Girls’ culture / boys’ culture

In response to my last blog post­ing, 5/27/14, JJ wrote: “Dear Avi, My fam­i­ly love your books and we have a col­lec­tion of them on our book­case. How do you write from a female’s per­spec­tive? Do you inter­view or seek opin­ions from females (read­ers, fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends, etc)? Just curious.”

Regard­ing our under­stand­ing of male and female, there are, to be sure, bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences, but there is a per­sua­sive learned cul­ture that shapes our under­stand­ing (and prac­tice) of male and female as well.  The cul­ture is taught and learned con­scious­ly and uncon­scious­ly, so much so that cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences are often pre­sumed to be biological.

When I am talk­ing to groups of kids and they ask this question—and they do—I pro­vide an exam­ple. I ask the kids to take out paper and pen­cil, and then write down all the words they know for var­i­ous shades of blue. Inevitably, the girls write down many more words.

Is it because girls have, bio­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing, eyes that can see more col­ors than boys can? No. Nev­er­the­less, knowl­edge of color—and the words to fit that knowledge—is very much more an aspect of girls’ cul­ture than in boys’ culture.

I will ask the same kids to write down all the posi­tions on a foot­ball team. Guess who knows more? Guess why?

Can one learn these things—color—positions on a foot­ball team, regard­less of gen­der? Of course!  Do we learn? Not always.

All the same, if we are talk­ing about cul­ture, I believe it can be learned—and writ­ten about. I try.