You’d think that since I’ve been through this once before, watching my child discover sexism is alive and well wouldn’t bother me so much. But two nights later, I’m still bothered by my 8-year old’s indignation. And I shake my head that the stuff that bothered me in 1971, when I was 8, is still present.
Two nights ago, I was working on a writing assignment. My youngest was watching television, Nickelodeon, when she came running into my room.
“Mommy. WHY do they ALWAYS SAY that boys are better at sports than girls?” She was near shouting, and there was hurt in her voice.
Before I could answer her, she continued. “Why do they say that if you are a bad thrower, that you THROW LIKE A GIRL?” Now she was really mad. Her older sister, an 8th grader, plays varsity softball for the high school. The youngest has watched her sister play multiple sports, and watched this winter as her older sister’s all- girls soccer team played in their same age group boys’ division–and watched them go undefeated and become division champs. She has seen girl athletes kick boys’ butts–regularly.
She then hopped up on my bed. “Watch me, Mommy. Watch how I throw.” And then she proceeded to throw an imaginary softball in an overhand arc that looked like it would nail the runner out at first base.
She hopped down on the bed. “It just makes me so mad.”
These kinds of mothering moments are hard for me. I want to talk about insitutionalized sexism, and sexuality, and systems of oppression and patriarchy. But that’s not what an 8-year old wants to hear.
“Honey,” I said. “Some boys are afraid of girls. And it makes them feel better to be mean. That’s why they say mean things about girls.”
She nodded her head. “I know that,” she said, and bounded out of the room to practice her cartwheels in the living room.
What a great story Lorraine and it makes me remember my child rearing years all to well.
You might try telling her “girls are so great that boys sometimes feel threatened by them so they have to say mean things to make themselves feel better.” Same is true of some men, IMHO. Also boys do that sort of thing to show off to girls, they think.
I had a son as well and I taught him to respect and understand women, and his three sisters helped to reinforce that. He’s almost 25 now and I couldn’t hope for more in him. I almost envy the woman who will have him for a husband, wish I could have been so lucky.
what you said to her is good as well, btw.
Best of luck in the raising of your children, it’s a long journey and you sound like a great mom.
Left to themselves, males tend to have greater upper body strength, and females tend to have stronger legs, however there are female discus throwers and shotputters, and male dancers and skiiers.
Saying that a bad throw is “like a girl” is simple bigotry like saying someone dances “like a white person” or “crunches numbers like an Asian.”
Until recently, most girls did not learn to throw, multi-generational families that pull babies out of the crib and dance with them before they can take steps by themselves are less common in European cultures, and Science has told us that people whose first languages include at least one pictographic one do get a bonus leg up in math learning skills. I don’t think Science has decided why yet, though.
Stereotypes tend to paint learned (or not learned) behavior as genetic predisposition, which is stupid.
Thank you for reading this rant in its entirety. Reward yourself with something. Preferably chocolate.
And I wonder why it is that women do seem to be genetically predisposed towards chocolate and can speak of chocolate in almost reverential tones..at least I can and do.
But ask any woman who is responsible for the box being empty when she came home.
I’m a guy and I resent your claim that you have a special relationship with chocolate due to your gender. Maybe I’m like a male dancer or whatever, but I consume 3-4 bars of 85% chocolate solids Lindt per week. My wife prefers licorice, does that make her less of a woman?
I ain’t givin’ up chocoholism to the girls.
The other side of that coin is when you grow up as I did throwing as well as the boys and you are called things that others view as insults. . .What? are you some sort of a dyke? A lesbo? (In my case, I happened to be, but I’ve known just as many fine athletes that weren’t gay as were).
We seem to have and apply labels for everything and most times they are hurled as insults. Fortunately I am the un-insultable one, so I didn’t get overly hurt by such remarks. However, there was no mistaking they were meant to hurt. And plenty of little girls do get hurt by them, just as little boys who are called pansies, or pussies, wimps.
We need to put some kindness, tolerance and understanding in the water supply. These type of things don’t ever seem to change for some reason.
I agree, I was a skinny little runt playing little league and was richly rewarded by a coach who made it abundantly clear to the other members of my team, that this is a team sport and everyone can improve something to make the team better. He encouraged me and when others said hey your throw like a girl, that unfortunate lad would end up running laps around the ball fields. Now imagine 5 baseball diamonds inside a running track. lol My coach then would explain that not everyone was gifted with the ability to throw and it was indeed learned. Thanks to him I not only learned to throw and hit a baseball, I also learned to be tolerant of others, even though I have to work doubly hard to be civil to those right wing theocrats that want to take away my right of self determination. I learned that others who are more fortunate that myself were willing to share their good fortune and show me how to improve myself. I say not to bad for a 10 yr old boy who’s home life was like living in a psycho ward, yet who didn’t turn out so bad after all.
I always wondered about this stupid ‘leap of faith’ in some peoples bigoted little minds that somehow if you were a girl and good at sports you were a dyke…huh?
Then again I guess like most bigoted assumptions these are just really ignorant ideas people repeat and perpetrate ad nauseum.
Maybe we should start a National Non-Label Day where you have to relate to everyone you talk to as person period and not think of them as black/asian/arab/dyke/homo/Indian/white/hillbilly or whatever and see them as a human being for just one day.
Oh yeah, memory lane. First I was instructed to read Sisterhood is Powerful. Fair enough. But the comedy of the “battle of the sexes” was heading up the mountain to my brother’s place.
Mountain men. Puma’s & Gerber’s on the belts, stout walking sticks at the ready, backpacks full of food. Taking the narrow trail through the Sierra forest from 3000′ down to the clearwater creek 1000′ below. Dirt, dust, the occasional rattlesnake, awkward maneuvering up, across and finally down the steep trail.
It was hard work, a little sketchy at times, but our manly trio in our manly way forged ahead on the manly trail to the manly crystal-clear water-and-granite flat spot that was “The Camp”. The cameraderie! The bonding with nature! Setting up the camp! We be MEN!
And then I had to turn around and help the women with the crib (yes, a folding, wooden, full-size); the kids they’d packed on their backs; the bulk of the food supply; and all the sleeping gear. Bummer.
What was that Ginger Rogers line again?
I think it was something along the line of she did everything Fred did only in high heels, a dress and had to dance backwards half the time. Take that Fred.
It’s the strangest thing to find kids excluded based on their sex. The area I’m in is the same way in that it tends to isolate the girls from sports – but it also is isolating the boys from academics, probably because the girls as a whole are easier to manage in a classroom setting. We need to take a very close look at what our schools are doing because they are not very balanced at the moment and it certainly seems to go both ways. The teachers are often unwilling to to address the needs of the individual child.
The shame of it is that kids hear these negative stereotypes mostly from their parents. I can remember the pain, at 16, when my parents wouldn’t let me go to my junior prom with this really cute guy because, gasp!, he was Jewish.
It turns out he was gay. It turned out I’m gay/bi too. And I suffered knowing how my own parents would hate me if they knew, due to the attitudes I heard from their mouths as I grew up.
To this day they have not really acknowledged or apologized for that, even though they are somewhat more enlightened (years of Oprah watching? who knows).
Great post.
Heh.
There are two girls on my 7-year-old son’s baseball team. One of them is unenthusiastic but tries to have fun, and the other is really into it.
Both of them are better than most of the boys, and it doesn’t bother the boys one bit.
-AG
Isn’t this all question of empowerment?
kids will always expand to fit the space you give them. give them limited sterotypes and that’s what they’ll fit into.
empower them with knowledge, justice, achievement, fair play, passion and compassion – and they’ll usually expand to fit the space.
You’ll maybe have a lot of disagreements later, but that will mostly be due to the depowerment that you yourself have allowed as you compromise thru life.
Does anyone remember-Jodie Foster in the Bad News Bears?
I mean she gave ’em hell! I had a moment like that with my daughter, she had commented on this piece of art that my now husband had at his apartment- it had a topless female figure in it, kind of a fantasy art thing, and she was kind of upset-she said “you never see any fat girls on people’s walls”!
We took it down, it’s in the shed, eight years later she is completely okay with herself, and other moms try to “borrow” her to boost their daughters self esteem.
I’m of the generation that thought it wasn’t cool to do sports. Junior high school phys ed teachers must have had their punishment with our girls’ gym classes. One poor woman said that there was no such thing as a home run in our girls’ softball – it was hit and three errors.
Much later I discovered that jogging could be fun – such a sense of accomplishment – I had control over my body. I remember crying after being able to jog one mile; I had never thought I was capable of anything athletic. A 5K run had the same effect.
I think sports have much to offer girls and young women, not the least of which is self-confidence. As a girl, I never would have thought I would some day be saying this.
My 10 year old daughter who is just breath and britches can “throw” a man 3 times her size and weight.
Judo/Jujitsu… throws 🙂
We help with some of the women’s defense free community classes in the past. Women ALWAYS say “but what if the man is bigger than I am” – Sensei just has my daughter step up and if she can escape from any grab or choke – ANYONE can.
Girl power is EMPOWERING. Especially when the girl is little but is a dynamite “thrower”. 🙂