Sandra Bartky

We are born male or female, but not masculine or feminine.

The disciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere; the disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular.

Women punish themselves for the failure to conform.

Performance for another in no way signals the inferiority of the performer to the one for whom the performance is intended.

Women's body language speaks eloquently, though silently, of her subordinate status in a hierarchy of gender.