Mike,
Your wife does the same task differently not because she's a woman, but
because she is not as strong as you are, as a human being. A man of her
height and weight would not not accomplish something the way you do, either.
And a woman of your size would not have a problem with that.
Marina
woman your size On Tue, 9 Sep 1997, Michael Marc Levy wrote: <snip>
> Charnas portrays women who
> have either been born into a society or adapted to societies where women
> are expected to participate in the full range of human activities,
> including many physical activities generally handled by men in our society.
> One of the problems with many female warrior stories, it seems to me, is that
> the female characters act pretty much like men when it comes to accomplishing
> physical activities. This doesn't strike me as entirely realistic. I know
> from experience, for example, that my wife, who is a small person and
> doesn't have a lot of physical strength even though she works out
> regularly, will often set out to accomplish a physical task (digging up a
> garden, flipping a matress, moving the refrigerator, sewing on a button)
> completely differently from how I, who am much stronger but much more clumsy,
> would do it. She'll do the job just as well, sometimes less quickly, sometimes
> more quickly, but she'll break it down into different parts or
> sub-routines than I would, use different tools, etc. I think we see some
> of this in Charnas's riding women and particularly in Alldera's invasion
> force in Fury. We see some of this in Eleanor Arnason's work as well.
>
> Mike Levy
>
"Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society
happens to be selling at the time."
Naomi Wolf
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