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Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.
Angela Carter
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote personifies cities, attributing gender characteristics to them, which reflects cultural perceptions.

Angela Carter's quote creatively assigns gender identities to cities, suggesting that each city embodies specific traits typically associated with masculinity or femininity. London is portrayed as masculine, Paris as feminine, and New York as a balanced amalgamation, challenging conventional gender binaries and promoting a more nuanced understanding of identity and urban life.

Themes

CitiesGenderIdentityCultureUrban LifePersonification

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on urban culture, I quoted, 'Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual' to illustrate the different vibes of major cities.

More from Angela Carter

She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver.
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For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
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Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
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To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
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I haven't changed much, over the years. I use less adjectives, now, and have a kinder heart, perhaps.
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