Thursday, November 15, 2007

I throw like a girl

I do not like to admit certain gender differences. I hate saying that someone "throws like a girl", but last night at church I was watching the girls throw the football and they were all throwing like girls. I also hate to admit that I am a girl that throws like a girl. It's terrible to assign typical gender abilities to anyone let alone myself, especially when I generally have "typical" female weaknesses without having too many "typical" female strengths (like cooking a delicious supper or keeping a neat house or being a great flirt). I realized watching those girls that I must look like a girl when I throw a ball too. For some reason, I had never thought about the way I look when I throw a ball. I hope I can still throw a ball without feeling too self-conscious and embrace throwing like a girl.

I started thinking about writing and whether or not there is such a thing as writing like a girl. I thought of certain works by women, especially feminist writers, and how most of their works could only have been written by a woman. There are also works by men that could not have been written by a woman. This conclusion is strange to me because I want to believe that genders can write the same things, but our experience differs. I did finally think of a few people whose work seems to be non-gender informed, but how can I be sure? I wish there were a way to read without knowing the author so that I could really examine the issue without prejudice. It sounds like a grad school project.

I'm pretty sure that I mostly write like a girl, but I do love to create gender ambiguities.

9 comments:

Shauna said...

And just for fun, there's this. I say just for fun because I pulled two samples from my blogs and the Gender Genie predicted that I was male for one and female for the other.

Anonymous said...

I could play with that link all day long. My writing is predicted a girl when I'm blogging and predicted a boy when I'm doing legal writing. The legal writing scores are heavily male.

malh said...

I think it is a coming of age thing when you are able to admit that you throw, think, act like a girl. Especially when you don't really enjoy some of those feminine things like flirting or cleaning the house.

Anonymous said...
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linda jean said...

I went ahead and deleted that last one... just because. MALH-- I'm not sure how to take the maturity comment. I don't really agree exactly because I think that there are dangers in accepting "stereotypes" about yourself. Some things about all of us fit into "stereotypes", but no one is a stereotype. I've known since I was in Jr high that I throw like a girl, I've just never thought about how I must look like a girl when I throw.

jmlo said...

"I feel pretty... oh so pretty... I feel pretty and witty and gay (meaning happy)..." A song I feel very happy to sing because God made me a girl and he loves me very much. Could a boy sing it and enjoy it? Would a boy look like a girl if he sang it?

Anonymous said...

jmlo- no doubt. how about another song? i've always thought "Rose Garden" sounds more like something a man would say yet a woman made the song famous...the song you talk about is very typical female, but can't a man feel pretty? :) (or since pretty has such feminine conotations "handsome"). Maybe expressing the ups and downs of feelings is more female. "Today I feel pretty, tomorrow I will feel fat. Yesterday I felt mediocre." Whereas a man is constant, "I'm a relatively attractive guy".

mllr said...

You are so much more interesting than the typical girl.

Unknown said...

This is a dumb post - Jim
Predictably Male