{"id":13457,"date":"2009-09-19T10:15:26","date_gmt":"2009-09-19T15:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=13457"},"modified":"2012-10-17T02:23:14","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T07:23:14","slug":"when-woman-means-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/09\/19\/when-woman-means-short\/","title":{"rendered":"When “Woman” Means “Short”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phoebe sent in this Moto Guzzi website<\/a>.\u00a0 You can see that it allows buyers to select a “lady seat” for their motorcycle:<\/p>\n

\"aa\"<\/p>\n

What is a lady seat?\u00a0 As Phoebe explains:<\/p>\n

The lady seat is simply a lowered seat to allow people with shorter inseams to straddle the bike comfortably when stopped or maneuvering by foot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"a\"<\/p>\n

So really, it’s just a lowered seat for people who are shorter than the imagined person for whom the motorcycle is being built.<\/p>\n

This is a use of sex as a shorthand for referencing physical characteristics that (may or may not be) true on average, but are not categorically true.\u00a0 That is, women may be on average shorter than men, but not all women are short and not all men are tall.\u00a0 So we have (1) a conflation of women and short stature and (2) an erasure of short men that essentially means that they cannot buy a comfortable motorcycle (unless they’re willing to buy it with a lady seat).<\/p>\n

This kind of thing is done all the time.\u00a0 In fact, it is the primary conflation that we use to justify sex segregated sports.\u00a0 Women, it is often argued, can’t play football because they are too small and would get too physically knocked around.\u00a0 But this (1) assumes that all women are small (which they are not) and (2) erases small men.\u00a0 Few people seem to notice that it’s not only women who are excluded from football, it’s also all of the men who aren’t big enough to play with the “big boys.”\u00a0 Rather than excluding women from football, we might use a weight class system (like they do in wrestling).\u00a0 If we had two football leagues (say, in high school) based on weight, both sex integrated, then not only could women get a chance to play football, lots of men who otherwise don’t get a chance to play could play too.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phoebe sent in this Moto Guzzi website.\u00a0 You can see that it allows buyers to select a “lady seat” for their motorcycle: What is a lady seat?\u00a0 As Phoebe explains: The lady seat is simply a lowered seat to allow people with shorter inseams to straddle the bike comfortably when stopped or maneuvering by foot. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,55,2103,23703],"class_list":["post-13457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13457"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51854,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13457\/revisions\/51854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}