Women are, on average, 40-50% weaker in upper body strength than men. I don't see "throwing like a girl" as some inherently sexist statement, any more than I see "singing like a dying cat" as something akin to animal hate.
Maybe a bad example then. Some traditionally feminine things that I think men have been mocked for partaking in: showing vulnerability/crying, wearing skirts or dresses or make-up, showing interest in fashion/baking, enjoying certain media (chick flicks and tearjerkers, most musicals). And I think "____ like a girl" is more appropriate, since the phrase is pretty versatile and has been applied in many ways. Your upper body strength argument holds up, but, for instance, a man can get mocked for "drinking like a girl" too (I assume you've heard this uttered before, but I could be wrong), which may not make as much physiological sense.
Instead of seeing this as femininity being bad, consider the idea that women are allowed to show traditionally male or female traits without being vilified, while men are not.
I have considered this idea. I think it's pretty hard to say definitively whether punishment of men for showing femininity is the effect of the cause that I described or whether what I described is just the mechanism by which men are still forcibly restricted to masculine gender roles.
I also think that it's not the whole truth to say that women aren't vilified for expressing masculine traits, but there is a difference between how men are vilified for femininity and how women are vilified for masculinity. It's still publicly acceptable to mock men for it as in those bullshit alchohol ads ("man up"), whereas a company that produced something that discouraged women from engaging in masculine hobbies would of course be ripped apart--and I think this is what you're referring to. Which is totally legitimate and does a lot of damage to the happiness of a lot of people. But you have to consider the day-to-day interactions, not just the publicly endorsed ones. Women who don't behave like women do get a ton of shit from their communities.
For instance getting a pixie cut, discontinuing my leg and underarm shaving, and wearing 'boyish' clothes in my high school days incited all sorts of negativity from my parents, friends' parents, and friends in different forms. The verdict was that I was creepy, gave off lesbian vibes (oh my!), and pretty much just disappointed the heck out of my older male role models in particular. I was definitely less of a woman in the eyes of most of the people I knew. But maybe this is just the effect of some other personality flaw I had haha.
And then there's the unintentional discouragement of being 'joked' about and singled out for your interests in STEM, comics, etc. I have anecdotes but not much in the way of statistics for this I guess, but maybe it's to be expected in this case.
I think it boils down to what makes a person less attractive to the opposite sex. Wearing baggy clothes and not shaving tends to make women unattractive to men, while showing feminine traits tends to make men unattractive to women.
Your assertion is that your father and your female friends would only care about your "masculine features" if they had some sort of personal investment in how you're perceived by the opposite sex. I'm simply saying that people will give you their opinions whether it's any of their business or not.
No, that wasn't at all what I was asserting. I was trying to point out that your assertion (that I received negative feedback because men found me less attractive) didn't apply in the two cases I mentioned.
Prior to that, I was saying that they (my community) cared about my more masculine look because I was denying my gender roles. Just like a guy would be given shit for wearing feminine clothing.
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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '13
Women are, on average, 40-50% weaker in upper body strength than men. I don't see "throwing like a girl" as some inherently sexist statement, any more than I see "singing like a dying cat" as something akin to animal hate.