gender

"Over the past five decades, gender-role portrayals in advertisements have changed in accord with the changing roles of women in society. In 1953, only 23.4% of women were in the labor force. At that time, advertisements typically portrayed women as objects of sexual gratification, or as spouses, homemakers, and mothers whose characteristics were passivity and dependence (Courtney & Lockeretz, 1971 in Belknap & Leonard 11, 1991) Four decades later, women's participation had doubled, to 60.7%. (Basset, 1994; Hughes, 1995). Women not only were gaining ground in marketplace participation, but also were filling positions once held primarily by men. As women began to enter the workforce, the image of the ideal woman began to be transformed. Changing demographic, economic and social patterns, encouraged a resurgence of feminist groups who focused public attention on the portrayal of women in media (Sullivan & O'Connor, 1988). Women in advertisements became central characters (Belknap & Leonard, 1991); they were portrayed as working outside the home, in nontraditional, progressive occupations. In contemporary advertisements, increasingly women are presented in professional roles requiring decision making on items and topics other than household, hygiene or beauty products, and sometimes they are portrayed as autonomous and equal to their male counterparts. Coinciding with this reduction in the portrayal of women in traditional homemaker and mother roles, has been a 60% increase in advertisements in which women are portrayed in purely decorative roles (Sullivan & O'Connor, 1982)."

": Wilt dine with me, Apemantus? : No, I eat not lords. : An thou shouldst, thou'dst anger ladies. : O, they eat lords. So they come by great bellies. : That's a lascivious apprehension. : So thou apprehend'st it, take it for thy labour."

"And since a man can't make one He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one."

"She's quick; the child brags in her belly already."

"They did not understand how my world had shrunk. They couldn't see that the bigger I got, the smaller I became, and they didn't understand that once the baby came, I would be gone!"

"I dreamed of you for the first time the other night. You were swaddled in a blanket and floating. Your hair was dark brown before it curled and turned blonde, just like your father's. I brought my head down to my clavicle and nuzzled you, melting a little. I told you, or did you tell me that it wasn't time yet? We are waiting for you, wondering who you will be. I've made a habit of Googling strange changes in my body in the off chance they might be connected to your existence. Too much saliva, bleeding gums, muscle pains in the lower abdomen. Every time, no matter how seemingly random, all of these symptoms are correct, connected to the making of you. I'm reminded my body is marching onward without any help from me. There is a quietness that comes with pregnancy, a humbling. I'm listening for you. I'm full of wonder. Mornings and nights, my stomach grows. It's getting colder, an election is coming. I feel you flutter underneath my belly button. I want you to see the world's potential. You feel like the world's potential. I'm driving through Manhattan, looking out the backseat window of my friend's car, studying pedestrians as they move through the city. A man crosses the street in glasses, another jogs in place, his eyes focused ahead of him. I stare at these strangers. Will that be you? I wonder. I'm in the shower, rearranging all the names I'm thinking of for you in my head. I peer down at my belly and say one of them aloud to see if it fits. Water steadily beats against my back. In that moment I can't feel it myself or the space around me. Just you. Hello, I think, is that you? My chest swells and my eyes sting with the thought that one day soon, so very soon, your presence will be real. I close my eyes and try to imagine you moving through the pixelated darkness of my mind's eye. I cannot wait to see who you will be."

"I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie."

"He ploughed her, and she cropped."

"Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy."

"Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb."

"So Fanfare for the Makers: ... As mothers sit up late night after night Moulding a life."

"As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time That from the seedness the bare fallow brings To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry."

"In the dark womb where I began My mother's life made me a man. Through all the months of human birth Her beauty fed my common earth. I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir, But through the death of some of her."

"Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life."

"You become like a vampire when you're pregnant: your senses are so sensitive and your emotions are so heightened – that helps with performance because you really feel things. Any stories about something happening to little girls killed me. Put it this way: I did not find Inside Out uplifting."

"There was a time when doctors recommended alcohol to pregnant women for relaxation and pain relief, or even prescribed it intravenously as a tocolytic — meaning it stopped premature labor. One doctor who trained me spoke of a 1960s prenatal ward full of intoxicated women "swearing like sailors." Things began to change in 1973, when fetal alcohol syndrome, or F.A.S., was formally recognized after a seminal article was published in The Lancet, a medical journal. F.A.S. is a constellation of findings that includes changes in growth, distinctive facial features and a negative impact on the developing brain. We now know that alcohol is a teratogen, meaning it can cause birth defects. With that knowledge, the pendulum swung hard. In 1988, Congress passed the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act, which would add the well-known "women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects" label to alcoholic beverages for sale or distribution in the United States. (A warning about drinking and driving was also added.) Many people unfortunately took this as an opportunity to police pregnant women in public."

"The question is not 'Can a man do it?' It's 'If a man does have a successful pregnancy, can he survive it?'"

"The shamans are forever yacking about their snake-oil "miracles." I prefer the Real McCoy—a pregnant woman."

"I found that being pregnant was different from how I thought it would be...It shares a lot in common with writing in a way. You have an imaginary version of yourself pregnant, and an imaginary baby, an imaginary idea of yourself as a mother."

"Let me then say it bluntly: Pregnancy is barbaric. I do not believe, as many women are now saying, that the reason pregnancy is viewed as not beautiful is due strictly to cultural perversion. The child’s first response, 'What's wrong with that Fat Lady?'; the husband's guilty waning of sexual desire; the woman's tears in front of the mirror at eight months – are all gut reactions, not to be dismissed as cultural habits."

"And Venus, thou, with timely seed, Which may their after-comforts breed, Inform the gentle womb; Nor let it prove a tomb."

"Pregnancy is the temporary deformation of the body of the individual for the sake of the species. Moreover, childbirth hurts. And it isn't good for you. Three thousand years ago, women giving birth 'naturally' had no need to pretend that pregnancy was a real trip, some mystical orgasm (that far-away look). The Bible said it: pain and travail. The glamour was unnecessary: women had no choice. They didn't dare squawk. But at least they could scream as loudly as they wanted during their labour pains. And after it was over, even during it, they were admired in a limited way for their bravery; their valour was measured by how many children (sons) they could endure bringing into the world."

"Motherhood is never honored by excessive talk about the heroics of pregnancy."

"The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."

"A ship under sail and a big-bellied woman, are the handsomest two things that can be seen common."

"I was supposed to do Coachella the year prior but I got pregnant unexpectedly. And it ended up being twins, which was even more of a surprise. My body went through more than I could. I was 218 pounds the day I gave birth. I had an extremely difficult pregnancy, high blood pressure. I developed toxemia, preeclampsia, and in the room, one of the baby's heartbeats paused a few times so I had to get an emergency c-section."

"... the story of pregnancy is best recounted in s. The first trimester is characterised by and . The second trimester is characterised by a large stomach and a feeling of well-being. In the third trimester you may experience bloating around the face, , , , chronic , , , forgetfulness, fatigue, feelings of apprehension about the birth and a longing for pregnancy to be over."

"Eric Johnston, an attorney who helped draft the Alabama bill, thinks a man and a woman can have sex and go straight to a clinic to determine if she's pregnant. First off, you've gotta give her six minutes to clench her way to a toilet; otherwise she's gonna get a UTI and ruin an exam table. Secondly, that isn’t how it works...It's still hard to know if you're pregnant at six weeks. You might have no symptoms, or if you do, they’re symptoms like fatigue or bloating and gas. On the other hand, it does explain P.F. Chang's new motto: 'Maybe it's not us; maybe you're pregnant!'"

"So, this is my belly. I am twenty weeks. And I have the MTV awards coming up. And as you can see, little plum plum is ready for the world to know that he or she is here. I think I'm gonna have to just throw in the towel and if you can see that I’m pregnant, I just have to own it. So I maybe...Well, my baby maybe debuting itself on the awards. I'm going to be a mommy."

"Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishings of tissue, the droolings of the flesh, these are signs, these are the things I need to know about. Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own."

"The baby is coming in three weeks. I feel anxious. These last three weeks are my last weeks responsible for myself. So I'm trying my best to take care of my child like myself and enjoy my freedom I guess for the last three weeks. This is going to be nothing in comparison to having a child."

"Being pregnant is an occupational hazard of being a wife."

"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."

"Our mothers' wombs the tiring-houses be, Where we are dressed for this short comedy."

"[P]regnant women also must take care of their bodies, not avoiding exercise nor adopting a low diet; this it is easy for the lawgiver to secure by ordering them to make a journey daily for the due worship of the deities whose office is the control of childbirth. As regards the mind, however, on the contrary it suits them to pass the time more indolently than as regards their bodies; for children before birth are evidently affected by the mother just as growing plants are by the earth."

"It's all very well for a man. He doesn't have to go through this sort of thing, and he knows he never will have to. How can he understand? He may mean as well as a saint, but he's always on the outside. He can never know what it's like, even in a normal way — so what sort of an idea can he have of this? Of how it feels to lie awake at night with the humiliating knowledge that one is simply being used? — As if one were not a person at all, but just a kind of mechanism, a sort of incubator."

"The male has a negative Midas Touch - everything he touches turns to shit."

"Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman (Males as well as females think men are women and women are men), and becomes a transvestite he loses his desire to screw (or to do anything else, for that matter; he fulfills himself as a dragqueen) and gets his cock chopped off. He then derives a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from "being a woman." Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female. Sex is, itself, a sublimation."

"Although wanting to be an individual, the male is scared of anything about him that's the slightest bit different from other men; it causes him to suspect he's not really a "Man," that he's passive and totally sexual, a highly upsetting suspicion. If other men are A and he's not, he must be not a man; he must be a fag. So he tries to affirm his "Manhood" by being like all the other men. Differentness in other men, as well as in himself, threatens him; it means they're fags, who he must, at all costs, avoid, so he tries to ensure that all other men conform."

"Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit."

"Our "society" is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she's exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation, further, enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual by being a "rugged individualist", a loner, equating non-co-operation and solitariness with individuality."

"The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming."

"The male is a biological accident: the y(male) gene is an incomplete x(female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion.... To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples."

"He ["the male"] is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than apes, because he is, first of all, capable of a large array of negative feelings that the apes aren't - hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, disgrace, doubt - and, secondly, he is aware of what he is and isn't."

"Feminism is the result of a few ignorant and literal-minded women letting the cat out of the bag about which is the superior sex. Once women made it public that they could do things better than men, they were, of course, forced to do them."

"It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction."

"To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo. It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure."

"At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we are to create and preserve a less violent world. [...] III) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race."

"Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes."

"I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males."