I totally agree with Alison Jagger. Men are considered to be bigger than
women, because our idea of an average man is larger than our idea of an
average woman. Our definition of "average" is influenced by what we
believe to be "the norm". Therefore, when asked to visualize "typical"
man and a woman, most of people will think of a guy being taller, just
because we believe it should be that way.
Marina
On Tue, 9 Sep 1997, Yvonne Kenyon wrote:
> I've been interested to read the discussion on height comparisons between
> women and men, not merely because it coincides with a university course i'm
> doing on representation and gender.
> In her essay "Sexual Difference and Sexual Equality" Alison Jaggar says:
>
> "... the ubiquitious context of sexual inequality has shaped not only our
> sex-differentiated genetic potential and the sex-differentiated ways is
> which we express that potential, but continues to influence our perception
> and interpretation of existing sexual differences, disposing us, for
> instance, to perceive a greater disparity between the sexes than exists.
> One example is the common perception that men are generally taller than
> women, a perception reinforeced by the norms of heterosexual coupling, even
> though the mean difference in height between women and men is only a few
> inches, whereas the normal distribution of height within each sex is over
> two feet."
> which is to say that there is a grreater discrepancy in height within the
> sexes than between the sexes. It isn't surprising that this misinformation
> gets re-represented in sf.
>
> Ciao
> Sian
> ruralrep@medeserv.com.au
>
"Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society
happens to be selling at the time."
Naomi Wolf
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