This might come to a shock to many, but I am a woman.
I was fortunate enough to never feel like that meant much, though I never felt any different or question my gender. I just never believed that being a woman entailed more than being a person that holds the potential to eventually bare children.
Although nowadays I fear the concept of tomboy or tomgirl might offend many, due to the lack of a simpler way to express what I mean to say, allow me to use these terms as their definitions allow. Not going into the detail of who does the considering or what typical means, for argument sake admit that there is an underlying and statistically endorsed general consideration that, associated to ones culture, attributes characteristics to define the "typical girl" and the "typical boy" and that tomboy is thus a girl that exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of a boy.
Full disclosure: I was graced with a tomboy spirit and never felt the pressure to be any different, probably because my mother was already a great athletic tomboy and my father.. Well, he married my mother, so I guess of all the ladies he could have tried to pick he rushed to close the deal with the lady that made him warmer and cozier inside and that was a tomboy girl. My mother sisters and cousins were all female and all were clear tomboys. This means that in my family tomboy behavior was actually valued. Independently of our gender we all came out with a high athletic prowess, incredible sensitivity for words and arts in general and good abstraction and logical thinking. I always took my upbringing for granted, considering that I was born to a family in sufficient financial well-being that nothing ever missed on the table or school ground, but looking back I realize that I was blessed so much more than that. My great-aunt was a woman that studied while caring for her younger sisters because her mother was ill and ended up with a maths degree giving high-school classes, divorced from a cheating husband and absolutely selfsuficient. That is a woman that blew over 95 candles and still has a wit to shame me. Most of the women in my family ended up in science. My grandmother was never that good with maths, she was a stay-home woman that took care of the household until she embodied the emancipation. She studied after her children were razed with little opposition from her husband that missed the "real cooking" but knew better than to try and stop her. By the time she was able to retire she took a master in "woman condition"she wasn't a brilliant study, but she had a shy strength that sounded like "why not me too?". This way, since very young I learned that there was no underlying reason why being a woman meant more than that you had some reproductive organs that aren't always nice to handle. Nowadays I know mine was a very limited and fortunate view of life.
A phd, a baby and a husband later I can say that looking at statistics and reports I now understand that not all women got the chance to fulfill their true potential, many due to some cultural pressure even within my own culture, other due to unequal funding. It saddens me to know that little girls can't imagine themselves following courses that they get inspired by because they are told that they wouldn't be successful "because it is not a subject/job for a girl".
Worst than that, I fear that this is only perpetuated by the confused and mishandled media movement that assaults the concept of gender equality. There is no such thing as gender equality, by definition genders are different, that is why we came up with the genders, to mention the difference between humans in two kinds.
There should nevertheless be gender equity! I am all for it, but how do we get it? Assuming that what we need is to force science down little girls throats or that little boys should be forced to play with dolls is absurd and treating equally inherently different individuals equally will only result in more differentiation.
Studies show the impact of hormones on our career choices, career according to hormones. There is also no doubt that hormones control our brain functions: "Verbal memory scores are frequently used as one measure of higher level cognition. These scores vary in direct proportion to estrogen levels throughout the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause" -Estrogen wikipedia; "There are some differences between a male and female brain (possibly the
result of different testosterone levels), one of them being size: the
male human brain is, on average, larger. ... Attention, memory, and spatial ability are key cognitive functions affected by testosterone in humans." -Testosterone wikipedia. Now as all men like to point out, size is not always a good measure. And for a great investigative journalism on the subject watch: The gender equality pradox - documentary NRK - 2011
where you can easily get the idea that the social movement is guiding and creating biased on the undeniable truth, men and women are on average different.
Women can have their brains wired differently because biologically they were selected to perform different tasks, does that makes them dumber? Well, maybe? Now, before you rage out of this blog understand that language was developed in this patriarchy that has since been progressing into what we now know as modern society. Although we attacked the concept that only males can be clever, wasn't the measure of cleverness devised based in men abilities, by men and to measure men for men jobs? Couldn't it be that this new emotional coefficient helps complement the previous idea that cleverness was limited to the intelligence coefficient?
It all boils down to statistics, the numbers that don't lie, the data, the science, the undeniably reliable source of probing reality. Does anyone doubt that although you can define very accurately the average woman there probably isn't such a being? Statistics my friends was developed to use in bulk, to predict, and see traces in the many, but fails miserably to define or predict the singular. Are you sure that given any woman she will be more likely to be alike her sister than her brother? Can you not think of cases where that isn't true? Then fighting any statistics that prove men to be different from women, which is to be rationally expected since we are biologically different, is not only illogical but a perversion of science. Then why are we so concerned about the amount of women in science or engineering? -women scientific research women in science
Shouldn't we rather be concerned about the fact that socially we have created a higher relevance to all men-prone jobs and discredit the importance of women-prone jobs. Why is the kindergarten teacher, that possibly has more influence in designing our future societies, less relevant in our culture than the engineer that helps design the landscape? Why are nurses considered less important, when they have such an impact on patient recovery, than the doctor, that might be replaced by an artificial intelligence with access to an inhuman size database (comment). Why did career women look down on stay home mothers or women that hanged their career for few years to attend closer to their children? Why do we make it sound like only maths and science is a smart subject, when psychologists that aren't extremely smart aren't only useless but harmful?
Maybe, this "woman's day", instead of praising the women that less look "like women" to you, praise the diversity that makes each woman and man unique. Instead of parsing equality that is imposed forcefully and unnaturally on society, praise equity that allows minorities to feel welcomed and secure where they are valuable for their diversity contribution. Praise mothers for being mothers and fathers for being fathers, teachers for teaching, nurses for nursing, lawyers for defending and accusing, doctors for researching and devoting, and society for learning to adapt to the human concept that has evolved so much since my great-aunt's time. Embrace a new era in which we no longer need to fight tradition for the sake of breaking momentum. Instead of steering boys and girls to behave accordingly because it is tradition, or to behave the same because it is the new fashion, one can nurture their curiosity to explore what they like and allow people to fall in love by professions that fit them best, whether that means equal statistics or not, whether that means being a minority and learning about your own uniqueness.
From a place of absolute freedom, because I know that I was free to be as pink as I'd like -I did have that phase- and I was free to dream of becoming a painter, then a dance, then a physicist and then an engineer and finally managed to follow through on the last two:
"I have a dream, that one day every person will feel free to explore and define his/hers own self and thus contribute more efficiently to society."
I was fortunate enough to never feel like that meant much, though I never felt any different or question my gender. I just never believed that being a woman entailed more than being a person that holds the potential to eventually bare children.
Although nowadays I fear the concept of tomboy or tomgirl might offend many, due to the lack of a simpler way to express what I mean to say, allow me to use these terms as their definitions allow. Not going into the detail of who does the considering or what typical means, for argument sake admit that there is an underlying and statistically endorsed general consideration that, associated to ones culture, attributes characteristics to define the "typical girl" and the "typical boy" and that tomboy is thus a girl that exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of a boy.
Full disclosure: I was graced with a tomboy spirit and never felt the pressure to be any different, probably because my mother was already a great athletic tomboy and my father.. Well, he married my mother, so I guess of all the ladies he could have tried to pick he rushed to close the deal with the lady that made him warmer and cozier inside and that was a tomboy girl. My mother sisters and cousins were all female and all were clear tomboys. This means that in my family tomboy behavior was actually valued. Independently of our gender we all came out with a high athletic prowess, incredible sensitivity for words and arts in general and good abstraction and logical thinking. I always took my upbringing for granted, considering that I was born to a family in sufficient financial well-being that nothing ever missed on the table or school ground, but looking back I realize that I was blessed so much more than that. My great-aunt was a woman that studied while caring for her younger sisters because her mother was ill and ended up with a maths degree giving high-school classes, divorced from a cheating husband and absolutely selfsuficient. That is a woman that blew over 95 candles and still has a wit to shame me. Most of the women in my family ended up in science. My grandmother was never that good with maths, she was a stay-home woman that took care of the household until she embodied the emancipation. She studied after her children were razed with little opposition from her husband that missed the "real cooking" but knew better than to try and stop her. By the time she was able to retire she took a master in "woman condition"she wasn't a brilliant study, but she had a shy strength that sounded like "why not me too?". This way, since very young I learned that there was no underlying reason why being a woman meant more than that you had some reproductive organs that aren't always nice to handle. Nowadays I know mine was a very limited and fortunate view of life.
A phd, a baby and a husband later I can say that looking at statistics and reports I now understand that not all women got the chance to fulfill their true potential, many due to some cultural pressure even within my own culture, other due to unequal funding. It saddens me to know that little girls can't imagine themselves following courses that they get inspired by because they are told that they wouldn't be successful "because it is not a subject/job for a girl".
Worst than that, I fear that this is only perpetuated by the confused and mishandled media movement that assaults the concept of gender equality. There is no such thing as gender equality, by definition genders are different, that is why we came up with the genders, to mention the difference between humans in two kinds.
where you can easily get the idea that the social movement is guiding and creating biased on the undeniable truth, men and women are on average different.
Women can have their brains wired differently because biologically they were selected to perform different tasks, does that makes them dumber? Well, maybe? Now, before you rage out of this blog understand that language was developed in this patriarchy that has since been progressing into what we now know as modern society. Although we attacked the concept that only males can be clever, wasn't the measure of cleverness devised based in men abilities, by men and to measure men for men jobs? Couldn't it be that this new emotional coefficient helps complement the previous idea that cleverness was limited to the intelligence coefficient?
It all boils down to statistics, the numbers that don't lie, the data, the science, the undeniably reliable source of probing reality. Does anyone doubt that although you can define very accurately the average woman there probably isn't such a being? Statistics my friends was developed to use in bulk, to predict, and see traces in the many, but fails miserably to define or predict the singular. Are you sure that given any woman she will be more likely to be alike her sister than her brother? Can you not think of cases where that isn't true? Then fighting any statistics that prove men to be different from women, which is to be rationally expected since we are biologically different, is not only illogical but a perversion of science. Then why are we so concerned about the amount of women in science or engineering? -women scientific research women in science
Shouldn't we rather be concerned about the fact that socially we have created a higher relevance to all men-prone jobs and discredit the importance of women-prone jobs. Why is the kindergarten teacher, that possibly has more influence in designing our future societies, less relevant in our culture than the engineer that helps design the landscape? Why are nurses considered less important, when they have such an impact on patient recovery, than the doctor, that might be replaced by an artificial intelligence with access to an inhuman size database (comment). Why did career women look down on stay home mothers or women that hanged their career for few years to attend closer to their children? Why do we make it sound like only maths and science is a smart subject, when psychologists that aren't extremely smart aren't only useless but harmful?
Maybe, this "woman's day", instead of praising the women that less look "like women" to you, praise the diversity that makes each woman and man unique. Instead of parsing equality that is imposed forcefully and unnaturally on society, praise equity that allows minorities to feel welcomed and secure where they are valuable for their diversity contribution. Praise mothers for being mothers and fathers for being fathers, teachers for teaching, nurses for nursing, lawyers for defending and accusing, doctors for researching and devoting, and society for learning to adapt to the human concept that has evolved so much since my great-aunt's time. Embrace a new era in which we no longer need to fight tradition for the sake of breaking momentum. Instead of steering boys and girls to behave accordingly because it is tradition, or to behave the same because it is the new fashion, one can nurture their curiosity to explore what they like and allow people to fall in love by professions that fit them best, whether that means equal statistics or not, whether that means being a minority and learning about your own uniqueness.
From a place of absolute freedom, because I know that I was free to be as pink as I'd like -I did have that phase- and I was free to dream of becoming a painter, then a dance, then a physicist and then an engineer and finally managed to follow through on the last two:
"I have a dream, that one day every person will feel free to explore and define his/hers own self and thus contribute more efficiently to society."
