"Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them"
About this Quote
A lot of power hides in how offhand this sounds: a movie star, famous for glamour and candor, casually diagnosing a cultural sickness. "Men are so willing" frames respect not as an ethical achievement but as a lazy reflex. The target isn’t boredom itself; it’s the way boredom gets mistaken for seriousness. If something is dry, difficult, or punishing to sit through, it gets stamped IMPORTANT, and therefore worthy of deference. Monroe is calling out a shortcut in taste-making: tedium as a credential.
The gendered bite matters. Coming from an actress whose intelligence was routinely discounted, the line reads like a counter-punch to a world that demanded she be charming, light, and endlessly watchable while granting authority to men who could afford to be dull. It’s not just that men respect boring things; it’s that the things men control - institutions, gatekept culture, "serious" conversation - often reward a performance of boredom. You can almost hear the meeting rooms, the lectures, the critical reviews: if it makes you yawn, it must be art; if it makes you feel, it must be fluff.
There’s also a self-protective edge. Monroe understood that entertainment is feminized and therefore suspect, while gravitas is masculinized and therefore safe. The quote exposes respect as social theater: boredom becomes a costume for authority, and authority becomes a way to dismiss anyone who refuses to wear it.
The gendered bite matters. Coming from an actress whose intelligence was routinely discounted, the line reads like a counter-punch to a world that demanded she be charming, light, and endlessly watchable while granting authority to men who could afford to be dull. It’s not just that men respect boring things; it’s that the things men control - institutions, gatekept culture, "serious" conversation - often reward a performance of boredom. You can almost hear the meeting rooms, the lectures, the critical reviews: if it makes you yawn, it must be art; if it makes you feel, it must be fluff.
There’s also a self-protective edge. Monroe understood that entertainment is feminized and therefore suspect, while gravitas is masculinized and therefore safe. The quote exposes respect as social theater: boredom becomes a costume for authority, and authority becomes a way to dismiss anyone who refuses to wear it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sarcastic |
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