h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know horses that can kick, not seen one do a punch recently...

Re the 'yikesed' post liking to an Australian news item posted on You Tube about the thoroughly distasteful past-time of throwing people of restricted growth.

The woman raising objection in the video, appears to be a person of restricted growth. However, the reporter manages to interview her in such a way that she has to look up to him significantly. It may have been more appropriate, for her to have been interviewed sitting down. That way, it would have looked more like a discussion between equals and she would have been seen to have looked the reporter virtually straight in the eye. Using a reasonably close-cropped shot, she would have been afforded the dignity that she was complaining that the 'dwarf throwing' didn't, particularly if they didn't show a full length shot exposing the possibility that her feet didn't reach the ground when sitting.

PP

Surely if you are a girl then however you throw is 'like a girl', and if you are a boy, then however you through is 'like a boy'.

Yes your statement is technically and logically correct.

However, I happen to be a girl who throws like a boy.

Surely the fact that you are a girl who throws like a boy means that the statement that girls throw in a certain way is incorrect?

When I use the statement, 'I throw like a boy', I'm using it as a metaphor, or more correctly a simile.

It appeared to me that you were using the phrase in a literalist way.

Indeed.

I was challenging the use of a metaphor that can reinforce the narrow gender stereotypes that pervade society and reinforce patriarchy and stuff.

By re-enforcing the gender sterotypes then we pathologise those that don't conform to them.

Shall I do some post modern queer theory next? Or shall I get back to talking about the 'top nurses to shag' with my colleagues.



One of my friends has managed to keep gender sterotypes from her son, now 8 she works full time and her husband was staying at home, then was part time. He's got long hair so people often assume he's a girl, but he also likes football and fighting, but no one has told him that baking bread, knitting and crochet are for girls he really likes them too. He once went to a school fancy dress day as Pippi Longstocking.
Some people have assumed that she should take him to the doctor and see if he is 'gender confused'. But he knows he is a boy, he just likes knitting and crochet.

But what does he throw like?

PP

>I was challenging the use of a metaphor that can reinforce the narrow gender stereotypes that pervade society and reinforce patriarchy and stuff.<

And I was being tongue in cheek humorous in the context of the general cultural mileu of h2g2.

What you are talking about is also interesting.

>One of my friends has managed to keep gender sterotypes from her son,<

That sounds truly miraculous considering all the many complex and insidious ways these things impinge.

Yes I had a lot of this confusion as a child. It happened as a matter of course. I much preferred playing with boys, and was into guns, bows and arrows, playing with toy soldiers and a million other things associated with boys. I never had any interest in dolls..but I had a great love of animals.

It's hard to work out how these things really come about, and how much is genetic..and how much environmental (samo samo of course). I had an awful relationship with my mother and took a dislike to her girly interests..but adored my dad..he was a real man


Taking someone to a doctor about just this seems pretty strange to me.

I was laughing at what PP said!

"real man"

That's a whole different !

Oh, yes, the problem. Amazing what a difference a good sports bra makes in most sports!

I throw like a juggler myself. Not so much speed and power, but with good accuracy, and several balls at once.

***

As for gender stereotypes, I once found myself holding a friend's rather glitzy handbag and felt silly because everyone would be staring at me. Then I remembered I was female and they'd just assume that hideous thing belonged to me, which was worse.

>>Surely if you are a girl then however you throw is 'like a girl', and if you are a boy, then however you through is 'like a boy'.

What if I'm both?

What if I'm neither?

PP

This thread is all about whether people conform to the stereotypes. We are all aware of the paradox in contraventions of a stereotype, if you take it as absolute truth.

oh gad theres allways one

>This thread is all about whether people conform to the stereotypes<

Isit?

Is this really about conformiong to stereotypes? If it is, then I will happily go against the grain- in that I personally throw like a male, not a female. However, my friends did not meet the required
standard - in that the distance they threw was less than me.

I can personally throw more tha 90 ms, however, this is totally redundant when the pil3t