Instructions
Prompt: Choose at least 3 quotes from the readings –  Ortner’s 1. “Is Woman to Male as Nature is to Culture” and reflect on Kincaid’s 2. “Girl” in conjunction. Post to the discussion section about your observations and reactions. What did the readings reveal about your assumptions and perceptions of gender, self, and “other”? Use key concepts in these readings to draw relationships and insights. Considering the time when these were both written, what is it like today “to learn” gender? Put another way, how do these writings illuminate our thinking and observations about gender today?
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid (published in The New Yorker – June 26, 1978)
Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color
clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun;
cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off;
when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum in it,
because that way it won’t hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it;
is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it
won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you
are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat
boys, not even to give directions; don’t eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I
don’t sing benna? on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a
button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to
hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like
the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so
that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t
have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red
ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your
throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a
whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like
too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to
someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for
dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a
table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence
of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut
I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own
spit; don’t squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s
flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be
a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is
how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a
good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a
fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on
you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if
this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving
up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it
doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s
fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are
really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?