That Verse Doesn't Say What You Think It Does

Part One of a series on Chapter Ten of Sheila Gregoire's She Deserves Better

Everything takes me longer than I expect it will.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Getting through She Deserves Better has been the example that proves the rule. I’m finally to the last chapter, and, as before, there are a lot of true things mixed together with not-so-true things. In some cases the writers draw straight connecting lines through various and sundry curious data points, leaping to conclusions that aren’t warranted by the evidence. In other cases, they provide evidence for circumstances that might have been true a decade ago but are no longer. And in others, they don’t appear to observe what is there for anyone to see if only they/them wanted to.

Not So Much

On page 236 they claim that “our society” “prefers” “boys to girls.” The proof they offer for this declaration is that it is ok for a girl to wear the t-shirts and bathing costumes of her brothers, but not ok for a boy to wear the clothes of his sisters. Girls can do what are traditionally considered boy kinds of things, but boys can’t do what are considered to be girl kinds of things. “Your daughter” they explain “is being raised in a world where femaleness is seen as inherently inferior to maleness.”