Top 286 Masculinity Quotes & Sayings

Masculinity & femininity are just styles. They are interpretations

What we men share is the experience of having been raised by women in a culture that stopped our fathers from being close enough to teach us how to be men, in a world in which men were discouraged from talking about our masculinity and questioning its roots and its mystique, in a world that glorified masculinity and gave us impossibly unachievable myths of masculine heroics, but no domestic models to teach us how to do it.

The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity. Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.

My masculinity isn't hinged on whether or not I knit.

Our ability to fall in love requires enough comfort with our masculinity to join it with someone's femininity and feel enhanced. .. . If our mother made us feel secure and proud in our masculinity, then we want to find that again in our wife. If we are really comfortable with our mother, we can even marry a woman who is a friend rather than an adversary, and form a true partnership.

Masculinity is part of a binary and requires its opposite, since, in the absence of femininity, masculinity would have no meaning.

For me, I think there is no absolute standard on masculinity.

What we're seeing now is not just a backlash against feminism. When you look at guys like [Jesse] Helms in the '80s or even Reagan and Bush, there was a real political backlash against feminism. This is different. This is a parodic recreation of the destruction of traditional masculinity. Look at these hollow men. Look at Steve Bannon who wears sweat pants, who doesn't shave. Or Yiannopoulos who is just a clown. This is toxic masculinity. It's new. To see it as a return to the past is a mistake. It's the breakdown of traditional masculinity, rather than its retrenchment.

Violence has always been unfortunately embedded in masculinity, this alpha thing.

It's good to see a man who isn't afraid to live out his masculinity.

Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility.

I think male authors who want to try to tackle these issues of representation of women can generally do a better job if they try to question traditional notions of masculinity and the sort of toxic nature of traditional ways of presenting masculinity.

If we're talking about masculinity and tenderness, I don't look at Clinton.

In human beings pure masculinity or femininity is not to be found either in a psychological or biological sense.

Masculinity is kind of a toxic curse, isn't it? The expectations of it were hard on me.

If you have a conversation "Why is it you think masculinity is linked with heterosexuality? Or why is it you think masculinity is linked with sexual dominance or the sexually active position in the sex act?" If you start to ask people those questions, then they realize "Maybe gender is not one thing. Maybe I have collected a number of things under one category and I've made a mistake".

No need to continually insist upon your unshakable masculinity.

Men in Rajasthan pride themselves on their moustaches. It is a sign of their masculinity.

I’m confident enough in my masculinity and sexuality that I can say that Ryan Gosling is just dreamy in this movie.

There's three things: there's masculinity, there's intelligence, there's sensitivity. You've got to bring those three things to a leading man's role: masculinity, sensitivity, intelligence. In some people, there's a little too much in the mix of one or the other.

Masculinity is a terrible problem, as we construe it and shape it.

I have no memory of feeling strong and rugged at any point. I've been considering masculinity my whole life.

One thing you can say about Trump is that he is not a traditional patriarch. He has a wife who's not even in the White House. And you could say the same of Duterte in the Philippines and of Putin. They're parodies of masculinity. They're hyper-masculine, but they're also totally unsure of their masculinity, and they parade it around.

There's an enormous difference between normative white masculinity and normative black masculinity.

As boys without bonds to their fathers grow older and more desperate about their masculinity, they are in danger of forming gangs in which they strut their masculinity for one another, often overdo it, and sometimes turn to displays of fierce, macho bravado and even violence.

Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations. Masculinity pertains to male dominance as femininity pertains to female subordination.

I'm not that powerful to take out the masculinity of a beard.

When I was young there were lesbians who said "Oh, I will free myself of all norms of masculinity, all norms of heterosexuality ". And then, they ended up in very complex relationships that were maybe full of heterosexual power dynamics or full of lesbian forms of masculinity and they became very confused.

Men talk about masculinity through sports and clothes. They don't talk about gender, they talk about LeBron James and whether it's okay to wear lipstick and eyeliner. They're not getting to the question at hand, which is, "What does it mean to be a man when the traditional values of masculinity are eroding incredibly rapidly?'

I just think that culturally, women - we're all human beings - but at least we don't have our masculinity to prove.

Masculinity varies from time to time and place to place. But it doesn't exist just in the mind of a single guy: it is shared withthe other guys. It is a code of conduct that requires men to maintain masculine postures and attitudes (however they are defined) at all times and in all places. Masculinity includes the symbols, uniforms, chants, and plays that make this the boys' team rather than the girls' team.

... the socialization of boys regarding masculinity is often at the expense of women. I came to realize that we don't raise boys to be men, we raise them not be women (or gay men). We teach boys that girls and women are "less than" and that leads to violence by some and silence by many. It's important for men to stand up to not only stop men's violence against women but, to teach young men a broader definition of masculinity that includes being empathetic, loving and non-violent.

You know who must be very secure in their masculinity? Male ladybugs.

I celebrate masculinity when I'm onstage.

The great passion in a man's life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.

Some of the sexiest things to me in a man are confidence, authenticity, honesty, kindness and masculinity.

His masculinity was only too apparent

There's room for many definitions of masculinity in the modern era.

I think all of my male characters, I suppose, in all of my films, they're not necessarily the traditional version of masculinity.

Genius declares itself to be a kind of higher masculinity.

Some men can maintain cragginess and weary masculinity. Women just get old.

I think if we took away that toxic masculinity then the world would be a much better place.

It's undeniable that what we are taught as a culture to believe about disability is at odds with traditional notions of masculinity.

Masculinity is what you believe it to be. I think masculinity and femininity is something that's very old-fashioned. There's a whole new generation of people who aren't defined by their sex or race or who they like to sleep with.

Actually the family is still the core social unit. Culturally, traditional masculinity was a removed father. That was a false conception of masculinity and the proper relationship between a man and his children.

For me, masculinity is about control, and femininity is more of an embrace, the art of listening. It's very inspiring to explore the shadows of masculinity and femininity, and the tensions between both, and the place of women in the world right now.

As a guy develops and practices his masculinity, he is accompanied by an invisible male chorus of all the other guys, who hiss orcheer as he attempts to approximate the masculine ideal, who push him to sacrifice more of his humanity for the sake of his masculinity, and who ridicule him when he holds back. The chorus is made up of all the guy's comrades and rivals, his buddies and bosses, his male ancestors and his male cultural heroes--and above all, his father, who may have been a real person in his life, or may have existed only as the myth of the man who got away.

The U.K.'s got the most advanced relationship with masculinity, femininity and sexuality.

No man represents toxic white masculinity more than Donald Trump.

I do think that there is a real crisis of masculinity that's happening in America. I think the problem is - the way it's being framed is that there's a problem with masculinity because women are too powerful, or women are taking up too much space.

Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women.

I think we still live in this era of hyper-masculinity.

Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.

Hey, I'm comfortable with my masculinity.

There are just so many ways to talk about masculinity, it feels like one medium can't do it alone.

We're in a world where masculinity, especially with these big spectacle movies, is often pushed by rippling six packs and forcing an image down someone's throat trying to prove masculinity. Whereas I think true masculinity comes from having a strong sense of self.

The scripture is filled with examples of genuine masculinity; you could mine David's story for probably a year by itself. And we have to get the masculinity of Jesus back. Not the pale-faced altar boy, but the man that made a weapon and cleared the temple, who boldly cast out demons and calmed the raging sea.

I think we've got a very two-dimensional view of what masculinity is, of what strength is, what a guy needs to do.

Femininity doesn't always relate to being a woman and masculinity doesn't always relate to being a man; it's a quality of being-ness. Women have to portray the quality of masculinity; society wants it to be like a man; not necessarily male, but like a man. If that makes sense...In nature itself, there's yin and yang, there's masculine and feminine.

I got into sports because that was a way to prove your masculinity. I was good at it.