[This is a post written by Mary Schweitzer, for a email-list I lurk on. I’m posting this here with Mary’s kind permission. – Amp]
Anecdote: During World War II, when employers had to hire women for “men’s” jobs, it was pointed out that a lot of farm women do a lot of hard, physical work all the time.
I recall (it’s somewhere in my master’s thesis, could be in the JEH paper from 1980) a report in the Women’s Bureau (a wonderful source) about how men assumed that a BIG woman (read: fat) would be strong, and a skinny woman would be weak. That is, they projected unto women’s bodies what a “strong man” looks like and what a “weak man” looks like.
However, the report noted, to everyone’s surprise it was the scrawny farm women who were the strongest.
Now, today we know that when women do weightlifting (like the Nautilus circuit, not like power lifting) they don’t get BIG. They get … kinda scrawny, if you want to look at it that way (in today’s society, they get the type of figure that is “in” for the moment) (well, “in” if it also has tits and ass tacked on to either side — but your basic Hooters girl or USC “song girl” — they don’t call them cheerleaders at USC – will do the Nautilus circuit to get small and tight, then add on the tits and sometimes even a fake butt. The fake butt is all toward the back — for waggling — big hips, which supposedly represent childbearing capabilities, are also on the undesirable list. One could hypothesize that the current male affinity for a woman who is simultaneously tightly muscular (again, not weightlifting muscular), has big jugs, an butt that “looks good” in shorts or tight pants but is not wide enough to signify childbearing — shows they are looking for a playmate who can also be Mom.
In other words — women’s muscles do not build OUT like men’s do — they get more tight.
But men didn’t “see” that (although it was all around them) because they assumed that a woman who shared a particular characteristic (such as physical strength) with men must LOOK like a man.
That digression aside, the point remains that (1) an awful lot of farmwomen used to do very hard physical labor, but nobody seems to remember that; and (2) men assumed that the visual characteristics of strength in a man would be identical in a woman.
It was not that women could not be strong — they ended up doing a lot more tasks during World War II than the men had ever thought them capable of — but that men had not been sufficiently observant to notice the women around them who WERE physically strong.
I remember when women’s basketball was played half-court. That wasn’t that long ago.
Just about any “evidence” these guys have that women “can’t do” something men can do has historically been socially constructed.
And the PET scan studies that supposedly show that men use a different part of their brain for problem-solving than women is a tautology — if you are TAUGHT to approach problems in a certain way, then the part of your brain that corresponds to what you were TAUGHT to use is going to light up in a PET scan — it does not prove anything genetic; does perhaps demonstrate something very interesting sociological.
Finally, as I was trying to get across with the (personal) story of the embarrassed 13-year-old who was considered a freak of nature because she tested higher than ANY 13-year-old boy in a study of spatial reasoning ability — as long as there are SOME women who don’t fit the stereotype — they may claim these women are the tail on the “bell curve,” but they have no way to prove it — AND, what they CANNOT say, is that NO woman can do XYZ.
As long as they cannot say NO woman can do it, and as long as significant differences remain in the way boys and girls are raised (particularly when you look at TV — jeez!), and in the expectations society has for men and women, they have no way to tell HOW MANY OTHER women could do it, were the social assumptions and constraints differently.
Yes, women have babies and men don’t. Women can breast feed. That’s about it.
My son spends more time raising his daughter than his wife does (there’s a day are center where he works, plus she is a social worker in Florida and is grossly overworked). But he is in a career path and no one has denied him promotion or chances for self-improvement because he happens to be the one who spends more time with his daughter. Were he to get an opportunity to move up, nobody would ask in the interview “What are you going to do about the kid?”
Nobody would ask him “Are you planning to have more children?” They’re not supposed to be able to ask us that, but they do, don’t they?
The degree to which social constructions of gender differences impacts expectations and behavior is so very very great, that whatever biological differences there may be are swallowed up by it. (For that matter, nobody discusses the biological differences AMONG men and AMONG women.)
One more example and I will quit: In 17th century New England, men were the guardians of religion. The male head of the household was legally charged with educating his household (including servants) to a minimal level of literacy, but also by reading the bible to them and literally making sermons TO them. WOMEN were not considered to be biologically (or theologically) capable of understanding scripture (the Society of Friends — Quakers — believed th opposite — women were human beings, all human beings were the same in the eyes of the Lord, so women could be both ministers and even missionaries, which is how Quaker women ended up getting hung in New England …)
Two centuries later, in the 19th century, it was accepted as an OBVIOUS fact that WOMEN were the guardians of religion, morality, all things “home,” and they had a duty to protect men from internalizing the harshness of the commercial world. (The favorite fictional account of a male/female relationship would have the woman “saving” the man from his self-centeredness, the product of participating in that cold, harsh outside world.) Conversely, women were supposed to stay OUT of that cold, harsh, outside world because not only was it not in their “character” to be able to participate in competitive endeavors of that sort, BUT IT WOULD DESTROY THE VERY FABRIC OF SOCIETY IF THEY TRIED.
Spend an evening with 1950s-60s sitcoms on TVLand or some similar channel — it is hard not to be beat over the head with the obsession that women are creature from another planet. That was all part of an enormous societal push to try to squeeze women back to pre-World War II conceptualizations of what they could, and could not, do — by the pretense that women were “better” at household work than men (when men tried to run the house they always screwed it up) the converse message was being subtly — and sometimes not so subtly — being sent — women would screw things up in the outside world. This defying the statistics that showed a steady progression of even married women (and women with older children) in the market place.
With the lens of a historian, this is all very much the short run. We are not so far removed from this deliberate effort at amnesia (forgetting what women did in World War II, forgetting what we know farmwomen always did) that any hypothesis about what women are “suited” for, as opposed to what men are “suited” for, that one can be in any way certain that even a study designed to show the “real” gender differences does not have socially constructed biases built into it.
One more thing — I was interrupted in writing this email by a friend who was meeting with one of the women behind the book, “Out Bodies Our Selves.” That was a very radicalizing book at the time, because I don’t think any of us (I was about 19 or 20 when it came out) REALIZED how little we knew about our bodies, or ourselves. They are putting out a new edition, and will also have a website. Send your students there, because they are back in that world of ignorance where we once were.
Thanks for posting this Amp, it seriously rocks.
I am constantly trying to educate my students to look at things this way. I never say that there _aren’t_ biological differences between women and men, but a) the differences _amongst_ women and men are so much larger to make the differences _between_ statistically meaningless, b) our social understandings of gender shape our constructions of biology so much that there is no way to draw conclusions outside of that, c) our very construction of gender as a binary is flawed, and d) just becauase if there are biological differences does not automatically mean these are genetic and/or predetermined because there are so many other variables (such as socio-economic) that influence biology.
Moreover, to speak of differences as biological, automatically codes those that don’t fit with our understandings of the average as negative (and anyone that doesn’t think that the ‘other’ side of a binary distinction in western society doesn’t get coded as negative … well, I’ve got a bridge you might be interested in). So, offering up a suggestion of biological causation of differences is never value-free (a cigar is _never_ just a cigar) and gives the supposed difference _way_ more credence than it ever deserves.
Anyway, thanks again Amp, and extend my thanks to Mary as well.
Wow–that’s a nice summary. In particular, I like how she points out the flip-flop on the role of women in religion, and I had never considered the role of 1950s sitcoms beyond prescribing roles for men and women. It hadn’t occurred to me that it was a strong reaction to the roles women took on during the war.
Thanks for that!
Good to know that Mary is still around and kicking. She and I used to get into some great drag-outs.
Great post! I am one of those naturally scrawny females (really it IS natural– I pig out all the time) and I’ve always been able to do pull-ups. People do assume that I’m weak due to my size. I play drums now, so it’s important for me to hit hard. But even before I played, I always had a lot of physical strength relative to my body weight (in other words, like a boy my size). But I don’t look like a man and even did some modeling as a teenager– of course that didn’t last long since the objectification was obvious to me.
I also wonder why all these gender-difference studies are published in such an irresponsible way. It doesn’t matter if all women suck at math except for one (which isn’t true, but hypothetically). We should all be judged as individuals, and that supposed one math-genius woman should have the opportunities as all those supposed male math-geniuses.
Re: domestically incompetent males in the media
Yesterday I watched the Disney show “Lizzie McGuire” with my daughter. For the “A-plot”, Lizzie’s mom chaperoned a school field trip, to Lizzie’s dismay (until the heartwarming conclusion, of course). The “B-plot” involved Lizzie’s dad and brother left at home alone — Dad tried to cook duck l’orange, which led to the kitchen being totally demolished. That plot’s heartwarming conclusion had dad and son sitting on the back steps eating delivered pizza, while dad ran the hose into the wading pool full of dirty dishes. Because men can’t cook or clean, I suppose.
The kid and I laughed our asses off, as in our household Dad stays home, and does most of the cooking… he’s out of town and we’re surviving on starches and fishsticks, ’cause I just don’t enjoy cooking. But, kee-rist, hasn’t all the funny been wrung out of the “dad can’t cook” meme yet?
I recently found your blog and I find it very interesting I teach high scool U.S. History and Government and was wondering if I could cite your website and use the material for instruction. By the way my grandmother 97 and still living was a single mother who was able to get a factory job and get out of being a household servant because of all of the jobs available during world war 2. She too was thin because she worked 14-16 hours a day walked during her lunch time to pay bills, and cooked and cleaned for her two teenage boys, but she was no wimp.
So does Mary Schweitzer have a blog tucked away somewhere over there? That’s some keen, insightful stuff. The sort of stuff I find myself pointing at saying to my less political/scientific aquiantances, “see, you idiots? that’s EXACTLY how it is! Pay attention, dammit!”
back to the body of this post, Mary and Sarah in Chicago both hit upon a thing that has been bugging me more and more lately (It isn’t just my imagination that there’s been a glut of “women are just different from men, here’s our research” studies lately, is it?):
I’d bet my bottom dollar that there are stronger biological factors than gender in determinining all of these things.
like nutrition, for example. or womb temperature during fetal growth. or sunlight exposure. or frequency of wearing cotton.
of course, it’s difficult to point at research that says “vitamin c may help you rotate three dimensional objects in your mind” and then use it to retroactively justify decades of personal baises, and centuries of systemic oppression.
of course, I have no, zip, zero, zilch research that would back up “womb temperature during fetal growth afftects intelligence” but I’d bet it, or something similarly obscure, has more to do with mental capacity than presence of a Y chromosome or what genetics reccommend you have tacked on between your legs.
I was always one of those “freak of nature” girls who blew the lid off the visual-spatial part of the exam too, even back before I knew I wasn’t “supposed” to do that.
Looking back, I think being exposed to a lot of three-dimensional puzzles, toys, and games had a lot to do with it. I liked to “make” things. Reading and stories helped develop my imagination (and visualization), and I think that helped too. So when faced with a test that showed a flat piece of paper, and I had to mark the circle next to what it would look like if folded….well hell, that was easy, it was just origami! Or when given puzzle pieces and told to put them together to look like the picture….well hell, that was tangrams!
Eventually, with our many moves, I attended a grade school where the principal had a strategy for her professional advancement—to identify the whiz kids, and test us out of the seventh grade. She did this every year; every year some lucky ducks got to bypass the seventh grade because she wanted to make it look like her school was really something, passing all those kids ahead. And purely through the luck of moving to that neighborhood, I got to be one of those kids.
Now, when the school psychologist at the junior high (where I went to take the test) gave me the test, he was watching me pretty carefully too….I was being ‘vetted’ not just through test scores and grades, but on my psychological makeup too (as if there’s some huge difference between 12 and 13 year-olds, but, hey…..one less year of school and I’d’a stood on my head, y’kwim?). He wasn’t surprised about my vocabulary or reading comprehension…..girls were supposed to be good at that. But he seemed a little…not just surprised, but disturbed that I did even better on the “boy sections” of the test. And then he did something really strange….he started asking me questions. Not the typical conversational questions that adults ask kids, like “what do you want to do when you grow up”, but whether I liked boys, was I happy being a girl, did I ever think about being a boy, and that sort of thing. I pretty much let him know that I found those questions highly offensive, that contrary to male-chauvinist belief it is possible for a girl to be both smart and heterosexual, that what’s he expect, a bimbo?!! (all done with the inimitable flair of a know-it-all, hipcoolbadasss twelve year old….think, “are you talkin’ to me“, with lipgloss), and he backed off that line of questioning. Yeah, I was a smartass kid with feminist parents. Sue me.
So, I take this Summers crap with more than a few grains of salt. I really don’t think my visual-spatial skills are all that much out-of-the-norm—I just had the opportunity to develop them, that’s all. I’m giving my daughter the same opportunity. Wonder what her test scores will look like? ;-)
Bravo! It’s astonishing how many otherwise intelligent guys (well . . .yes) I’ve read commenting on this issue who just don’t get the social/historical aspects at all. As far as I can tell, deep down they seem to think that once a long, long time ago women had fewer opportunities, but then somehow they got more and it’s all better now. No comprehension (that I can see, anyway) of the mechanisms and rationalizations of oppression, no understanding that today had to be fought for, that it could be rolled back, no nothing! Go Mary!
Very frustrating.
Also a bunch of folks who seem to be quite bright but lacking in any ability to hear social nuances.
As a child Meave Leakey – paleontologist, daughter-in-law to Lous and Mary Leakey (the famous Olduvai Gorge digging-up-ancient-hominds folks),
“was also a wiz at puzzles, and had a friend who was so amazed by her ability to assemble them — even when the pieces were facedown — that he made it his hobby to carve puzzles out of plain planks of wood. The patterns grew more and more complicated, in hopes that Meave would one day be stumped. She never was.
“He wanted to make it too difficult for me,” she says now. “I always loved puzzles. I loved putting all the pieces together.”
In her all-girls schools, Meave had very little exposure to science. All the attention paid to literature and the arts did not, however, discourage her . . .”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57672-2001Apr8
-Dan S.
>>(For that matter, nobody discusses the biological differences AMONG men
>>and AMONG women.)
Whenever a statistical test about differences between male and female are made, distribution data is gathered, and subsequently data about differences among genders are gathered, too.
Dunno what the custom is, but I’d assume that research reports do print out this in-gender variance, too. I can’t understand why they would omit such essential, compactly representable, and easily gathered data.
Of course newspapers (and all human discussions) tend to “water out” the research results into catchy, provocative phrases (“(wo)men are better than (wo)men!”). Perhaps I’ve become cynical in this matter, but people tend to prefer mean over variance.
The problem is that the difference between men and women is such a tiny part of who we are that it’s pretty much insignificant. I would say in relation to what percentage of our respective make-ups differ from each other compared to the amount of attention those differences, the differences get far more attention than is warranted.
Mikko,
you’re not being cynical (or at least, I hope your not, as that means I am serious as well) because data amongst women and amongst men IS taken.
However, media, people, etc, etc don’t want to hear about that. The salient, and (more importantly), social-understanding (ie common sense) confirming, to them is the information about the differences between the sexes, even when demographers, sociologists, everyone else, scream that it’s not relevant.
But what do we know? We just study this crap … *smile*
Okay, yup, I’m cynical …
Sarah in Chicago
I appreciate a lot of what she says, but really, physical strength isn’t the best example of a gender difference that is “socially constructed.” In point of fact, the average man has about twice the strength of the average woman. It is an indisputable fact that men, on average, carry more muscle, while women, on average, are lighter, shorter, and carry more body fat. It is inevitable that there would be average differences in physical strength, no matter what “socialization” occurs.
Sure, there are some weakling men and some mighty strong women. But on average, men are a lot stronger. This shows up in numerous ways. The difference in physical strength is why we are very concerned about men who beat their wives, and not so concerned about women who slap their husbands. It’s why if you go to any gym anywhere in the country, you’ll see plenty of guys benching 200 pounds or more, but you’ll never see a women bench that much (unless she takes steroids or is an Olympian).
Wow Jack,
Damn, you completely missed the ENTIRE point of that article, didn’t you?
Nobody is arguing that there aren’t differences between men and women. Part of what Mary, and I (and Amp and Amanda) argue rather is that the differences are so statistically insignificant in the context of the wider variance amongst men and women that to speak about it is simply to give it WAY more credence than it deserves.
Yes, there is an average strength difference and an average height difference between men and women, but a) the real recorded difference isn’t as big as you seem to think, and b) just because there is a difference doesn’t mean it’s cause is biological.
We are concerned about domestic violence not because men can ‘hit harder than women’. That’s a fallacy of a HUGE degree. We are concerned about domestic violence because it is insidious and inhuman (why are we concerned about non-violent domestic abuse if it were simply about hitting?).
As to the gym example, thanks for providing it, its a wonderful example of social conditioning on embodiment. Yeah, you don’t tend to see women brench pressing large amounts, but thats because our culture tells women extremely strongly that women with large muscles are ugly. Those are extremely strong messages of censure and taboo, and women tend to follow them.
I suggest perhaps you read Mary’s excellent article again.
Sarah in Chicago
Look, Sarah, just because I commented on one narrow point doesn’t mean that I missed the other points in the article. Indeed, I began my post by saying that I appreciate a lot of what she says.
Nobody is arguing that there aren’t differences between men and women.
Really? I could have sworn that in the article itself, Schweitzer herself spends the first 9 paragraphs talking about physical strength, and then concludes in the 10th paragraph: “Just about any ‘evidence’ these guys have that women ‘can’t do’ something men can do has historically been socially constructed.”
Yeah, you don’t tend to see women brench pressing large amounts, but thats because our culture tells women extremely strongly that women with large muscles are ugly.
This only highlights another well-known biological fact regarding differences in muscle development: Women simply CANNOT develop “large muscles” to the same extent as men can, unless they take steroids (as do female bodybuilders). Women don’t have nearly as much natural testosterone (which builds muscle, and which men have in much greater amounts).
Yes, there is an average strength difference and an average height difference between men and women, but a) the real recorded difference isn’t as big as you seem to think, and b) just because there is a difference doesn’t mean it’s cause is biological.
What do you think the “real” difference is, then? If you look at highly trained men vs. women, you’ll find that the male world records for bench press are about double the worlds for women. That can’t possibly be due to “socialization” — the sorts of women who compete for these world records are most definitely “socialized” to pursue physical strength to the greatest extent possible. Yet even after years of training and effort, they are only half as strong as men of equivalent training.
Not biological? Men are often 50-100 pounds heavier than women. And they usually have lower percentages of bodyfat. And they are taller on average. And they have much more testosterone. None of that has anything to do with socialization, and all of it leads to men having more muscle on average (and hence more strength).
* * *
Look, I’m with Schweitzer on a lot of these issues. Was it silly to think that women were naturally unfit to be lawyers or naturally unfit to understand religion? Of course. But don’t jump to the opposite extreme of thinking that women (on average) are just as physically strong as men. That’s equally disconnected from reality. Sure, maybe some women don’t lift weights because of “socialization.” But even if every single woman on earth was socialized to lift weights from age 5 in pursuit of the greatest physical strength possible, it would still remain a fact that (a) women don’t produce as much testosterone, (b) women are lighter and shorter than man, and (c) women naturally carry more body fat (which means less muscle proportionally).
(NOTE: All of the above is ON AVERAGE. I know there are many exceptions on either side. So don’t bother replying with an anecdote about your male friend who is a wimpy midget, nor about your female friend who won the world record for shot-putting.)
(ALSO NOTE: I’m not trying to make any political points here whatsoever. I just don’t like it when well-intentioned people put their heads in the sand regarding some of the most elementary biological differences between men and women.)
Jack,
Again, you’re missing the point by a large margin.
Yes, again, there ARE physical differences between men and women. BUT, again, that DOESN”T automatically mean that the causes here are biological. It’s simply bad logic, aside from not being borne out by any research whatsoever.
Yes, these things CAN be due to socialisation. I’m not saying they ARE, but that we can’t discount EITHER position.
But regardless, this is not the point here. The focus we have all had is that the differences between men and women are so small (regardless of being fundamental or not) in the context of the FAR wider variation amongst men and women that it becomes virtually meaningless to talk about them.
So; a) physical differences between men and women cannot automatically be infered to be biological caused, and b) there really isn’t much of a practical point to seriously discuss them.
PS. I lecture at university on sociological gender theory, I wouldn’t stoop to using andecdotal examples, and yes, this isn’t about scoring political points, its about disabusing ‘common sense’ notions about gender differences (which invariably tend to be wrong).
I guess what I don’t understand (on both sides of the argument) is why “on average” matters. I agree that men tend to be taller, more muscular, and have less body fat. But why does it matter? Because, as everyone has pointed out, that’s just ON AVERAGE. The problem, as I see it, is that women or men who are not average tend to not get a fair shot simply because of how the average woman or man performs.
oops …
that should be “I lecture at a university on socioligical gender theory”
Just proves that over-education can’t guarantee grammar ability … maybe Mickey D’s is hiring … :)
Yes, again, there ARE physical differences between men and women. BUT, again, that DOESN”T automatically mean that the causes here are biological. It’s simply bad logic, aside from not being borne out by any research whatsoever.
You’re not responding to anything that I said. I gave several specific examples of differences between men and women, differences that are definitely biological. And yet you ignore them. Are you seriously denying that (a) men are on average heavier than women; (b) men are on average taller than women; (c) men on average have lower bodyfat than women; and (d) men on average have a lot more testosterone than women? Really? Or you’re trying to imply that men are taller (for example) only because they are socialized to be taller? Weird.
So; a) physical differences between men and women cannot automatically be infered to be biological caused, and b) there really isn’t much of a practical point to seriously discuss them.
I’m not “automatically” inferring anything whatsoever. I’m looking at the actual evidence. If someone is saying that all gender differences are “socially constructed,” the only honest answer is, “Well, yes, a good many gender differences are socially constructed, but let’s not ignore the gender differences that indisputably exist.”
And there is a practical point: If a soldier has to hike for 10 miles while carrying a 70-pound backpack — as one of my friends had to do in the Army — most people will not be surprised that few women are strong enough to fulfill that duty. But someone who is convinced — for whatever ideological reason — that women are just as physically strong as men will think that discrimination or socialization are the only reasons that more women aren’t engaged in that activity. Now, of course, there might be some discrimination or socialization at work. I’m not denying that. If there were no discrimination or socialization, you might see that women are 18% of the soldiers on the hike as opposed to 10%. But all the same, you’re never going to get to a 50-50 ratio.
Averagegirl: The problem, as I see it, is that women or men who are not average tend to not get a fair shot simply because of how the average woman or man performs
True enough. But the answer is not to ignore the most undeniable physical realities. The answer is a firm rule that everyone must be judged individually on their own merits.
Jack,
*pounds head against her office wall*
Oiy, I just give up … this is pointless … I don’t know if you really aren’t seeing what all of us are really saying instead of your own interpretation, or rather you’re just choosing not to.
“But the answer is not to ignore the most undeniable physical realities. The answer is a firm rule that everyone must be judged individually on their own merits.”
Yeah, I agree. When that becomes a reality, I’ll quit being a feminist! (Not to imply that I want to control the way people think; I’m just saying that if others voluntarily came around to that way of thinking, we’d have a lot more respect for humans as individuals and not as some member of a group).
Speak for yourself. ;)
From here, it’s pretty significant.
Le’difference is not the be all and end all of creation, but it’s not a flyspeck, either. At least, not to me, and not to most people that I know. YMMV, of course.
Jack’s viewpoint seems reasonable and largely correct. He isn’t saying that socialization and discrimination don’t play huge roles, he’s just pointing out that the underlying biology is real. Outliers don’t usually tell us the whole story, but they do have things to teach us, and the extreme example teaches us something about the underlying biology: the strongest man in the world is a hell of a lot stronger than the strongest woman in the world, and that can’t be explained in purely social terms.
The outliers don’t mean that women can’t be strong, and they don’t mean anything in terms of how we should treat one another. But they do point to the biology underlying the socialization, and they indicate to a fair-minded observer that there are some processes that are not socially mediated.
Well, what ARE you saying? I give several specific examples of physical differences that are obviously biological. And your only reply is an abstract denial, along with the amazing observation that “These things CAN be due to socialisation.”
You can argue that men are socialized to use their natural advantages. But how on earth are men socialized to be taller? Or to have more testosterone? Perhaps men are socialized to become bald as they grow older? (After all, that’s one of the side effects of testosterone too.) Are men socialized not to menstruate?
Jack, a week from sunday is the super bowl, do you not think that these men have not been socialized to use their natural advantages to be stronger, or perhaps to know that since they are stronger that pounding someone smaller and weaker to make a point is ok. they can be socialized to look out for the weaker sex making their opinion more valid, They can be socialized into thinking that a woman’s place is in the home and to do whatever the man says
To some extent, I agree with Jake; it’s clear that some of the on-average strength differences between men and women are biological. I’m not sure that anyone’s really disagreeing with that, though.
There was one sentence in Mary’s post which Jake read as a denial that biology has any relevance to physical strength differences at all. However, in the context of the original discussion (a context I ripped Mary’s post out of), I read that as referring not to physical strength, but to Larry Summers, Stephen Pinker, et al. Taken out of context, however, I can see how it could be read the way Jake read it.
Did I misread the article? Because my impression was that part of the point was that, in women, greater strength didn’t really correspond with greater bulk.
This also leaves me to wonder if the correspondence between strength and bulk in men is exaggerated.
Also, one of the things I’m wondering about is where this “narrow hips are sexy” thing is coming from. I keep hearing that, especially in regard to models — one of the models, on the utterly horrible reality show about models competing to be in Sports Illustrated, was criticized for having excessively wide hips — but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what people I know actually find attractive.
Mary was saying that greater strength doesn’t necessarily correlate to greater bulk in women. Women who increase their strength through work or exercise develop dense muscle mass but don’t add much new mass; men who exercise or work get denser and add mass as well. Hooray for testosterone. Some men – I’d bet men who didn’t work on farms and didn’t know strong women personally – misjudged what made a strong woman from visual cues because they assumed that women got strong in the same fashion as men, but it turns out they don’t.
Or so I understand what she said. It makes sense to me.
I’ve known a few people in the construction trades, both men and women. Two women I knew were carpenters, both did a great deal of hard physical labor in the course of their jobs, and both were very slender. That’s only anecdotal, of course, but still, I’m quite ready to believe that muscle bulk in women doesn’t really correspond to effective strength.
The thing is, I’m not sure it does in men, either. Many of the men I’ve known who do intense physical labor are slender and wiry, not bulky.
For several months, I was working in a building that was being set up as a factory for auto accessories. There were a lot of people — almost all men (there’s a fair amount of sexism in the construction trades) and mostly electricians, doing a lot of work that demanded a lot of strength. With a few exceptions, the men didn’t seem to be particularly bulky — most seemed to be of a medium or slender build. The only person I ever saw in the place who was “cut” in the sense that bodybuilders talk about was a manager — who never did any actual physical work, or anything that might get his expensive clothes dirty.
This left me to wonder if muscle bulk has little to do with actual strength, and more to do with imitating a peacock. Indeed, given how much I hear of drug abuse among bodybuilders and athletes, I wonder how much muscle bulk is about as natural and as functional as breast implants.
Lots of strong men are wiry, just as you say. I am not an expert on exercise physiology, but it’s my understanding that if you work steadily at something, your muscle tissue builds up slightly but becomes more dense. If you increase the load of work you are doing, your muscle tissue builds up considerably.
So if a sedentary thin man starts doing a manual trade, he will build some muscle mass, but not a whole lot – he’ll become wiry instead of bulky. If he starts as an electrician, moves to framing work, and then starts digging ditches, however, he will bulk up because he’s increasing the amount of physical work over time. It’s the same process for women, but it is slower for them to build muscle mass with increasing loads. (I gather that female bodybuilders had to create a lot of new knowledge when they entered the sport, because a lot of the things that were true for their male predecessors weren’t really true for them.)
Dense, strong muscles will of course outperform flabby muscles, ounce for ounce, regardless of gender. Muscle bulk does have a lot to do with strength, however. The 200 lb electricians you worked with were strong men with modest amounts of very dense tissue; if your (presumably) fitness-club-habitue manager was bulkier than them and was getting the same level of physical exercise as they were, then he was also stronger.
I myself yearn for the day when it is the strength of a man’s legs, rather than his upper body definition, that determine his sexual attractiveness to muscle hounds. I have a torso like a toast rack, and legs like tree trunks forged from steel cords. Darn it.
Attention, attention. Anecdotal data ahead.
When I worked in the warehouse for the Strand Bookstore in NY, my job involved a lot of heavy lifting. The boxes of books that I lifted and stacked, often over my head, weighed anywhere from 40 to 150 lbs. At the time I started, I weighed 115 lbs. By the time I left, 9 months later, I weighed 120 lbs – which I had achieved after about 4 months. I definitely built muscle mass – not only in my upper body but in my lower body as well (I often had to walk quite a bit, sometimes carrying a box). I never became bulky, I stayed thin & wiry. If I had started out as a squatter, heavier person, I believe that I would have remained a squat, heavy person but one with more muscle.
Achieving body-builder bulk requires specific types of excercise w/ a decent amount of weight & many, many repetitions. Most jobs do not provide body-builder types of excercise.
I think it depends on your build. My boyfriend put on weight rapidly when he was lifting weights, but he’s more broad-shouldered than wiry. Whereas my ex would lift and lift and just stay thin.
What I really wanted to get at was that it’s an instance of a sexual difference being exaggerated, and the significance of that difference being exaggerated, not that there aren’t any differences in typical muscle volume between men and women, or that some men tend to develop greater muscle volume than others.
Foolish Owl said: “Also, one of the things I’m wondering about is where this “narrow hips are sexy”? thing is coming from. I keep hearing that, especially in regard to models ““ one of the models, on the utterly horrible reality show about models competing to be in Sports Illustrated, was criticized for having excessively wide hips ““ but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what people I know actually find attractive.”
I’m glad someone else brought that up. You are so right. I’m generally a size zero, maybe a 3 if I’m lucky. Everyone seems to think I have the ultimate privileged life because I’m naturally thin. Sure, I have the type of bod that is glorified (actually, objectified) in the media. But the thing is: I’m not a model or actor! My body type sucks for “real life”.
Why does it suck? Because I’m a freak of nature. I’m a “minority” and not a “real woman”. Other women hate me. And men think I’m too skinny to meet their standards. Sure, I look like a model in tight or skimpy clothes. But I choose not to wear those for obvious reasons. In real-world clothes, I look like Olive Oil (you know, from Popeye).
I have women say “I hate you” like I should take that as a compliment (especially when they usually DO hate me). They say that if they had my bod, they’d show it off so other women would hate them too. WHY? Can someone please explain that to me? Why is it good to have other women hate you? Because women don’t matter??
And like I said, men aren’t shy about letting me know I’m too skinny for their tastes (even though they buy the SI swimsuit issue and drool over the ribs and hip-bones poking out). I even have boobs, but that’s just not good enough. Some of them are so arrogant that they tell me I’m “trying too hard.” Ha! As if I would starve myself for a bunch of morons! But men and women both seem to think that I do.
One time at work I got “caught” buying a yogurt and was berated by a male co-worker. He said I should be eating doughnuts. I had actually eaten 4 doughnuts already, and why should I have to justify myself anyway? It’s just like a heavy person being berated for buying doughnuts instead of yogurt– it’s not anyone else’s business.
I realize I don’t look like most women and that my body is offensive to some. But I really hate it when the women who hate me are the same women who buy Cosmo and Elle. I realize few here read those dumb mags. I was just trying to give a different perspective and wanted to know what other feminists thought. I think it’s a “mixed message” case, similar to the whole virgin-whore thing. And it also shows what a fine line there is for us to walk– we should be thin, but not too thin– probably size 7 is considered acceptable and nothing else.
Drumgurl – you’re not a freak of nature. You’re a person. Screw anyone who tells you different.
(Well, not literally. That would be rewarding the wrong behavior.)
Just to be clear on what I meant about hips: I’m puzzled why I keep hearing that only narrow hips are attractive in women, when I often hear men say the opposite. I often hear men say that they find models disgusting. I believe that’s just as sexist as saying that women who don’t look like models are disgusting is sexist — it’s the idea that women should be judged by the accident of their appearance that’s the problem.
Saying that you find something disgusting or unappealing is not the same thing as saying that people should be judged by their appearance. Everyone has opinions; it’s the assigning of excessive importance to other people’s opinions that is problematic, not the holding/vocalizing of the opinions themselves.
Are you saying that women are at fault for being upset when people criticize their bodies?
Drumgurl, if you actually play the drums, I’d say you have a good way to meet men. Skinny drum playing chicks are hot in the right circles.
No. I’m not assigning fault to anyone.
Amanda, LMAO! That is true, and I do play drums. I’m engaged, so I’m not looking for a guy. It’s more my frustration that *some* guys think I actually starve myself for them.
I think the reason why thin is the ideal-but-not-really is because of money. What would marketers do if women found out men like the average type? Our economy would crumble! (I’m only half-serious on that last comment, for reasons too numerous to explain.)
Sorry Robert, too late. You said I could screw everyone! No, just kidding. :)
Another anecdoet on the “strength=/=bulk in men either” sub-discussion:
In high school I applied for a job at a pizza place, and I almost didn’t get the job because the owner I talked to (a rather hefty woman) saw how skinny I was and thought I wouldn’t be able to lift the heavy rubber floor mats. My mom (who knew the owners) had to go convince her that I was strong enough to work there. (It’s especially odd because her husband was a fairly scrawny fellow, and he had no problems with the mats.)
What I really wanted to get at was that it’s an instance of a sexual difference being exaggerated,
That’s one of the main points I took from the post. Whatever on-average sexual differences there might be, culture tends to obsessively underscore them, and starts hyperventilating whenever something threatens to make them a little fuzzy . . .
Coming up next – Pres. Summers gives off-the-cuff comments on why there are so few women blogging about politics . . .
Um…the idea that strong women “get scrawny” is nonsense. Those scrawny farm women weren’t scrawny because they were mighty; they were probably underfed. (Anybody remember *why* we have a school lunch program?) Yes, it’s true that women, not having testosterone, don’t bulk up as much as men. It’s also true that the mental image we have, of the Arnie-liked, ripped bodybuilder, is also not what most strong men look like. And I’m sure female bodybuilders would be interested to hear that they just look “scrawny”.
drumgurl, if your male co-workers are berating your looks, you might ask them if they’d like to take the dispute to HR to settle the matter. That might shut them up. (Ditto female coworkers who hate you–that’s not feminist, that’s just fucking pathetic.)
“the mental image we have, of the Arnie-liked, ripped bodybuilder, is also not what most strong men look like. ”
Good point. When you see those Strong Man competitions, most of the winners are undoubtedly pretty hefty, but also have a lot of body fat, especially compared to body builders, and thick, shapeless bodies.
Also, most body builders do little to no cardio or aerobic exercise, and therefore, despite the muscles and definition, are not in good shape at all. But again, we’re back to “strength” being defined exclusively by how many kilos you can lift, not how far or long you can keep moving. If you want some examples of amazing strength, look at rock climbers.
How body builders got to be a symbol of “healthy” for some is beyond me.
Hello Ampersand,
I’ve been lurking here for a while, and wanted to tell you I love your blog. I must say that Larry Summers certainly caused a ruckus with his idiotic comment, and a good one at that. It’s good to rekindle debates that should never be closed as long as some people retain their prejudices. The thing is, prejudiced people don’t always realize it, and don’t always come across as raving racists/mysoginists/whatever. We internalize society’s concepts of what’s normal, expected and fine, and feel justified because it’s common knowledge and obvious.
Well, it’s not, most of the time, and even if it was, it would still need to be verified by science. In this case, every single assumption is tainted by the structures of power within society. There was a time when you couldn’ t define yourself without mentioning the colour of your skin (it’s still true in deeply prejudiced environments, such as wealthy circles in the South), or your religion (its mention is mandatory on Greek ID cards). But the advent of secular, rationalist and humanist visions of mankind changed that, by determining once and for all that all human beings are equal (it took a long time to actively pursue this goal, sure, but it was inevitable since the day politics began being based on the idea that humans had their destiny in their own hands, being inalienably free) . Does it mean they’re completely identical ? No, and no one is making that assumption.
Now, transpose this to the gender issue, and suddenly, it seems we are not talking about the same kind of problem. People are, for the most part, deeply convinced that being a man or a woman is the first and most objective thing to define us. Well, no and no. Processing every piece of information that comes to your mind through the filter of “I’m a boy” or “I’m a girl” means you’re already conforming yourself to the expectations of society. Some might say that it has nothing to do with society, that it’s simple biology. So you’re conforming yourself to biology ? People who were small at one point of their lives should never attempt to play basket ball, then. They were sent a message by biology, after all.
Ridiculous, right ? Because it DOESN’T MATTER. As an individual, and that’s how we take our decisions, you can’t give a crap about those cosmic/social omens. Screw biology (sorry ’bout that), your will ultimately is what makes or undoes you.
So maybe most men will find it a little easier to put on some muscles. Does it mean they will ? Does it mean women, through exercise, can’t become much stronger than a lot of men ? Does it mean there are no women who can outdo everything 80% of the masculine population does (what a horrible way to talk about 50% of the world, don’t you think ?) ?
See, here’s the thing. Since we are all genetically unique (and the question of twins will help us shed some light on the subject), we are all biologically unique. And that’s just the first deal of cards. What we do with it can completely transform and surpass those initial abilities. Twins, precisely, if trained in wholly different sports, can obtain opposite abilities. You can have a miler and a sprinter, a Fosbury and a Jonathan Edwards, or, gasp, even a football player and a dancer. If they happened to be boys, you want to bet the one who chose to become a dancer felt much more pressure from society, and maybe even his parents ? And if our twins happen to be girls, you want to bet … actually, our society can’t even accept girls in football !
Does this have anything to do with biology ? Not at all. It’s simply a matter of social norms. Jake, what makes a good football player ? Not sheer speed, not raw strength, and even less other “objective” proofs of manhood. Do you remember why Todd Pinkston was so criticized at the end of the regular NFL season ? Because he dropped several passes on big plays, for fear of being roughed up by defensive players. Specifically, what makes a good football player is his willingness to get hurt. That, and a great sense of the game. If Ray Lewis was but a brainless thug unable to feel the game, he wouldn’t have made a tenth of the tackles in his career. A tenth, and I mark my words.
So, are women more fearful than men ? Hard to say. Let’s take the question apart, shall we ? Society’s answer would be yes, of course. Everyone knows that mice in particular make women hysteric, and men were born to chase them away while women weep ontop of a chair. Riiight. Society’s perception is that women should act this way and men that way. So tell me how this knowledge will not influence either’s reaction ? Some women will decide to react exaggeratedly not to offend their companion’s essential sense of virility (because there’s no way anyone is going to say that virility isn’t presented as a superior value in our society), some men will vanquish their fear of mice so as not to “make fool of themselves”. Good for them. It’s always good to “do the thing which you think you cannot do”, after all. That’s how we grow as persons.
And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it ? That women aren’t supposed to grow as much. Imagine, regarding strength, that each of us has internal limits, that can only be reached by intensive training. Now, imagine that everyone gets the exact training to achieve that (and it wouldn’t be done, even in this hypothetical world, because not everyone would want that much training. So, are women lazier ? Less resistent to pain ? Curious, because in this case society says exactly the contrary…). So, now that everyone has been given a chance to reach their peak of strength, let’s compare the results.
Maybe the ten strongest in the Earth would be men. Maybe n°11 would be an amazing woman, too. Maybe in the first hundred, there would only be 13 women. But who do you think would be in the lowest thousand ? There would be men as well as women, no doubt. A matter of laziness, remember ? And maybe the mean would be superior for men. But you probably would have n°655 334=a man, n°655335= a man, n°655 336= a woman, n°655 337 a man, n° 655 338 a woman, and n° 655 339 a woman. Would that matter ? Not at all. And you would probably have n°1001=a woman, and n°837, and so on, and the only thing that would accomplish is to make people stop assuming that men are stronger than women, and that it means they are naturally better than women at everything that requires strength, and everything else that society views as praiseworthy too, for that matter.
So, is anybody saying that biological differences don’t exist ? No. What we are saying is that they do not bound anyone, and that underlining them causes unjustified injustice within society, which I personally define as having a political agenda. And if somebody insists that, since we are talking about top-notch athletes, minimal advantages count a lot, then be coherent and reserve sports for Black men, because it is also common knowledge that Blacks are much stronger than poor white men, and much more “endowed”. More testosterone, Jake and Robert, you know ?
White people perpetuated the myth of the hordes of Black rapists, but they can’t admit it logically means Brian Urlacher the-much-revered should be sent to a bridge club ? Something is fishy here..
And as for actual world records confirming the unbreachable gap between men and women, the answer still is “come back later”. The topic has already been discussed here, and one of the main points is that women have began training hard relatively recently, because of previous social biases, which means that they are probably nowhere near their peak. Besides, less athletes (because some people don’t dare defy everybody’s expectations, which doesn’t justify the discrimination) means a smaller pool, and Science and Statistics tell us that the value of the results just isn’t the same. And we are just starting to explore new training methods, adapted to how everyone responds, as Mary Schweitzer showed. Gee, opportunities really haven’t been the same, have they?
Oh, and since systemic prejudices have hardly disappeared, no wonder women’s sports continue being viewed as second-hand activities with half-athletic participants. I am sure that thirty years after Blacks gained the right to go to school, their education levels still hadn’t caught up with those of WASPS (on average, and you know what they say about that). They still haven’t, have they ? And I’m sure some white supremacists use that statistic to assert white men’s natural superiority over Blacks. “Centuries of oppression, generations of internalized resignation” don’t go away just like that.
How about we compare biological differencies after centuries of equal conditions ? And even better, how about we stop thinking in shady and irresponsible binary oppositions ? Hopefully, after a hundred years of social equality, we’ll finally see ourselves as individual human beings, inalienably free and bound to each other’s fate by will .
How body builders got to be a symbol of “healthy”? for some is beyond me.
For that matter, there’s the fiction of females being the only bodybuilders who might take steroids in order to gain larger muscles. Uh-huh. Sure.
Bodybuilders got to be the symbol of healthy because they keep saying “We’re healthy! We’re healthy!” until everyone else is sick of hearing it. Seriously. The bodybuilders I’ve met were obsessed with bodybuilding. There’s an entire industry built up to encourage that obsession. When I’ve seen bodybuilding magazines, they were full of articles that talked about how bodybuilders were healthier, more attractive, sexier, etc. Yet my impression is that few people outside bodybuilding find that look particularly attractive.
And that’s before we get to the drugs. The abuse of which is common knowledge. I had the drugs in mind when I said that the bodybuilder look is as natural as breast implants.
I’d said something earlier about the peacock syndrome. What I had in mind was that bodybuilding doesn’t make one stronger in a useful way, doesn’t make you healthier, and, in the eyes of many, makes you less attractive. But some people think it’s worth it, because it makes them look more exaggeratedly masculine.
I enjoyed reading the article and all the comments. I grew up on a ranch. Most of the women worked as hard or alongside men plus they cooked and cleaned. They for the most part were scrawny and strong. I now live in the burbs and workout at one of the local health clubs. I think that the reason we are so body conscious is due to all the TV and movie subconscious mind control about what “fit” should look like.
I feel that the most important muscle to make the biggest and strongest on my body is my….BRAIN!
For that matter, there’s the fiction of females being the only bodybuilders who might take steroids in order to gain larger muscles. Uh-huh. Sure.
Odd, that’s not something I’ve ever heard, even in passing. Where does one usually run across this particular myth?
—Myca
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Well, hi there. I had no idea that this essay would end up read like this. How nice.
Interesting discussion.
Why thin hips for women and big bulgy muscles for men? Maybe because when the generation that is now in their 30s were playing as kids, the girls played with Barbie dolls and the boys played with G.I. Joe and other Mr. Muscle Man toys … ;-)
And do I have a blog? Not really. Write on different lists and sometimes somebody uploads something I wrote, as in this case. These days I mostly write on the disease I have had since 1994, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, and the different ways the CDC finds to hide it from the public (it tends to be endemic but it also occurs in cluster outbreaks, which scares the bejeebers out of CDC).
Nice little piece of work here. Blog on.
Is this by chance the Mary Schweitzer that grew up in AZ?
I’m afraid I don’t know, offhand.