Naomi Weisstein Quotations

Psychologists have set about describing the true nature of women with a certainty and a sense of their own infallibility rarely found in the secular world.

In some extremely important ways, people are what you expect them to be, or at least they behave as you expect them to behave.

When we hear jokes against women, and we are asked why we don't laugh at them, the answer is easy, simple, and short. Of course we're not laughing . . . . Nobody laughs at the sight of their own blood.

Why have they been telling us women lately that we have no sense of humor -- when we are always laughing? . . . and when we're not laughing, we're smiling.

It's as if women are in a totally rigged race. A lot of men are driving souped-up, low-slung racing cars and we're running as fast as we can in tennis shoes we managed to salvage from a local garage sale.

The first reason for psychology's failure to understand what people are and how they act, is that clinicians and psychiatrists, who are generally the theoreticians on these matters, have essentially made up myths without any evidence to support them; the second reason for psychology's failure is that personality theory has looked for inner traits when it should have been looking for social context.

Except for their genitals, I don't know what immutable differences exist between men and women. Perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences; probably there are a number of irrelevant differences. But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both sexes, answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices.