This article asks a good question- what, indeed, is in an expression? Everyday we hear remarks such as ‘write more like a man’, ‘you throw like a girl’ or ‘strap a pair on,’ and particularly in Cambridge I find. Ms. Bates is absolutely right; such expressions are unacceptable and must be challenged even if those making them do not mean to criticise the female race or cause us offense. Continue reading
When discussing sex and gender with my step mother, I tend to try and tread pretty carefully. My brothers, Jack 3 and Edward nearly 1, always get drafted in as the main examples during these debates which become increasingly more heated, not to mention absurd, as they progress. “Your brothers just like tractors, they have since day one” is a line that comes up often, not to mention the inevitable “they just don’t concentrate like you did as a baby, too much energy, they are boys after all!” In between these assertions I try to bring in the possibility that, perhaps, the boy’s seemingly innate love of combustion engines and beating each other senseless may have come from the specially shaped world of World War II Spitfire annuals and rough and tumble that they have been exposed to since birth. At this I get shot down. I am assured that when I have children of my own I will understand that it is nature, not nurture, when it comes to the difference between boys and girls. Continue reading
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