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Analysis Of ' Throwing Like A Girl ' By Iris Marion

Decent Essays

In her essay “Throwing Like a Girl,” Iris Marion Young examines why women move differently than do men. She discusses the apparent observable differences in bodily comportment, physical engagement with things, ways of using the body in performing tasks, and bodily self-image of feminine existence. Young makes the argument that the differences between men and women are not caused by a mysterious “essence” or by any biological or anatomical limitation, but, rather, we are socialized into “being” in our bodily space by the situation surrounding our existence. The present account will discuss the phenomenon “throwing like a girl” and the contributing factors to the gender differences depicted in Iris Marion Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl.” In Part One, I will provide a reconstruction of Young’s argument set out in her essay. In Part Two, I will give a critique of her argument. In a psychological study with five year-old children, Erwin Straus observes that boys and girls throw differently. He concludes that the reason girls throw the way they do is because they are “feminine” and thus throw with a “feminine attitude” in relation to the world and to the space surrounding them. He posits this to be a natural, biologically based “feminine essence.” Simone de Beauvoir rejects this notion and, instead, claims human existence is to be defined by the individual’s situation. Beauvoir places great focus on physiology when talking about the woman’s bodily being and her physical

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