, Nepal, Cambodia, Haiti, Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. Proportions of births unplanned (unwanted plus mistimed) are far higher, exceeding half of all births in 9 of the 67 countries in developing regions for which data are available."

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

"Mean labor pain scores were significantly higher in control group than immersion bath (IB) group suggest that use of IB as an alternative form of pain relief during labor. WI in primipara at any stage of labor, from 2 cm external opening of the uterine cervix, significantly decreased parturition duration compared with traditional delivery. It raised both the amplitude and frequency of uterine contractions proportional to uterine cervix gaping with no disturbances in contraction activity of the uterus. A 3-cm gaping of uterine cervix is the optimal timing for WI in the primipara because earlier WI at 2-cm uterine cervix gaping also accelerated the labor but required repetitions of WI or use of oxytocin for correcting weakened uterine contraction. In contrast, IB did not influence the length of labor and uterine contractions frequency. However, contractions length was statistically shorter in IB and it can be an alternative for woman's comfort during labor, since it provides relief to her without interfering on labor progression or jeopardizing the baby. WI during first stage of labor reduces the use of epidural/spinal/paracervical analgesia/anesthesia compared with controls and there is no evidence of increased adverse effects to fetus/neonate or woman from laboring in water or water birth. Neonatal swimming can accelerate babies growth in early stage. In a microbiological study, comparing neonatal bacterial colonization after water birth to conventional bed deliveries with or without relaxation bath showed no significant difference between three groups in neonatal outcome, infant's and maternal infection rate."

"For the generation under age 35, nearly half of all births are now outside marriage. This family structure, once common mainly among African-Americans and the poor, is spreading across races and into the middle class. Factor in education, though, and the difference is stark, raising concerns of a new class divide. Among young women without a college degree — those like Michelle Sheridan — 55 percent of births are outside marriage, according to an analysis by the research group Child Trends. For those with at least a four-year degree, it's just 9 percent."

"Only about one-half of the 123 million women who give birth each year receive antenatal, delivery and newborn care. But, even many of those who get care do not receive all the components of care they need (including routine care and care for complications)."

"Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety."

"Only the male superior position was significantly associated with preterm premature rupture of membranes (odds ratio 2.40, 95% confidence interval 1.16 to 4.97) and preterm delivery without premature rupture of membranes (odds ratio 1.82, confidence interval 1.02 to 3.25) after confounding variables were controlled for. No sexual positioning or sexual activities related significantly to term premature rupture of membranes."

"Compared with controls, PP cases had odds ratios of 95 for previous preterm birth, 186 for abortion and prematurity and 158 for fetal loss, abortion/prematurity after controlling for confounding variables. Compared with controls, PTB cases had an odds ratio of 96.5 for previous preterm delivery, 84 for abortion and prematurity, and 320 for fetal loss/abortion and prematurity after controlling for confounding variables. Conclusions: Previous preterm delivery, abortion and prematurity and fetal loss/abortion and prematurity all increase risk for subsequent preterm birth with or without PROM."

"Population growth results first and foremost from the physical labour that only the biological female can perform. This labour, which is performed by the woman’s body, can be described as reproductive labour and it includes the processes of menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. These have been defined as natural processes or events, things that just happen, rather than as work performed by the woman, but like all other forms of labour these activities require energy and drain physical resources. The decline in levels of fertility that has taken place throughout much of the world has been decline in the level of this reproductive labour, but most scholars dismiss the notion that women had or have a particular motivation to reduce fertility. The pains and pleasures of the body are assumed to be perennial factors that are always present and therefore do not create change. However, changes in fertility rates show us that the burden of reproductive labour borne by the average woman has risen and fallen sharply over generations."

"If birth is a manifestation of life, death is another."

"Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born."

"A man is born alone and dies alone."

"He is born naked, and falls a whining at the first."

"It is alleged that I was born in Granger, Utah, in 1883, on the 24th of October. I was there but do not remember the event. However, my mother was an honest woman and I must take her word."

"You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of democracy, social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil. With faith, discipline and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve."

"The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a finished man."

"Once men realize that they are also deprived — not as much as women, just as whites are not as deprived as blacks — but there is a full circle of human qualities we all have a right to. And they're confined to the "masculine" ones, which are seventy percent of all of them, and we're confined to the "feminine" ones, which are thirty percent. We're missing more, but they're still missing a lot. If a man fights to be his whole self, to be creative, to express emotions men are not supposed to express, do jobs men are not supposed to do, take care of his own children — all of these things are part of the feminist movement."

"A Christian is the gentlest of men; but then he is a man."

"Obedience, submission, discipline, courage — these are among the characteristics which make a man."

"The man, whom I call deserving the name, is one whose thoughts and exertions are for others rather than himself."

"The work of men" — and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one — we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."

"A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child's ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary power to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing-love. It's smart to be strong. It's big to be generous. But it's sissified according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving affectionate, and alluring. "Aw, that's girl's stuff!" snorts our young comics reader. "Who wants to be a girl?" And that's the point. Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."

"The manliness of Christian love, and the putting away from ourselves of all fear, because we are " perfected in love," is one of the highest lessons that the gospel teaches us, and one of the greatest things which the gospel gives us."

"In proportion as man gets back the spirit of manliness, which is self-sacrifice, affection, loyalty loan idea beyond himself, a God above himself, so far will he rise above circumstances, and wield them at his will."

"The conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character."

"Give us an age in which Christian manhood shall assert itself as the highest earthly thing and the noblest earthly estate. Give us an age that, instead of whining and groaning under the truth, shall rejoice in the truth. Give us an age which, lifted into identity with its highest possessions, shall be made by those possessions patient, pure, heroic, and honorable."

"Power in its measure and degree is the measure of manhood."

"I long to have the children feel that there is nothing in this world more attractive, more earnestly to be desired than manhood in Jesus Christ."

"There is a great deal more correctness of thought respecting manhood in bodily things than in moral things. For men's ideas of manhood shape themselves as the tower and spire of cathedrals do, that stand broad at the bottom, but grow tapering as they rise, and end, far up, in the finest lines, and in an evanishing point. Where they touch the ground they are most, and where they reach to the heaven they are least."

"Surely we have had enough of confusing maleness with "usefulness" and other human virtues. If men had a more modest view of what their masculinity ought to entail, perhaps they could move on from debilitating feelings of loss to tackling their real economic and political problems."

"The idea that lack of paternal guidance can explain today's masculinity crisis doesn't make sense. I suspect rather that underneath the sons' charge that their fathers did not teach them how to be men lies another, unadmitted complaint — that their fathers taught them only too well how to be men, and they are choking on the lesson. These men, as boys, faced the age-old tradeoff: If you undergo the painful process of renouncing the "feminine" aspects of your humanity and follow your father into manhood (and what choice do you have, really?) you will share in the spoils of the superior half of the race. Now, as men, they find that the spoils are far more meager than expected. No wonder they feel betrayed."

"I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness)."

"These jewels, whereupon I chanced Divinely, are the kingdom's, not the King's — For public use: henceforward let there be, Once every year, a joust for one of these: For so by nine years' proof we needs must learn Which is our mightiest, and ourselves shall grow In use of arms and manhood."

"And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, Shall think themselves accurs'd, they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks, That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

"The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you’re making a 'feminist’ story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That’s not feminist, that’s macho. Unfortunately, there are still not that many girls going into science, engineering and technology."

"Stan: Just because we rip on you for being rich doesn't mean we don't like you."

"Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men."

"We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind."

"Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly,—the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion."

"In this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us singlehanded against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty to truth — the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher."

"The best and most authentic reaction against feminism and against every other female aberration should not be aimed at women as such, but at men instead. It should not be expected of women that they return to what they really are and thus reestablish the necessary inner and outer conditions for a reintegration of a superior race, when men themselves retain only the semblance of true virility."

"The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food."

"Amazon society, as mythology, history, and universal male nightmare, represents a culture in which women reign culturally supreme because of their gender. Amazon societies are also important because women were trained to be warriors—military and, presumably, in other ways as well..."

"Men are about hierarchy. They walk into a room, figure out who the top dog is, and then see where they stand in relation to everyone else."