In this essay, I will give an overview of Iris Marion Young’s Throwing Like a Girl and by using the examples provided by Young, set out the main argument of her essay. Then I will explain the application of Young’s ideas with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of embodiment followed by explaining the difference between her ideas and Simone de Beauvoir’s rejection of a “feminine essence.” Lastly, I will give reasons in favor of Young’s position. Young argues that that “throwing like a girl” has no relation to a “feminine essence” but is rather due to women’s situation of being conditioned by their actions in a patriarchal and sexist society. Young states that there is a typical style of doing something like a girl in which the whole body is not put …show more content…
Although contemporary society is not as patriarchal as it was in the past, that male dominance still exists today. Young’s description of a self-imposed “I cannot” can be supported with common real life examples today. The “I cannot” comes from a woman’s insecurities, fear of getting hurt, and underestimating their bodily capacities. In a sexist society, these factors of the self-imposed “I cannot” would lead to …show more content…
Some typical sexist remarks include throwing like a girl, saying that a certain sport isn’t for women, or in general that women can’t do something that men can do. “Throwing like a girl” is not because women being inferior to men in terms of athleticism but because they are conditioned to move a certain way in a patriarchal society. This brings back the restriction of movement due to the contradiction women face in that society. Although women are of human existence, they are still limited in subjectivity and transcendence by existing in a patriarchal
In How to Triumph Like a Girl by Ada Limón, the speaker discusses her appreciation for female horses, but also conveys an overall message that can be applied to the female form in general. While describing her love for the “lady horses”, her words create these somewhat generalized themes that continue to be further illustrated throughout the poem. Such as the concept that femininity is not weak, gender does not equal worth, and that triumph does not actually have anything to do with being a girl, or otherwise.
Contemporary western women frequently limit their physical movement in everyday life compared to men. For instance, they sit with their legs together, take shorter steps, shield their body with their hands and arms and put less effort into definitive tasks (Young 139:2006). Young argues that women behave in this way because the patriarchal environment in which they live teaches girls that they are “physically handicapped in society” (152:2006). This, again, has striking parallels to Dworkin’s work on foot binding. The female body is constructed in such a way that means it is constantly objectified and “gazed upon” as if it were a “shape of flesh rather than a living manifestation of action and intent” (Young 154:2006). This results firstly in women being viewed as weaker, second-class citizens in comparison to men, resulting in inequalities that can be seen in many areas of life. However, most significantly it means that women constantly fail to achieve their full potential. They learn to “actively hamper their own movements” (Young 153:2006), a hugely significant and damaging inequality that results from a rigid and out-dated social
She is responsible for training her daughter to gain abilities to discover her roles herself through knowledge, and also responsible to provide her daughter with inner and social safety. In addition, in the society, it is necessary for a mother to be fully aware of the significance of her daughter’s adolescent stage; she has to direct her daughter’s potentials by useful activities while she maintains a healthy, relationship with her daughter. Social norms and traditional conduct if care isn’t taken might affect a child. One should be able to express one’s self, by not been judge by the society. Whether a one acts a certain way the society doesn’t except one to act, one should have a freedom to express his or her gender roles in the way one wants it to
Realistically, when someone is more powerful, they have the ability to set the rules. Men have historically held power in society, which means that women did not have as much stance or freedoms as men have had in the past. For example, Canadian women did not have the right to vote until the year 1916. This factor has continued to trail into the present day, creating the ‘weak’ image towards women, overall forcing and pushing men to become the opposite of this factor. Thus, cultural ideals of masculinity rely on the ideas of femininity through patriarchy and gender binaries. The emphasis on characteristics of men are being exaggerated, as society is pressuring men with unattainable standards of masculinity such as being tough, muscular and buff. Men continue to conform to these characteristics, in the fear of being oppressed through exclusion, which only strengthens society’s standards even more. This leads to more societal pressures on men, thus leading men to experience more societal pressures in the fear of feeling excluded. These “systems of inclusion and exclusion are divisions or barriers that prevent people from joining and belonging.” (50). For example, if a man wears nail polish, they may be oppressed and excluded through facing ridicule and bullying, because wearing nail polish is considered “girly”, therefore this boy is rebelling against society’s socially
Girls are told to stay indoors and play with their dolls or bake, while boys are encouraged to go outdoors, get dirty, and be adventurous. Wade and Ferree also state “sports are squarely on the masculine side of the gender binary” (Wade and Ferree, 174). Hence, we are brought up with the understanding that playing and talking about sports is a boy’s thing, which further promotes the notion that sports are a very masculine thing. Furthermore, as playing sports is competitive and is a way to show excellence, young boys are considered as “real boys” and “real men” later on. However, when boys do not talk about or play sports, they are considered feminine or “not real men.” The same rule applies for young girls. If young girls are too into sports, they are considered to be “too masculine.” This is true for me too. When I was younger, I was told to not play too much outdoors and to behave “like a girl.” The stigma that only boys should be allowed to play sports and it is not a feminine thing needs to be erased for us to welcome a more gender-equal
We mistrust our bodies and have this constant urge to question whether we are capable of achieving certain tasks. “Typically, the feminine body underuses its real capacity, both as the potentiality of its physical size and strength and as the real skills and coordination that are available to it” (148). We seem to take into practice a certain “ambiguous transcendence”, which simply means that we lack bodily trust. Young uses the example of when men and women hike. A man usually speeds through the trail, not worrying about the many dangers that can come if he steps on the wrong rock or slips on a tree branch. A woman, in contrast, would analyze every aspect of the trail and worrying about whether she is capable of completing the run or not. She displays “discontinuous unity”, in which all this divided attention that is being given to that dangers of the trail are causing her to be taken out of the flow. “Our attention is often divided between the aim to be realized in motion and the body that must accomplish it, while at the same time saving itself from harm” (). When it comes to “inhibited intentionality”, women seem to underestimate their abilities and convince themselves that they are not capable of doing a certain task. There’s this perception that a women “simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an ‘I can’ and withholds its full bodily to that end in a self-imposed ‘I cannot’.”
Within todays sporting community, certain aspects of sport and its practices promote and construct ideas that sport in general is a male dominated. Sports media often provides an unequal representation of genders. Women athletes are regularly perceived as mediocre in comparison to their male equivalents (Lenskyj, 1998). Achievement in sport is generally established through displays of strength, speed and endurance, men usually set the standards in these areas, consequently woman rarely reach the level set by top male athletes. Due to this, the media significantly shows bias towards male sports while we are ill-informed about the achievements in the female sporting community. On the occasion that a female athlete does make some form of an appearance in the media, images and videos used will usually portray the female in sexually objectified ways (Daniels & Wartena, 2011). This depiction of female athletes can cause males to take focus solely on the sexual assets of the athlete in preference to to their sporting abilities (Daniels & Wartena, 2011). Sexualisation of sportswoman in the media is a prevalent issue in today’s society, it can cause physical, social and mental problems among women of all ages (Lenskyj, 1998).
Krane, V. (2001). We can be athletic and feminine, but do we want to? Challenging hegemonic femininity in women's sport. Quest, 53,115-133.
Sports, in general, are a male dominated activity; every “real” male is suppose to be interested and/or involved in sports in the American society. However, it is not expected of a female to be interested in sports and there is less pressure on them to participate in physically enduring activities. These roles reflect the traditional gender roles imposed on our society that men are supposed to be stronger and dominant and females are expected to be submissive. As Michael Kimmel further analyzes these gender roles by relating that, “feminism also observes that men, as a group, are in power. Thus with the same symmetry, feminism has tended to assume that individually men must feel powerful” (106).
31). Following Young’s theory, society has already decided that women are a ‘weaker sex’ due to the belief that females respond to situations by limiting their physical engagement because they are not capable to concentrate their efforts on physical activities as compared to men (Young 1990, p. 33). Young (1990, p. 33) states that generally cis-women fail to engage with their body’s potential for an efficient performance as they are in a mindset where they do not have trust in their bodies to accomplish the same things as men. Moreover, trans-women are also forced by the pressure of society leading them to feel self-conscious of their movement and stiffen against performance as they are unsure on how to behave and act (Hines 2007, p. 55). This is due to their own experience as it can be confusing for a trans-woman to change from the hard-wired gender behaviours of their birth sex to their gender identity and therefore, most are limited to the comportment of gender stereotypes. This is the result of expression that transgender people choose to act on to better reflect their gender identities (Griffin 2012, p. 7). Similarly, this causes wasted motion and repression of strength by both cis-female and trans-female resulting from hesitancy that comes conforming to gender ideals that women are submissive and soft. Thus, this shows that the female body is culturally and socially denied to have their own identity, subjectivity and
The text Mariah Burton Nelson, “I Won, I’m Sorry” is centered on the culture of women cannot or should not masculine men. The gender is going to affect the other people feeling. Even though, women who are able to make it on finally step on things. All the people will assume women are loser. Nelson gives us a few examples from the book. Like many women do not want to be taller than their boyfriend or husband. That’s seems to be what society expects from couples, for the man to be taller the woman. Nelson also mentions how sports like cheerleading, volleyball and figure skating are all considered feminine sports, while men dominate the physically demanding sports like football and wrestling. Of course, sports are not the only place where women
Gender in sports has been a controversial issue ever since sports were invented. In the early years, sports were played only by the men, and the women were to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was another area of life exemplifying the sexism of people in which women were not allowed to do something that men could. However, over the last century in particular, things have begun to change.
In Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power by Sandra Bartky, the writer examines the disciplinary practices which produces a body that gesture and appearance is feminine. Bartky challenges the social construction of femininity by revealing how feminine serves the interest of domination. She talks about apparatus of discipline, the disciplinarians that discipline. According to her, it is a system of micro power that is essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical. Taking into consideration one of the concepts of her analysis, feminine bodily discipline is something imposed on subjects and at the same time something that can be sought voluntarily. I will base my analysis on these dual characters and I will demonstrate that the production of femininity is more like something imposed
Rather than using only females, the director of the advertisement uses a small boy and a post-pubescent male to portray the message of the phrase being universally understood. The small boy, when asked to run like a girl, runs sloppily with his hands waving frantically next to him. His demonstration of this insult displays that his understanding of “like a girl” encompasses not being able to complete a task at maximum potential. The post-pubescent male, when asked to perform the same task, runs very slowly while being conscious of his hair being messed up. His response to this was similar to the little boy’s in that he didn’t complete the task how a normal person would run. In this aspect, both of the males treated this phrase the same regardless of the age; as an insult to the female gender. This insult that is shaped by society demonstrates that the female is the weaker gender therefore portraying sexism in that women are the ones who are able not to do things
middle of paper ... ... women know and think that if they don’t act or behave to their expectations they will. looked down upon and possibly neglected by their family and society. To avoid losing friends and family, most male and female, construct their own role in their life.