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Throwing Like a Girl
Jun. 4th, 2006 11:59 pm
High today, here: 21. Dewpoint then: 10. High dewpoint: 13.
High today in TO: 22. Dewpoint then: 10. High dewpoint: 13.
Low today on the balcony: 13.7. High: 22.1. Currently: 16.5.
I am hereby nominating Mark Mulder for the Curtis Joseph When-Will-You-Stop-Killing-My-Fantasy-Team? award. But seeing as I don't have Albert Pujols, I probably ought to shut up and count my blessings. *koff*
So, this is the New Way: Walk to WLU on weekdays; walk to UW on one weekend day and stay home the other weekend day, depending as whether I'm feeling particularly Christ-y or Jew-y. (You'd think that was a joke.) Today was walking to UW, through the park, along the Laurel Creek Trail, stopping along the way at a gazebo lined with the names of people who donated money, or in whose name money was donated, toward the trail. For a larger amount of money, you get to say something. Most people who say something, and who are not advertising something, are dead. Almost all of the dead people died young, or at least young-ish. It's so obvious; I don't know why it never particularly struck me until I was looking at those things today: people who die young are memorialized to a much greater degree than people who die in old age. Something like setting the balance right, I guess: they weren't finished making their mark, so others make it for them. Or, it's just a greater loss, calling for a greater response.
Finished the Lysis, which I started reading because I picked up a free copy of the Review of Politics at the Congress book fair, because it had an article about the Lysis (Mary P. Nichols, "Friendship and Community in Plato's Lysis) and an article about Nietzsche. The article, so far, is more interesting than the dialogue, but they never give much up on first reading. Actually, the end of the article, in which she suggests that the article is really about finding a place for philosophy in the city, is interesting; not so much the rest--although it would have been worth reading just to learn that the Lysis is the only dialogue in which a character (namely Menexenus) leaves and comes back. That, Nichols says, is what friends--it's a dialogue about friendship--do: they leave and come back, as opposed to lovers, who never leave.
This morning, politicaltheory.info brought to my attention (and so convinced me, provisionally, again, that it doesn't waste more time than it's worth) that Iris Marion Young once wrote a Merleau-Pontian analysis of throwing like a girl. It is called "Throwing Like a Girl", and it is collected in two books, each of which is called "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays. Well, actually, that's the sub-title of the more recent one, which came out last year, but still. Both of them also contain a mostly Irigarayian analysis of having breasts.
So, I had to track this down in the UW library today. Young's take on throwing like a girl is, basically, that girls are brought up to 1) distance themselves from their bodies, and 2) lack confidence in their physical capacities; these two factors lead them, generally, to make smaller, more tentative, more reactive gestures of all sorts, including throwing (and also including opening jars: Young notes that women, in addition to giving up quickly because they start out believing they can't do it, tend to try to open jars from the wrist rather than from the shoulder, such that, just like throwing, they generate a lot less torque and leverage), than boys. (The last time I walked to WLU, I passed a schoolyard where some girls, 10-ish, were playing a baseball-ish game, for gym class, with a soft rubber ball. The batter hit a little pop-up; all, or at least several, of the infielders shrieked, looked up, and leaned back, frozen on the spot.)
Which sounds good enough, but I just dunno. Throwing like a girl is something that has always bugged the hell out of me. (And hitting like a girl.) What bugs me, actually, is that almost all girls throw like girls--even girls who, from their general appearance and comportment, I expect not to throw like girls. I have often been disappointed by female softball players. Softball itself, definitely, is part of the problem. (I have long maintained that we will know that the feminist revolution is completed when girls are no longer made to play softball (hey, we got rid of ringette)--that, and the stuff they pour on maxi-pads in the commercials is red.) The dimensions of softball are shorter all around than the dimensions of baseball, such that when I play softball now, I find that I have to short-arm the ball to keep from launching it into outer space--I have to throw like a girl. (There are, actually, some major league baseball players who throw like girls. Tony Batista throws like a girl. Raul Mondesi could throw like a girl from the right field wall to second base on the fly.) But that's more effect than cause. I'm pretty sure, really, that if a girl grows up like I grew up, and like a lot of boys grow up, throwing balls all the time from before she's conscious, she won't throw like a girl. But I dunno.
High today in TO: 22. Dewpoint then: 10. High dewpoint: 13.
Low today on the balcony: 13.7. High: 22.1. Currently: 16.5.
I am hereby nominating Mark Mulder for the Curtis Joseph When-Will-You-Stop-Killing-My-Fantasy-Team? award. But seeing as I don't have Albert Pujols, I probably ought to shut up and count my blessings. *koff*
So, this is the New Way: Walk to WLU on weekdays; walk to UW on one weekend day and stay home the other weekend day, depending as whether I'm feeling particularly Christ-y or Jew-y. (You'd think that was a joke.) Today was walking to UW, through the park, along the Laurel Creek Trail, stopping along the way at a gazebo lined with the names of people who donated money, or in whose name money was donated, toward the trail. For a larger amount of money, you get to say something. Most people who say something, and who are not advertising something, are dead. Almost all of the dead people died young, or at least young-ish. It's so obvious; I don't know why it never particularly struck me until I was looking at those things today: people who die young are memorialized to a much greater degree than people who die in old age. Something like setting the balance right, I guess: they weren't finished making their mark, so others make it for them. Or, it's just a greater loss, calling for a greater response.
Finished the Lysis, which I started reading because I picked up a free copy of the Review of Politics at the Congress book fair, because it had an article about the Lysis (Mary P. Nichols, "Friendship and Community in Plato's Lysis) and an article about Nietzsche. The article, so far, is more interesting than the dialogue, but they never give much up on first reading. Actually, the end of the article, in which she suggests that the article is really about finding a place for philosophy in the city, is interesting; not so much the rest--although it would have been worth reading just to learn that the Lysis is the only dialogue in which a character (namely Menexenus) leaves and comes back. That, Nichols says, is what friends--it's a dialogue about friendship--do: they leave and come back, as opposed to lovers, who never leave.
This morning, politicaltheory.info brought to my attention (and so convinced me, provisionally, again, that it doesn't waste more time than it's worth) that Iris Marion Young once wrote a Merleau-Pontian analysis of throwing like a girl. It is called "Throwing Like a Girl", and it is collected in two books, each of which is called "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays. Well, actually, that's the sub-title of the more recent one, which came out last year, but still. Both of them also contain a mostly Irigarayian analysis of having breasts.
So, I had to track this down in the UW library today. Young's take on throwing like a girl is, basically, that girls are brought up to 1) distance themselves from their bodies, and 2) lack confidence in their physical capacities; these two factors lead them, generally, to make smaller, more tentative, more reactive gestures of all sorts, including throwing (and also including opening jars: Young notes that women, in addition to giving up quickly because they start out believing they can't do it, tend to try to open jars from the wrist rather than from the shoulder, such that, just like throwing, they generate a lot less torque and leverage), than boys. (The last time I walked to WLU, I passed a schoolyard where some girls, 10-ish, were playing a baseball-ish game, for gym class, with a soft rubber ball. The batter hit a little pop-up; all, or at least several, of the infielders shrieked, looked up, and leaned back, frozen on the spot.)
Which sounds good enough, but I just dunno. Throwing like a girl is something that has always bugged the hell out of me. (And hitting like a girl.) What bugs me, actually, is that almost all girls throw like girls--even girls who, from their general appearance and comportment, I expect not to throw like girls. I have often been disappointed by female softball players. Softball itself, definitely, is part of the problem. (I have long maintained that we will know that the feminist revolution is completed when girls are no longer made to play softball (hey, we got rid of ringette)--that, and the stuff they pour on maxi-pads in the commercials is red.) The dimensions of softball are shorter all around than the dimensions of baseball, such that when I play softball now, I find that I have to short-arm the ball to keep from launching it into outer space--I have to throw like a girl. (There are, actually, some major league baseball players who throw like girls. Tony Batista throws like a girl. Raul Mondesi could throw like a girl from the right field wall to second base on the fly.) But that's more effect than cause. I'm pretty sure, really, that if a girl grows up like I grew up, and like a lot of boys grow up, throwing balls all the time from before she's conscious, she won't throw like a girl. But I dunno.
