Patriarchal Society Quotes

“Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive”
― Euripides, Medea

“Marco opened the walkway gate just as a sprightly grey lizard skittered across the stone path. A bougainvillea vine laden with a riot of purple blooms scaled the right side of the house, and the heady scent of gardenias saturated the air.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“As a girl, she was a legal prey, especially if she was dressed in a worn black leather jacket and had pierced eyebrows, tattoos, and zero social status.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. 'This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar' she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. ‘My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.’ It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions?”
― Sandi Toksvig

“The most common theory points to the fact that men are stronger than women and that they have used their greater physical power to force women into submission. A more subtle version of this claim argues that their strength allows men to monopolize tasks that demand hard manual labor, such as plowing and harvesting. This gives them control of food production, which in turn translates into political clout. There are two problems with this emphasis on muscle power. First, the statement that men are stronger is true only on average and only with regard to certain types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease, and fatigue than men. There are also many women who can run faster and lift heavier weights than many men. Furthermore, and most problematically for this theory, women have, throughout history, mainly been excluded from jobs that required little physical effort, such as the priesthood, law, and politics, while engaging in hard manual labor in the fields....and in the household. If social power were divided in direct relation to physical strength or stamina, women should have got far more of it. Even more importantly, there simply is no direct relation between physical strength and social power among humans. People in their sixties usually exercise power over people in their twenties, even though twenty-somethings are much stronger than their elders. ...Boxing matches were not used to select Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the most developed musculature. In fact, human history shows that there is often an inverse relation between physical prowess and social power. In most societies, it’s the lower classes who do the manual labor.

Another theory explains that masculine dominance results not from strength but from aggression. Millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent than women. Women can match men as far as hatred, greed, and abuse are concern, but when push comes to shove…men are more willing to engage in raw physical violence. This is why, throughout history, warfare has been a masculine prerogative. In times of war, men’s control of the armed forces has made them the masters of civilian society too. They then use their control of civilian society to fight more and more wars. …Recent studies of the hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women strengthen the assumption that men indeed have more aggressive and violent tendencies and are…on average, better suited to serve as common soldiers. Yet, granted that the common soldiers are all men, does it follow that the ones managing the war and enjoying its fruits must also be men? That makes no sense. It’s like assuming that because all the slaves cultivating cotton fields are all Black, plantation owners will be Black as well. Just as an all-Black workforce might be controlled by an all-White management, why couldn’t an all-male soldiery be controlled by an all-female government?”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“the oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“How dare a person tell a woman, how to dress, how to talk, how to behave! Any being who does that, is no human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Bengal Tigress: A Treatise on Gender Equality

“Some gender norms are healthy, some are unhealthy - you must wake up from the patriarchal sleep to recognize which is which.”
― Abhijit Naskar, See No Gender

“If women can birth the world, women can run the world.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“I can always tell an intelligent man is attracted to me in the ways that he attempts to dominate over me with his intellect. I can always spot a wiser man when he doesn't.”
― Echo Kind

“Worship of balls is but a prehistoric mania. There will be no balls without a vagina.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World

“One of the first things you should learn here is women don’t criticize men. Men decide. Women follow.”

She blinked.

“That explains why everything is so fucked up.”
― Lexie Talionis, Flames of Lethe

“A garden is man’s attempt to domesticate nature. And a man is man’s attempt to domesticate himself.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“The women were emboldened by the first opportunity that had ever presented itself in their lives; the chance to take off the yoke and look back at the long slavish distance they had walked. How else could they count their losses? The neck of an ox, carrying a wooden yoke, cannot turn.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“When the mind asks endless questions without receiving any concrete answers, it starts attacking the body. It was either that or Shanti’s water had broken.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“By allowing women but one way of rising in the world, the fostering the libertinism of men, society makes monsters of them, and then their ignoble vices are brought forward as a proof of inferiority of intellect.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“War is a masculine merchandise.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“Boys become men, and men become stubborn. They insist on carrying all the burdens by themselves when they can easily share them with their women and daughters. We don’t distinguish between mules and hinnies when we load them, do we? So basically, we have given more equality to donkeys than to one another as people. And we are still none the wiser.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“You have to become a thief in order to rob the thief who robbed you.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“It is hard to follow the course of change when you have been changing along with it. It is only when there is some degree of constancy that an observer can note the variations.4. It is hard to follow the course of change when you have been changing along with it. It is only when there is some degree of constancy that an observer can note the variations.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“With every male trying to ensure that his life's savings ended up in the right hands -those of his own progeny- an obsession with virginity and chastity became inevitable. Patriarchy, as it's known, can be thought of simply as an outgrowth of male assistance with the rearing of offspring.”
― Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are

“War is a masculine merchandise, whereas preserving life is an act of the feminine.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“Ganz so, als wäre ich erst vollständig ernst zu nehmen, wenn neben mir ein Mann säße.”
― Marit Warncke, Der Fluch der Schicksalsrobe

“This is a patriarchal society. Men and boys are prized possessions.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“A família talvez seja nossa primeira prisão. Muito do que somos hoje tem a ver com criações desestruturadas, inconsequentes ou castradoras. Ela é muitas vezes responsável pelas nossas inseguranças, nosso vazio, nossa falta de amor. E você sabia que até as famílias foram criadas para servir ao capital? Antigamente vivíamos em comunidades, em tribos. Casais se uniam por amor. As crianças eram criadas pela comunidade. Não havia casamento ou família.
A família surgiu para dar conta da propriedade particular de pessoas poderosas que conseguiam acumular posses, riqueza, e queriam que ela ficasse somente com seus descendentes. O casamento surgiu, as famílias se institucionalizaram e os homens passaram a ser os donos de tudo - inclusive de suas mulheres.”
― Andre Carvalhal, Como salvar o futuro: Ações para o presente

“¡Qué fatiga es ser mujer!;
es tan sólo un caminito
el que nos dejan correr.


El barrio de la Macarena (1917)”
― Gloria de la Prada Navarro

“he law is a blunt tool and though it makes tall claims of being
objective and neutral, in itself, the law is fragile and will not smash patriarchy. Rather, The courts have always favored the power structure and shielded those who are resourceful. The courtrooms, themselves as a symbol of authority, defend the values of supremacy and protect the oppressive
and regressive system. However, those on the margins with their conviction and belief in the values of democracy, justice, and the rule of law, need to shake the system. With individual or through collective action the marginalized are challenging the power structure and are compelling the state and the society to make social and political transformation at a larger level. Angela Davis said that “in a racist society it is not enough to be a non-racist. We must be anti-racist”. Similarly, here it may be derived that `in a patriarchal society, it is not enough to be a non-patriarchal. We must be anti-patriarchy’. The women with their sheer will and conviction are marching ahead to smash
patriarchy using law as an instrument of change. However, what is required is the radical interpretation of constitutional values by the courts and this should be strengthened by assuring the equal representation of women within the judiciary at all levels to open up the possibility of nondiscrimination within the patriarchal hostile settings.”
― Shalu Nigam

“¡Bien, Andrea! Veo que estás hecha una mujercita… Me gusta pensar que tengo una sobrina que cuando se case sabrá hacer feliz a un hombre. Tu marido no tendrá que zurcirse él mismo sus calcetines, ni darle de comer a sus hijos, ¿verdad?”
― Carmen Laforet, Nada

“The ancient university breathed a spirit of having been designed by men and for men, as, of course, it was – not for anomalies like ourselves.”
― Elaine Pagels, Why Religion?: A Personal Story

“من أقبح أنواع الاستبداد استبداد الجهل على العلم واستبداد النفس على العقل.”
― عبدالرحمن الكواكبي