The Tribune

Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

“YOU throw like a girl!” This is a criticism we hear often. It is meant to say that you should be ashamed of the way you throw. How does a girl throw? Is there one way that defines how a girl throws? Do all girls throw the same way? What does it mean when someone says that to a boy or a man? You run like a girl! That is another ‘slanderous’ statement we hear.

But why is it slanderous? ‘Stop acting like a girl’ is another thing we hear often. Do all girls act the same way? How do girls act? What does it mean to stop acting like a girl? What kind of girl are we talking about? These are all cultural norms that have been established over time.

We have determined that girls are worth less than boys and they act a certain way and they are limited in what they can do.

Why is this such a common belief? How can we determine that one human being is worth less than another simply because of his or her sex? Why do parents say these things to their children?

What happens if a girl throws better than a boy? Does that mean that she is no longer a girl?

What happens when a girl runs faster than a boy? What happens when a girl, as is often the case, acts more reasonably than a boy? Is that a good thing?

These are all stereotypes we create and then reinforce in our communities.

What happens when there are girls who break the norm? Does that mean that they stop being girls? Do they stop being feminine because they can run, hit a ball well, play a good game of baseball? What happens when women are better engineers than men? Does that pose a problem for the men in their lives?

We often talk about positive role models for children, but we fill their heads with these limitations. “Women cannot do…”

In some countries they have these ideas and they are based on ethnicity and/or race: Blacks cannot be academically smart, but Asians can; blacks can be great sprinters, but not good tennis players.

Who determined these things? Once they are said to a child, and repeated time and again, they become ingrained and children live their lives by them. This causes all kinds of problems for children, especially when they become teens and are trying to form identities. All they imagine is the things they cannot do. Girls cannot be good engineers, nor can they be good basketball players because they run like girls.

Yes, scientifically most women have less muscle mass than most men do, which is determined in part by the amount of testosterone in their bodies. Each woman, though, has her own unique genetic makeup that could mean that one has higher levels of testosterone while others may have lower levels. This hormone helps determine how much muscle someone can develop, which in turn helps to determine how fast one can run, for example.

However, society discounts this. Women are simply week. If they are not week, something must be wrong with them. Men are strong, and if they are not strong, something must be wrong with them. Once again, these are limiting ideas that only impose constraints on the imagination of what we can do or be.

Men also have higher and lower levels of testosterone, and this has an impact on the way they behave and live in their bodies. A young man with lower testosterone can still be strong, but he will have to work harder than the boy with more testosterone. It means nothing more than that. He may also be less aggressive because testosterone is also linked to aggression.

Higher levels of testosterone can make people more aggressive, but they do not have to be aggressive. This is one reason that so many athletes are so aggressive, because they are given steroids that alter their natural hormonal balances. This is often referred to as ‘roid rage’, which can be extremely dangerous.

Outside of that, we still maintain that women are less than men. Where does this come from? Why do we insist on creating these cultural traps that imprison boys and girls in cells of impossibility. They cannot move beyond their sex because society says they are not allowed to.

A great female athlete must be gay because she can’t be considered a woman and a great athlete. A great female mechanical engineer must weird because women can’t be good mechanics.

Historically, blacks did not have souls. However, when it was convenient for the church to consider that in fact blacks did have souls, they were granted souls and ‘Christianised’ so that could be controlled by the power the church held over society.

Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” demonstrates this fact and the destruction of non-European cultures because of the introduction of Christianity. At the same time, black women were depicted as either Jezebels or workhorses, either way, they were soulless units of labour and could not be trusted nor civilised.

They provided many hours of entertainment for European society that put them in freak shows, much like the Hottentot Venus. We have moved away from this kind of thinking. In fact, we now understand that race is constructed to control. However, we still buy into the idea that women care less than men.

Why does society continue to limit a person’s potential to being determined by his or her sex instead of his or her personal goals, desires and strengths? If this society had continued to think like the colonisers, Asians would be the only shopkeepers, and blacks would be limited to athletics or hard labour.

Limitations are in fact imposed on us by cultural stereotypes and limited education, which dogmatically refuse to allow us to move beyond someone else’s imagination of what we can be. Can we move beyond the mental slavery that creates class, race and gender stereotypes?