Throwing like a Girl

By: Iris Marion Young

Iris Marion Young was an American lecturer in Political Science at the University of Chicago.She was a feminist and a political theorist. She explored subjects such as feminist social theory and political theory. This essay was written academically.

The author explores the meaning both physical and mentally behind the popular phrase you are ‘Throwing like a girl’. She explores what implies being a girl and the cultural implications that are mentally prefixed to women. The author gives an inside into the mind of women. How women experience certain body changes and how they take people’s perspective in every activity they do.

The author believes that the difference in throwing between the sexes is not due to physical attributes, but to mental attributes and also about the way both sexes occupy space. Women tend to use less physical space than what is available to them. Women tend to think of space being more closed and limited while men tend to perceive space as open. Thus explaining why in interior design we design spaces exclusively for men different than spaces for women.

Picture retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/petrus01/7980518983

She encompasses in numerous studies that women are more field dependent than men. For example, a woman has a propensity to assume an object is coming towards them instead of coming to them. They have this conscious fear of getting hurt. She states that women are uncertain of her body’s capacities and how her emotions are not entirely under their control. I can relate to this example when I was playing Volleyball. I was always so fearful that the ball will hit me that I couldn’t overcome that feeling. Therefore feeling I was not good.

She also states that the situation of women varies depending on a particular social framing and a specific epoch. She relays on Beauvoir argument that woman are denied subjectivity, autonomy, and creativity. These are necessities for a human being and that these are assessed by man. Although he also states that women are subjectively and that women that live apatriarchal society must, therefore, live in contraction. This argument brought me back to my childhood in my third world country and how my parents didn’t allow me to go outside passed hours, but they let my brother even though I was older than him. I would definitely agree with the author when she says that women’s situation varies depending on the social framing.

In my opinion as a woman, I believe women can be what she sets in mind and can overcome any pre-imposed idea. They are women who are fragile and hate carrying weight, but there are also women who are cross fitters and carry hundreds of pounds. I disagree with the author about generalising women and trying to put them in one category. I believe all of these ideas are reimposed by society but depending on the women’s personality and maturity. They can be overcome.

Picture retrieved from https://fitbodybuzz.com/crossfit-girls/

In conclusion, The author exposes that her idea is not finished and that further research needed to be done. I believed that in the text the author is trying to understand how the female mindworks in a social context.

Questions:

• Do you think designing spaces vary depending on the sex?

• To what degree can the author generalised women, being women all different individuals?