Gore Vidal Quotes

I think it's interesting being American, the expectations for an American guy, and the image that has to be projected. 'Oh, I can't wear pink,' that kind of stuff. There's none of that in Europe.

The real butches are straight ... dealing with and controlling men makes you stronger.

The mistake that straight people made was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous.

I actually don't think there is machismo in America, unless it's the cowboy type - the silent, smoking brooder.

If I talk to a girl, it's assumed that I'm having a scene with her. If I don't, then it's assumed that I'm gay.

Boys always like to see girls kiss. I don't get it; girls don't want to see boys kiss.

I think masculinity is bravado against the mystery of the universe of women. It's just a fear of not knowing what women have that's so powerful. It's this shield they put up to try to get closer.

I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don't understand how certain kinds of links are forged between gender and sexuality in the minds of those who want masculinity to be absolutely separate from femininity and heterosexuality to be absolutely separate from homosexuality.

Our main reasons for fearing males having sex with males is that you really had to construct a more powerful social role to keep men in their place than you did to keep women in their place.

You guys ask really long questions. In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.

The word 'excess' has no meaning for a male.

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.

What I do know is that traditional gender roles are very real and flipping the norm is difficult for even the strongest, funniest, smartest men.

Latin guys dance. American guys don't dance. That's a big difference.

American men are like women.

I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male - or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you'll see what I mean.

Women are just as violently minded as men are, but with men, it's taken for granted.

No, real men don't watch 'Deuce Bigelow.'

What we're doing is we're chipping away at what it is to be a woman and to be feminine. And what it is to be a man and be masculine. We're chipping away at that. I wish we could go back to 'Mad Men' days. I love those days. Men were men. And I love them.

Homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, they're all rooted in the same prejudice: the belief that one perception at birth - the sex we are assigned - should dictate who we are, who we love, how we act, and what we do.

I've always thought feminism had a lot to say about both genders, as it is hard to talk about one without the other. I think men and women alike would benefit from men having a more fluid idea of what being a man is.

There's a lot of stupid men out there who feel like makeup is a betrayal of the truth, and that is so funny to me.

Men have to stay strong. 'They fight, it's normal. Females don't have that instinct.

Most gay men are as sexist in their thinking as are heterosexuals. Their patriarchal thinking leads them to construct paradigms of desirable sexual behaviour that is similar to that of patriarchal straight men.

Men, through no fault of theirs, get born into cultures that tell them that if a woman can do it, it's not worth doing, or if they're not superior to women in one way or another, they're not really masculine.