Do girls, as a gender, throw worse than boys?
I was watching this video of Eva Longoria on the Ellen show, trying to dunk Tony Parker. That timed link skips to the throwing, and the first thought in my head was "they throw like girls". I haven't spent much time thinking about the mechanics of a throw, but here are some things that are characteristic of a "girl throw" in my mind:
- Forearm too vertical
- Arm not extended enough, the elbow travels the same distance as the ball, and hence leverage of the forearm is wasted. In a "boy throw", the elbow leads and "flicks" the forearm.
- No rotation from the hips, often steps forward with same foot as throwing arm.
- A "girl throw" follow-through is cut short and cuts straight across the body and finishes at around shoulder height, while a "boy throw" follow-through is diagonally across the body and finishes near the hips
- "Girl throw" includes releasing too early, leading to a high ball that flicks off the fingers, like Obama's throw from a link below.
For those that believe they don't have a "girl throw" and hence don't know what a "girl throw" looks like, try throwing it with your non-dominant hand. The timing of the throw is just terrible and it'll go like 1/4 of the distance of your dominant hand. The girl throw and boy throw (sorry I just cbf with quotes you know what I mean. If I miss any more, put your hands in the air like you just don't care) is not about strength it's about technique. The timing of the throw is more important than how far it goes, in determining a boy throw from a girl's.
A fun, biased, poorly sourced infographic for all. From Washington Post
I googled "throw like a girl" and came up with this Washington Post article, which I acknowledge isn't the best source, but it talks about some study that may or may not have been done. It is the source of the above infographic. While I admit I have potentially unreliable sources, I didn't find any studies that showed that girls and boys throw in the same way, and I'll be glad if someone can Google any sort of information that leans either way.
This one talks about Obama's girly opening pitch, and breaks down what it means to "throw like a girl".
Whatever the fuck Jezebel is, here's an article that sounds terribly biased, that kinda backs up the gender gap but in a way that's slightly offputting to read ("and, to be brutally honest, even the bad-at-throwing boys are probably better than the very strongest girls.") By the way, a post will be coming up on those crappy phrases that feign objectivity, such as "to be brutally honest" in this case. It's only more confusing when you read the author's name...
Here are some that try to equalise the playing field (ho-ho), by demonstrating how a man's non-dominant hand throw is a "girly throw", while PopSci gives us a case study of a female QB. I guess I agree but they don't address my question of - do girls, as a gender, throw worse than boys?
This, however, doesn't justify the validity of the claim that girls have a "girly throw". The label has to be shown to be an actual characteristic of girls, and not just some shitty prefix to make the poor thrower feel emasculated. I am obviously not asserting that no girls can throw, but I am quite sure that >50% have a "girly throw". On the flipside, there has to be a significant underrepresentation of men who throw with that particular form, say <20% . I don't think that these are impossible figures, and wouldn't be surprised if the ratios were even more skewed. I'm happy to debate what you think these numbers are, though, if you feel the need to. The Washington Post link posted above suggests an intrinsic difference between males and females, and it's not just environment (e.g. boys play more ball games than girls), that leads to the differences in throwing form. However, I don't know where they found Australian Aboriginals who still hunt for food?!?!
What I've found doesn't justify the attachment of the word "girl" to describe this particular style of throwing.
It just justifies that what we are now calling a "girl throw" is indeed inefficient and is not the technique you want to use to maximise your strength. Curtly, it is the wrong way. I'm just pondering whether it is valid to pin the label of "girl throw" on this incorrect throwing technique. Because, do females, on average, throw worse than males?
9 comments:
Looks like a virus, I know, but relevant
http://libgen.info/view.php?id=390537
Not really!
Out of that whole pdf, only one chapter was relevant, as far as chapter titles go.
Then, it looks at some psychologist's apparently brief nod to the difference between 5yo boy's and girl's throwing motions.
Then she talks about how he doesn't address why, and TIL that Amazon women chopped off their right breasts.
Because of the lack of actual relevant data and more of a complaining that we associate the "wrong" style of throwing with the "girl" style of throwing, how it makes women feel inadequate, blames it on the restrictive nature of clothes and expected behaviour, etc so I skimmed most of it.
If you want to make the relevance more clear, please give me a page reference or even better, a copy paste of which part you think adds to the discussion.
Yes, I couldn't find that chapter as a separate .pdf so I just linked to the entire book.
Marion Young quotes the psychologist to set up the rest of her essay, which is investigating the nature of female body experience in dialogue with thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. From Section 1 (Page 32-35), which is quite lucid and accessible, she eventually concludes that generally ""We [women] often experience our bodies as a fragile encumbrance, rather than the medium for the enactment of our aims. We feel as though we must have our attention directed upon our bodies to make sure they are doing what we wish them to do, rather than paying attention to what we want to do through our bodies.
All the above factors operate to produce in many women a greater or lesser feeling of incapacity, frustration, and self-consciousness. We have more of a tendency than men do to greatly underestimate our bodily capacity."
Then she gets into some complicated territory involving transcendence and immanence and existentialism, then reflects on spatiality, and points out negative aspects of female body experience. Her thought gets really technical here and complex, so I won't summarize it, it's not that difficult to read and in any case it's not necessary for the next part.
In section IV she gets into the socialization of patriarchy, and how this produces the problematic female relations to embodiment. So for example, so she looks at gender segregated educational activities, but she goes deeper and locates the source of the negative aspects of "feminine bodily existence" in the whole "woman-as-object" body of theory. Wall-of-text-quote because worth it.
"The source of this is that patriarchal society defines woman as object, as a mere body, and that in sexist society women are in fact frequently regarded by others as objects and mere bodies. An essential part of the situation of being a woman is that of living the ever-present possibility that one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape and flesh that presents itself as the potential object of another subject’s intentions and manipulations, rather than as a living manifestation of action and intention. The source of this objectified bodily existence is in the attitude of others regarding her, but the woman herself often actively takes up her body as a mere thing. She gazes at it in the mirror, worries about how it looks to others, prunes it, shapes it, molds and decorates it.
This objectified bodily existence accounts for the self-consciousness of the feminine relation to her body and resulting distance she takes from her body. As human, she is a transcendence and subjectivity and cannot live herself as mere bodily object. Thus, to the degree that she does live herself as mere body, she cannot be in unity with herself but must take a distance from and exist in discontinuity with her body. The objectifying regard that “keeps her in her place” can also account for the spatial modality of being positioned and for why women frequently tend not to move openly, keeping their limbs closed around themselves. To open her body in free, active, open extension and bold outward-directedness is for a woman to invite objectification."
There's more and I've thrown out a lot of her essay, but that's I think the essentials.
But that doesn't answer the question:
Does a girl indeed "throw like a girl", and do boys not "throw like a girl"?
And about this "society influences the women to be passive and not free in their motion", how early in their development does this take full impact? Even as young as five? What if we observed other cultures, or is it a universal paradigm that women are passive creatures that cannot move as they wish?
Can we expect girls who have no inhibitions to go grinding randomly in clubs, to dress as skankily as possible, and otherwise do not possess said reservations against objectification, to have a really good throw because they don't mind moving their body in a way that will attract wolf-whistles from the oversexed male gender?
It does. "Yes because clumsiness of female bodily experience under patriarchy" would be my attempt at summing up the answer provided.
Regarding age, probably yes, starting quite early. She talks about age on page 43 and cites other texts. Quote:
"There is a specific positive style of feminine body comportment and movement, which is learned as the girl comes to understand that she is a girl. The young girl acquires many subtle habits of feminine body comportment—walking like a girl, tilting her head like a girl, standing and sitting like a girl, gesturing like a girl, and so on. The girl learns actively to hamper her movements. She is told that she must be careful not to get hurt, not to get dirty, not to tear her clothes, that the things she desires to do are dangerous for her. Thus she develops a bodily timidity that increases with age. In assuming herself to be a girl, she takes herself to be fragile. Studies have found that young children of both sexes categorically assert that girls are more likely to get hurt than boys are, and that girls ought to remain close to home, while boys can roam and explore. The more a girl assumes her status as feminine, the more she takes herself to be fragile and immobile and the more she actively enacts her own body inhibition. When I was about thirteen, I spent hours practicing a “feminine” walk, which was stiff and closed, and rotated from side to side."
About other cultures, well, again I really wish you'd just read the .pdf properly and not rely on my rough synopses. From pages 30-31 (though it's also dealt with on page 29):
"Before entering the analysis, I should clarify what I mean here by 'feminine' existence. In accordance with Beauvoir’s understanding, I take “femininity” to designate not a mysterious quality or essence that all women have by virtue of their being biologically female. It is, rather, a set of structures and conditions that delimit the typical situation of being a woman in a particular society, as well as the typical way in which this situation is lived by the women themselves. Defined as such, it is not necessary that any women be 'feminine' — that is, it is not necessary that there be distinctive structures and behavior typical of the situation of women.7This understanding of 'feminine' existence makes it possible to say that some women escape or transcend the typical situation and definition of women in various degrees and respects. I mention this primarily to indicate that the account offered here of the modalities of feminine bodily existence is not to be falsified by referring to some individual women to whom aspects of the account do not apply, or even to some individual men to whom they do."
I don't think I understand what you're saying in your last paragraph, but are you suggesting that a fear of being objectified is the reason? I don't think that's a particular good reading of Marion Young; I think she's arguing because the feminine is already objectified, and this presents an inherent difficulty in the then self-conscious relationship between a woman and her body. It's the subject/object distinction so beloved of continental philosophy.
Okay all I was really looking for is "Yes, females do throw worse than males. Hence a 'girl throw' does exist."
Although I don't think I've made myself clear, in that I wanted to see statistical correlation, and not a writing explaining the female psyche/physiology.
I'm not really interested in reasons, because people biased the other way may say "women are weaker", "men are the traditional hunters" and other such junk.
As far as I'm concerned, if a "girl throw" does exist, any attempt to explain it is invariably conjecture, as there is no real structural difference between males and females that will cause the difference in throwing styles.
Fair enough, but that seems so unsatisfactory leaving it as a kind of "just is". I would take issue with your rhetoric of bias because you're ideologically presupposing an neutrality, but I doubt that would be a fruitful conversation, so I'll refrain.
I find it perfectly satisfactory, seeing as how the existence of a difference (which the essay you linked doesn't actually *prove*) validates the label of "girl throw", and it was not mindlessly attached as a label to inflict shame on those that cannot throw. As I said before, any attempt to explain it will be a reason but not THE reason.
Secondly, just because I point out inherent biases does not automatically imply that I am free from bias. Males will never have the true female experience, and on the flipside, females will never have the true male experience. Hence, obviously everyone will be biased towards their own experiences, those that they've heard of, and/or those that they choose to read.
I would point out how immature the last comment makes you sound, but I'll refrain.
1. Yes, because I thought it was more interesting than merely establishing something, but focussing on the reasons for the "girl throw," and done by someone who both seemed competent and erudite enough to trust. It does also seem you're shrugging too early for aporia.
I wasn't not talking about privilege exactly, but more about contemporary presuppositions regarding logic and discourse. Things like Cartestian autononomy, Kantian decontextualized reason, the myth of the self-contained acontextual individual agent, and so forth. Your comment about "people biased the other way" seemed to crystallize a lot of these points, and it was irksome enough I commented on it, but it wasn't irksome enough to spend much more of comment on If it's immature to not want to have to reconstruct anthropological genealogies in a comment box, I'm fine with that.
Though your clarification and qualification is helpful. I would just say it seems there are still hints of androcentrism around your comments.
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