They fill you with the faults they had.
I’m currently looking for a shoe rack to sit in the kitchen (to prevent further instances of gifts in shoes), and have been browsing the Ah-Goose* website and looking at the reviews. On one shoe rack two separate women suggest that it was tricky because they were women: “Not easy for a female who thought it only required a screwdriver” said one, and “from a female point of view, it seemed a bit too much for me to tackle” was the other’s review.
Why is being female relevant to assuming that you need only one screwdriver? Surely, that is more naive faith in the quality of Argos’s workmanship and a lacking tool kit. And why is it inherently trickier from a “female point of view”? Are you attempting to hold the screwdriver with your vagina?
Thing is though, it seems a fairly common argument for construction failings (I’ve seen it on a couple of other review based sites). One of my driving instructors (I have had a few…) explained my inability to manoeuvre his vehicle by my being female. Which frankly is bollocks*. It was down to my shitty spatial awareness and his poxy Metro*. Having a penis does not automatically imbibe you with the ability to read maps, do DIY and drive well. Unless there is something very significant my mother has failed to mention about herself*.
So I am quite annoyed that women (and men) use femaleness as an excuse for feebleness. Not because of all that “in this day and age” nonsense, because prior to “this day and age” it was accepted that women were just as physically capable as men were. But because it simply isn’t true. I have lousy depth perception because I am me. Not because I need to spend a fortune in Bravissimo*. B is better than me at not getting his sackperson* killed than I am, because he is him, and not because he has a penis (and the many more hours devoted to gaming probably helps).
I acknowledge that biologically speaking there are quite clear differences in male and female anatomy, and that for instance if you had an equally sized male and female that the male would probably have more upper body strength. But that’s only a probably, and where the shoe racks are concerned brute strength is probably bugger all use. In fact unless you’re constructing something for that World Strongest Man contest, which appears every so often on BBC2, strength isn’t all that useful in most things. I promise you. My approach to making anything work or happen is to go at it as hard and fast as possible, in my mind I can’t possibly be being effective unless I’m impersonating a stampeding buffalo. Frequently whatever it is breaks. Or people cry, because apparently that sort of thing hurts. Either way strength is no great benefit.
It’s not even a generational thing. Though I’ve come across plenty of fey middle-aged women who are entirely incapable of doing anything without their husband, I’ve met plenty of their younger counterparts. Women who drive and don’t even know that their car needs oil, let alone how to check it, or single women who will pay someone to install some shelves. Not because they’re not practically minded but as one of my female friends said “well it’s more of a bloke’s thing”. As if it were some mass organised male hobby. I have known women of my age and younger who have broken off relationships, or dismissed potential dates because the man in question didn’t demonstrate enough practical maleness. A teenage girl I used to work with told me that she wouldn’t consider going out with a man who couldn’t drive, women not driving was fine, but a man-well he might as well chop his penis off.
I genuinely do not understand it. In part I imagine this is due to my upbringing. There was no point in my childhood when my mother suggested she was incapable of doing something because of her gender. If she couldn’t do something it was down to her personal inabilities, not the gender as a whole. I have to say that until I was far into adulthood (past being surrounded by arty types who are incapable of even switching a light on without considerable debate) I had no conception that this was other than the norm. There were plenty of other things when I was growing up that I knew other people my age had not come across-in secondary school a girl doing a survey was openly staggered that not only did I know real life actual homosexual people, but horrors I had known them since I was very small.* I knew too that most people didn’t dispute anything about religion, and that their parents didn’t encourage them to hold one-child sit in protests. Yet I never considered that my mother’s stance on all people being equal was not the same in every household.
So my question (in a Mr Fish question stylee) what did you learn about the world in your house growing up that the people around you didn’t?
*I know it’s all crap but I figure it’s only holding my regular pairs in the kitchen (about 9 pairs) not the whole lot of them so even something from Argos should be able to cope with that.
*Though there have been various research with some suggestion that testosterone can help.
*I can’t do small cars (the idea of a SmartCar fills me with terror, and I’ve nearly prayed every time I’ve been a passenger in a KA), nor silly high up “I must protect my progeny at all costs even if I have to impail you on my radiator grill” cars. Essentially my brain is wired for the sort of cars I can’t actually afford, which makes my ongoing inability to drive probably quite a good thing.
* She is genuinely good at all these things. People have actually randomly complimented her on her driving, which is a bit bizarre. To be fair though all my blood relatives seem good at these things. Why the fuck I’m covered in bruises from walking into everything in my house, every bloody day I do not know.
* And truly I do need to, because gravity is not a pretty thing and I would probably injure many a passerby if I attempted to run for a bus. Also because I have discovered cheap bras are cheap for a very good reason; you pay Forth Bridge money you get the Forth Bridge, you pay piece of wood across a stream money and one vigorous bounce too many will break it.
* Little Big Planet on PS3 for those of you who have a real life life. It is the most frustrating thing ever, but very beautiful to look at. I have to play Tomb Raider to relax afterward.
* Even more shocking it seemed was the fact that this had not “made” me gay also. A thirty second survey turned into a twenty minute interrogation about my 14 year old sexual preferences (which was basically Howard Stapleford from Tomorrow’s World, or Jeremy Brett), and what exotic places I must have lived to have met people who apparently only resided in salacious soap opera storylines.
Tags: curiosity, driving, gender, inabailities, men, ps3, whinging, women
Are you attempting to hold the screwdriver with your vagina?
Obviously you saw that same German movie too…
Ahem.
80s Romford was a bastion of small-minded Conservatism [still is, only with a BNP element now]. My house, for all its failings, was at least a bastion of liberal values where some things weren’t for sale, unlike outside.
“Are you attempting to hold the screwdriver with your vagina?”
Congratulations, you’ve just made me laugh so much that my nose is running. This is a wonderful blog all round; I’ve been expressing similar sentiments for a long time, mostly through arguing with my mother who argues that, for better or worse, men and women are fundamentally different. While there may be some validity in that viz quantifiable physical differences (as you say), I’m inclined to think that “fundamental differences” are too often a handy way to excuse Being A Twat on both sides of the gender divide. Watching Confessions of a Shopaholic and Top Gear are just two sides of the same coin.
And yes, a lot of people do attribute shitty spatial awareness to being female, which can be viewed as a something of a “get out of jail free” card if you’re a dyspraxic female but can be seriously socially disabling for dyspraxic males who are actually expected to master all those practical skills (and the great majority of dyspraxics *are* male).
Actually, scrub everything I’ve just written about my mum: ’tis she, not my dad, who does all the DIY in our house, and she has just appeared over my shoulder with the following quote:
“Believe me, there are plenty of men who can’t hold a screwdriver. They may be good at screwing but that’s something else.”