Stereotyping

I can't say enough about how much I am enjoying The Scroll. First, someone else besides me is remarking on the odd publications of the CBMW. Then there is a wonderful post about Dorothy Sayers and female stereotyping.

This really speaks to me. In most ways I am a very traditional women for my age, but I happen to find that technology is just as interesting, and considerably less complicated than knitting socks.

I don't do well in many of the tradition 'women's' things. I remember being asked to help with crafts and preparing dinners for different Christian events and programmes. I am not good at these things. I like crafts and dinners, but I am not particularly gifted in these areas. Nobody asks me to do these things any more. One gets a reputation I guess.

I also like knitting but I am not great at it. It is a social thing and I like it and I do it with the kids, but I am not particularly talented at knitting, handcraft design, art, music, gardening, or any of the traditional 'women's' things. How terrible I felt when I was once told that as a women I could contribute to the church by writing hymns. One might just as well tell a man to have a baby.

So when Dorothy Sayers "What is unreasonable and irritating is to assume that all one’s tastes and preferences have to be conditioned by the class to which one belongs," it soothes my soul.