Um, if you're a girl/woman and you are thinking, then you are thinking as what you are. There's no such thing as "thinking like a girl" or "like a boy"...you can only think like yourself.
I never felt compelled to read her stuff even as a book-crazy teenager, perhaps for the very reason that it was sold so hard as A Female Author Writing Like a Guy, and "writing like a guy" seemed to mean you restricted yourself to writing about gangs and other troubled males in leather jackets.
I guess I figured, why reject one literary gender stereotype only to replace it two seconds later with another?
Also, I should add that on my Twitter yesterday, I wrote "I am dying my hair, waxing, drinking a cocktail and watching I Love Lucy, there is officially no doubt that I have a vagina."
See, I just outed myself as a hypocrite. It's easy.
I don't don't necessarily like her statement about thinking like a "girl" but I would argue that because being a girl is a gender construct you don't necessarily think like a girl because you have girlie parts.
This is not to slight Ms. Hinton, whose quote here is I think taken a bit out of context, but we need some female young adult authors writing from a female point of view who also don't "think like girls," by which I mean, the way girls are supposed to and presumed to think.
Am I reading too much into it to think that maybe what she means is that she didn't think within the limitations conventionally forced upon girls at the time when she was growing up? I'm probably really reaching there. I just love her so much and don't want to believe she's buying into and reinforcing the gender binary like that.
@somedisaster: I was gonna say the same thing, because I really, really want to give her the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to sit here right by you and ignore the others criticising her, lalalala, I can't hear them, lalalalal...
@bluebears: Me, too. I was just taking a deep breath preparing to write my magnum opus on thinking like a girl/boy, but realized I might as well spend that time thinking like a zombie.
I think girls think differently than guys. In general, we process language and spatial orientation differently, not better or worse but differently. For me, feminism is about social political and economic equality, not pretending the sexes are not at all different.
@cait98: True. Oh I knew she would get flamed, but it's out of context. What women really mean what they say something like this is: I think independent of gender stereotypes, therefore it may seem odd that I wrote from a man's p.o.v. She is not bashing women.
@cait98: I don't think that the sexes have no differences. I do not think those differences have any bearing on her ability to write from a different perspective. It's her wording that bothers me, you see?
@cait98: Yeah, but I'm pretty sure she didn't mean "I have a brain that has developed in the presence of an excess* of testosterone. It was transplanted to me by Dr. Frankenstein." She meant, "most women think in a way that is girly and I do not". The point is that the premise, that most women think in any particular way, isn't a statement anyone should be making.
@cait98: I just said the biological stuff as an example of proven ways girls think differently than boys. I think we also think differently than boys because of what's imposed on us societally and culturally. To ignore that I don't think does anybody any favors.
She found it easy to adopt a male perspective, she tends to see the world from a male perspective. I don't think that statement puts down women. Not more than any author who sees the world differently than one might expect them to based on outward appearances.
As to the gender binary, well I think that's outside the scope of what I'm saying. I'm definitely speaking in generalizations, it's a complicated thing. Your sex impacts the way you think biologically, your gender impacts it socially.
My overall point is that it's ok to acknowledge differences and take on other ways of looking at the world - while not putting anyone down and still striving for equality of women.
@restless: I agree. Especially since she was growing up during 60's in Tulsa. I imagine that pink frilly dresses were de rigueur, and writing male characters, even "sensitive," male characters put her in the position of being an outcast. I think she is slamming feminine stereotypes, not women.
@cait98: It's not that it puts other women down. It's that it assumes that men think one certain way, and women think a different way, but within those groups there is homogeneity and that's clearly not the case. I think it's kind of sad, honestly, that she perceives herself as so very different from others of her sex and gender that she's effectively disavowing membership in that sex and that gender insofar as her thinking processes are concerned. The alternative, which I find much more appealing, is that she could have worked to expand what we perceive as a woman's thoughts.
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She was personal friends with my proff and pretty cool herself. And it was a kickass class too- Jane Austen in Film and Literature.
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These statements bother me so much.
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I guess I figured, why reject one literary gender stereotype only to replace it two seconds later with another?
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There's no fooling you!
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See, I just outed myself as a hypocrite. It's easy.
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My boyfriend is more a "girl" than I am.
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Unicorns and rainbows, two favorite things of girly girly girly girls!
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FAIL.
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*Chemically speaking.
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She found it easy to adopt a male perspective, she tends to see the world from a male perspective. I don't think that statement puts down women. Not more than any author who sees the world differently than one might expect them to based on outward appearances.
As to the gender binary, well I think that's outside the scope of what I'm saying. I'm definitely speaking in generalizations, it's a complicated thing. Your sex impacts the way you think biologically, your gender impacts it socially.
My overall point is that it's ok to acknowledge differences and take on other ways of looking at the world - while not putting anyone down and still striving for equality of women.
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Right, but she never said being a woman makes her incapable of thinking "like a man" (whatever that means). In fact, she said the opposite.
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The whole incident is one big oxymoron.
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