"The girls were going to paint their nails and talk about their feelings, and the boys were going to play football."
My sister said this recently when we were discussing gender and the church. Apparently her thoughts on the subject were "and they wonder why I don't go to youth group."
I mean, clearly it's wrong because why do you assume all girls want to be boring and paint their nails?
Oh, actually. I'll take this opportunity to mention I do like painting my nails. I think they look really cool. But if anyone is going to accuse me of liking it "because" I'm a girl, well ... I kinda don't want to paint my nails any more.
This is actually a far trickier question than I originally thought. What if a lot of girls are more feminine (and less easily offended...) than me? What if you were given the duty of planning an activity for the girls in the youth group, and you asked them what they wanted to do, and the majority said they wanted to do something stereotypically feminine, because THAT'S WHAT THEY ACTUALLY WANT TO DO.
I don't want to be so angry about sexism and assumptions that I forget that there are generalizations you can make about the differences between boys and girls, and those are true statements. I'm actually imagining a graph with 2 bell curves on it:
See, for some attributes you measure, the graph will look like that- a statistically significant difference between the averages for men and women. But look at the overlap in the tails of the distributions.
(And we could speculate about the reasons for the difference- is it because men and women are genetically different? Is it because of what society says men and women are supposed to be like? It doesn't matter the reason- the fact is that a lot of girls genuinely do like "girl things" and a lot of boys genuinely do like "boy things.")
But I really do wonder how much of it is that they actually like those things and how much is that everyone assumes they like those things. Haha, I would love some real statistics on some of this stuff. So I don't have to draw a bell curve in Paint like I did up there.
I present to you a hypothetical scenario: Suppose you had 4 kids- 2 boys and 2 girls. And you tell them they can do some extracurricular activities. So each kid thinks about it and decides which one they want to do. And both of the girls, completely independently and of their own free will, decided to take dance class. And both of the boys, completely independently and of their own free will, decided to play soccer.
And then suppose somebody described the situation as "The girls take dance and the boys play sports." Is that an accurate description? I say no. Because that makes it sound like "The girls take dance because they're girls. You know how cute and one-dimensional girls are."
But Perfect Number, how can you have a problem with "The girls take dance and the boys play sports"? It is a completely correct statement about those 4 hypothetical children. How can you say it's not okay to say that?
I summarize it this way: I have a problem with statements about how boys and girls are different, and with treating boys and girls differently, when I feel limited by it. When people take the true statement that "boys and girls tend to be different in this particular characteristic" and from that conclude that we should make ALL the girls do this certain thing, and ALL the boys do that certain thing, and this is how boys and girls are SUPPOSED TO BE.
When other people notice that I'm doing something that doesn't match a feminine stereotype (like writing an equation to explain my feelings about dating- really though, how do people understand their feelings without a decent amount of algebra?), I feel good about that, because it means I'm independent and I make my own choices. When people notice I'm doing something that IS "feminine", I don't like it, because although I chose to do that thing because I personally do actually like it, I feel like other people see it as "ah well obviously she likes cute kittens- all girls do- girls are all the same."
Women should go ahead and be as feminine as they want or as non-feminine as they want.
Let's not take generalizations about what boys/girls like and use them to tell boys/girls what they're supposed to like. But in a practical way, how does this work? What if you ARE planning an activity for the girls in the youth group?
I don't know. That's tricky. Does it actually make practical sense to treat everyone exactly the same?
All right, what does everyone else think? Do other women feel the same way, or is this because I'm a nerd girl and for a long time I've felt the tension between my nerd cred and my femininity? (Because if no one else feels the same way, maybe I'm just too sensitive?)
Do any men want to share if there's some sort of similar thing with stereotypes about men? I'd expect it would play out differently- seems like it's way more socially acceptable for girls to be "not feminine" than for boys to be "not manly." Tell me all about it.
By the way, this week I am participating in Rachel Held Evans's "Week of
Mutuality"- blogging about equality of women in the church. http://rachelheldevans.com/announcing-week-of-mutuality
Also, here is one of her posts which relates to what I've written here.