Is it an insult to say that a man dresses like a girl, or that an article of clothing looks feminine?
Gender differences in styles of dress are totally cultural an socialized too.
When I was in junior high several centuries ago there was one kid who probably qualified as being retarded. He was the one kid in school no one ever, ever called retarded. I always heard it used as meaning extreme stupidity as trait of the person, distinguished from the act of doing something stupid. The actual intelligence of the person being insulted had nothing to do with it. Calling an actual retarded or whatever person retarded is far beyond the dickishness level of anyone I ever knew. However, I suspect it causes pain for the loved ones of people who are, even when not directed to them.
If you want to go that far back, I’d say it happened because men are physically stronger than women, and that the purpose of teaching sports to children was to prepare them for their roles as adults, including tasks that required greater strength, such as hunting and warfare.
Straw-Man. You are trying to limit the notion of ‘throwing like a girl’ to pre-pubescent children, which is an arbitrary limit that you are setting in order for it to sound more shocking.
I’ve heard adult men tell other adult men they throw like a girl when they mess up a throw, whether or not the victim of the egregious insult would throw like a girl normally or not.
But… the real issue here is, you’re retarded and you throw like a girl.
Only if you threaten them with a taser.
Hrm, interesting example. I guess the difference is that we’ve (theoretically) broken sports away from gender restrictions or expectations, while clothing is still often gender-specific.
That being said, yeah, it would be an insult to say a man “dresses like a girl,” because it implies that there’s something wrong with a person choosing clothes that aren’t stereotyped with their gender. Whether or not calling an article of clothing feminine is an insult would depend on the context, I guess.
“Girl” is pre-pubescent female human being. So, yes, that does narrow it down. Note that your example is entirely about technique, too.
And you have Ann Coulter’s Adam’s apple.
Isn’t it, though, if that’s what the speaker intends? If a man gets teased for wearing a pink shirt, told that pink’s a ‘woman’s color’? There’s nothing inherently feminine about pink, but it’s pretty much been encoded as feminine in North America. So if someone insults a guy for wearing pink, they’re telling him that not only is he acting like a girl, but they likely don’t even have to explain why a male wouldn’t want to do that or create any confusion in the first place.
I can’t think of a female equivalent in this case. Really short hair, I guess? But even then, I think the message is different. If a guy is wearing a pink shirt (and I know this isn’t the case in all areas – I know plenty of butch dudes who wear pink Lacoste, but they’re in major cities) he’s tagged as feminine/gay/weak. If a woman is tagged as masculine, the message seems to be that she’ll never be able to attract anyone.
I think a lot of these hangups are pointless as these insults have, in effect, transcended their source for most people. I know gay people about as open about it as you can get that use gay as an insult, it has two (well, okay, three, but who uses the first one anymore?) meanings that are wholly seperate: the one that effectively means “lame” and the one that means homosexual, other than one stemming from the other at some ambiguous point in time, they’re completely different in context, function, and whatelse.
“Retarded” as well, it’s a separate word from the actual medical context. While it is more closely linked (to the point where you wouldn’t use the “stupid” meaning on someone who actually IS retarded), you have to almost be trying to pick the stupid definition out and get worked up over it. It’s entirely likely the person you’re talking to wasn’t even thinking about the actual disability meaning, and very likely doesn’t really even have a problem with legitimately retarded people.
And “throw like a girl,” I can’t speak for others, but when I was a kid it was a universal insult indiscriminate of gender, GIRLS used this to insult GIRLS who couldn’t throw. Again, it stems from a somewhat sexist perception, but it’s entirely an idiom now. Expecting someone who uses this to actually think they’re insulting women is like assuming everyone deeply contemplates the original source and meaning of “never look a gift horse in the mouth,” people use idioms with little regard to their origins all the time.
That’s just my perception though, I just feel they’ve transcended their meanings to the point that it’s useless to get worked up because nobody really thinks about their origins (and, thus, no offense is intended) so they can be counted as simply different definitions of the same word. Contrast this with things like, say, “Jew” as a pejorative which isn’t really used by anyone that doesn’t actually have a problem with Jews since their meanings haven’t been distilled from one another.
This idea that boys’ throwing ability is the result of training is dubious to me. At least anecdotally, in terms of the children (my own and others) that I’ve watched develop from infancy, for most boys there is an innate ability to throw at least reasonably well that is less common to see in girls.
The ability to throw is certainly refined through training and practice over time, and I’m sure that this training and practice occurs more frequently for boys through gender-stereotypic activities and expectations, but I do believe that there are, on average, innate differences by gender in the ability to throw which are completely independent of training.
See what I did there?
Yes, and you appear to think it was clever.
Of course my observations are anecdotal. Have you offered, or are you going to offer, some empirical evidence regarding gender differences in throwing ability?
See what I did there?
Even the people at the highly-respected Kidz World are ahead of the game.
Yeah, you did the argument equivalent of “I know you are but what am I.” Would you like a golf clap?
Genetically, people are hugely more similar than they are dissimilar, so the baseline assumption is always going to be that people are equivalent. If you think otherwise, the burden is on *you *to prove it.
I have 2 questions.
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Are you trying to say that women are naturally, on average, as physically capable (with regards to athletics and such) as men?
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Has anyone ever hijacked their own thread so badly?
Uh, what are you, cognitively challenged? Genetically, boys and girls start out demonstrably different. XX vs. XY. So the assumption of equivalence, were one delayed enough to make it, would fail pretty much at step one. (Also, at birth, and this may be news to you, it is typical for girls to have a hoo ha, and boys to have a doodle, so there’s another strike against some sort of universal presumption of equivalence across genders.)
Perhaps you have a measured or presumed score of 70 or below on a standard measure of IQ, but the burden of supporting any assertion is upon the person making it. So, when you assert that differences observed in throwing ability result from environmental factors (or specifically training) that is an assertion that also requires support.
However, I’ll go ahead and provide the empirical support for my position that you cannot for yours.
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=1986-00868-001
From Thomas, J. R. & French, K. E. (1985). Gender differences across age in motor performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 260-282.
Abstract: Conducted a meta-analysis of 64 studies that reported gender differences on motor performance during childhood and adolescence. Findings yielded 702 effect sizes based on data from 15,518 female and 15,926 male 3-20 yr olds. Age was regressed on effect size, and the relation was significant for 12 of 20 tasks (e.g., balance, catching, grip strength, shuttle run, throw velocity, tapping). Several types of age-related curves were found; the curve for a throwing task was the most distinctive. Five of the tasks followed a typical curve of gender differences across age. For 8 tasks, gender differences were not related to age, and effect sizes were small. Results are discussed in relation to the development of gender differences to biological and environmental sources. A bibliography of the 64 studies is appended. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)
From the discussion:
You see what I did there?
Read the rest of the fucking thread. This part of the discussion is about girls. Girls, girls, girls. Not women versus men, but the capabilities of girls. I readily concede (and have agreed in this very thread, if you took the two fucking seconds to read it) that men have the capacity to develop more muscle mass more easily than women, as well as having other structural differences that lead them to perform better in sports where these things are a factor.
I think you mean so well.
You JUST SAID that the baseline assumption is that people are equivalent you retarded dildo. And no, your hijack is not going well. You look like a stupid asshole.
1.) “*Unlikely *to be *completely *environmentally caused” (emphasis added). Meaning there’s probably some environmental effect, especially as children age.
2.) You’re still talking about “throwing for velocity and distance,” which isn’t “throwing like a girl.” Girls cease to “throw like girls” once they’ve been taught how to do it with the proper form.
Kudos on coming up with a couple of different ways of saying “retarded,” though. I laughed.
Oh, and as for your little genetics lesson? Obviously, the demonstrably different things are… different. (I know, this is a hard concept to grasp, different things being different, sheesh.) The challenge is to *actually demonstrate *what’s different, instead of just making claims. So, different genitals? Demonstrable. “Throwing like a girl” caused by being a girl? Demonstrably not.
Yes, we start from the assumption that people are the same, and then look for what’s different, because a lot of our genetic code is the same. That’s not the same as saying that men and women are identical–just that we have to prove the differences instead of prove the similarities.
I quote from a meta-analysis of 64 studies that reveals a huge effect size for the differences between boys and girls that is evident as early as age 3.
Shot From Guns links to a wikipedia page about girls’ baseball.