This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

Confucius. Einstein. Gandhi. Descartes. Socrates. Churchill. King. Wilde. Mandela.  If it’s got a penis, the assumption is that it has some sort of insight or wisdom that no one else has ever demonstrated and that we should write down and attribute and even use as a measure of our own insight. Most of these select and immortalized words are attributed to males, but I also find that males are much more likely than females to throw what I have come to call ‘scrote quotes’ into prepared speeches and writings, but even into random conversations, as well. I started paying attention to this back when I was an undergraduate student and I would attend meetings for the lab I worked in. Some of the male students loved talking and dropping little nuggets of so-called wisdom that wasn’t their own – either quotes or factoids about sciencey stuff – and I began to suspect that they were making shit up in order to score points with the rest of us. And over the years, as a student, as a work team member, as a teacher, and as part of various social groups, I saw a common theme that went something like this:

• Males talk too much and too loudly,
• Males are pathological interrupters, especially if the person speaking is female,
• Males are more likely to attack what other people say, especially if the speaker is female, and
• Males put more stock in what other males say even if it is clearly bullshit, and like to scrote quote.

We all understand well the male belief in their own deservedness for simply being male, regardless of race, and their over-confidence, in general. This helps to explain their disproportionate oral presence in groups. They don’t really understand the concept of not having a voice. But why the devotion to other males? Why do they like to build up other males and even to quote them? Or maybe the question should be is scrote quoting just knee-jerk devotion to the brotherhood or a more calculated attempt to look intelligent or sensitive or insightful or humanitarian? Perhaps it is both as males seldom quote women or reference women’s contributions to the intellectual community, even if the women are acknowledged experts or intellectuals.

Regardless of the intention, male speech in general and the quoting and pseudo-intellectual posing of some males in particular elicits eye-rolls in me, and if I were the kind of person who could pull off a smug sort of snort, I’d probably do that too. Needless to say, as I’ve become more separatist in my lifestyle, I’ve avoided mixed-sex discussion groups, and I’ve almost completely stopped reading books by male authors. I did read a fairly well-done non-fiction book by a male on the history of salt a few years ago, but male fiction is pointless to consume, and I don’t feel I’m missing anything by putting to stop to men’s thoughts entering my world. That might bring gasps of horror from a lot of people. But would it shock the same people to know that my first 18 years were almost completely devoid of female-authored writing other than the requisite Judy Blume novels and the Nancy Drew, girl detective series?

But back to quotes. Do women really say nothing worth remembering and recounting? And do what men apparently say actually mean anything? I’ll dive in a bit with some examples, but before I do that, let me just say that I consider famous quotes to be a bit like modern art – and I’m saying this as someone who appreciates skills and talent and hard work and who doesn’t put this genre of art into any of those categories. It is a bit of a cliché to say, upon viewing a modern art installation: “What’s so great about this? I could do it. Hell, my 5-year old neighbour could do this.” But it is true. There is no skill in painting a canvas completely black or placing a bunch of laundry soap boxes in a random pile. Anyone could do it. But one person did it and became famous, and among a certain community of people, the installation is ‘genius’ because of the person who did it and the context it was done in, and perhaps the political or social climate at the time. In a similar fashion, most quotes are said hundreds, thousands, and even millions of times by people around the world at different times, but it became famous and attached to one person because of who the person was, and the context it was done in, and perhaps the political or social climate at the time. Women are just as likely to have said something supposedly noteworthy as a male, yet most of the time, it is male voices that are heard and acknowledged. And of course, males are notorious thieves of everything women create. We know this. But words. Can we ‘own’ words? In a male world, indeed. Everything can be owned and attributed.

What purpose do quotes serve? Lots of reasons, apparently. They supposedly preserve intellectual observations. They give a false sense of validity and non-fiction to religious teachings. They warn us to follow rules. They inspire and motivate. They serve as humour, but in a way that diffuses anger and deeper thinking about serious truths. For me, sometimes I read or hear a quote and it just doesn’t have the impact that it seems to have for so many. I’ll provide a few examples of scrote quotes that fall flat for me, before I get into lady-quotes.

Who doesn’t love Einstein, the world’s favourite quotable male intellectual? But I just think his words are nonsense at worst, and obvious, at best. For example:

“Learning is experience. Everything else is just information.” and

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

I just don’t understand why these inspire people. So many seem to hear them and say “whoa, that’s so true” to themselves. But many intellectual and inspirational quotes aren’t that deep or analytical and end up just stating the obvious.

I find religious quotes to be hilarious. The ones taken directly from religious texts and presented as words spoken by real people or people who are conduits for a supernatural being are ridiculous. It would be like me quoting a character from Harry Potter and pretending it means something profound, like: “It was the wand-maker, Ollivander who said in the Philosopher’s Stone: ‘Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard.'” and then looking at my audience in a knowing way and trying to make a profound statement about destiny. There are also quotes from the so-called shepherds who seek to rally the flock. MLK is a great source of inspirational nonsense. For example:

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

Yikes. Sounds deep, but it is just a clever way to justify non-thinking. In reality, he is describing living. Faith is more like falling asleep and dreaming you’re climbing a staircase to what passes for heaven in your religion.

And a good scrote quote that masks a problem in cheap humour comes from Jim Carrey.

“Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.”

The original quote is something like “Behind every great man is a strong woman”, which of course is supposed to acknowledge the unsung heroines in a man’s life – wives and mothers – and serves as a verbal Valentine’s Day. But Carrey’s quote and the many other humourous spin-offs out there are effective, not in attacking misogyny, but to make us laugh ourselves back into complacency. Carrey will likely be called ‘feminist’, but he is still part of the problem. Women can laugh at the truth, but they’ll keep on supporting their men, putting up with the nonsense, yet still reaping the benefits of heterosexuality.

Speaking of fake-feminism, let’s get into lady-quotes. There is a new genre of quotes called ‘feminist quotes’, which consists mostly of heterosexual women saying obvious and fluffy things about girl power or problems with men that they are complaining about, but are still willing to put up with in exchange for a better economic outlook and social standing. Almost zero percent of these feminist quotes are actually feminist. Woman speaking does not equal feminist. These women’s words are remembered and quoted because their words have little substance or may have substance, but the speaker doesn’t walk the talk in their lives. They aren’t threats to men, in other words. We don’t pay attention to women who actually say something important. That is key to remember. Here are a few examples.

Michelle Obama is a good source of inspirational, ‘feminist’ fluff. The perfect politician’s wifey.

“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”

There is no substance to these words and only inspire a ‘duh’ response in me, followed by: “But we have heterosexuality, misogyny and male violence that impose artificial limits and then convince girls and women that those limits are real and natural.” But she wouldn’t be allowed to say that, would she?

And then we get some good old lib-fem nonsense from icons like Madonna:

“I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”

As you may have noted in my last post, I’m not big on reclaiming slurs. I don’t find this quote inspirational, although I suppose I can appreciate the message that we shouldn’t give a shit what people think about us as females. But given how Madonna has marketed herself, she is 100% a conformist and thus does care about her audience thinks of her. There is a mismatch.

And then we get to actual feminist quotes. In my opinion, one of the most quotable feminists that has ever existed is Andrea Dworkin. I think I’ve read most of what she has written and have listened to recordings of her speaking publicly. This is a woman who saw truths and related them to us and she was hated by many for it. She is not the only quote-worthy feminist, and I include a slide-show of quotes in the side bar of my blog. But here I’ll include a few Dworkin quotes that mean something to me.

“Any violation of a woman’s body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.” and

“Men often react to women’s words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women’s words with violence.“

Really, there are so many uncomfortable truths, truths I’d never heard anyone speak before I read Dworkin. And what she said during her time could be applied 500 years ago and it can still be applied today. Does this not exceed the current standard for most of what passes for famous quotes?

Conclusion

For me, the measure of a good quote is this: does it speak a truth that is not immediately apparent and that makes you think about things that might be uncomfortable or difficult? Further, is it something that is not commonly said by many across time and place? There is a place for motivational slogans and addages, but to attribute these to a single source, especially to a male who is not as remarkable as he and his followers think he is, is not quite right. Let’s not lump unique quotations in with the ‘right time, right place, right sex’ phenomenon known as modern art. Words have to mean something and quotes have to touch something deeper.

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