random paper thoughts [elanya]

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Part of the reason women were generally taboo at sea was that there was no defined 'female space' on ships?

Also - look at perception of subversion in marginalized groups (how pirates were believed to organize themselves in comparison with the 'norm' - this i a trick to get to use Snelgrave ;)

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thoughtful

Music:: Tom Lehrer - Poisoning Pigeons in the Park

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There are 11 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Part of the reason women were generally taboo at sea was that there was no defined 'female space' on ships?

But... aren't all ships 'she'?

Even the ones named after famous male admirals and such?

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ships are female (In some languages. Rusian, and I believe German as well, ships are all male) but there are no spaces on the ships that are assigned to female gendered tasks in tha way that, for example, the kitchen is traditionally seen as a female space. There is no space assigned to women so they have no *place* on ships :)

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Is there no space assigned to women because they have no place on ships, or do they have no place on ships because there is no space assigned to them? Or, on the gripping hand, is this a stupid question because the answer to both is "yes" and not distinct?

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It isn't a stupid question - the idea of gendered space is a relevant athropological concept. I'm not sure I have phrased it the best here as I am just tossing out ideas. :p

There were women on ships, though - they were just ognored/overlooked because, conceptually, they shouldn't have been there.

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Not because it would have been admitting there was a problem with discipline on a given ship, and/or because removing them would probably have seriously annoyed the sailors who wanted them there, thus causing more problems than it solved?

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Those aren't mutually exclusive ideas. Ideally weren't supposed to be there, they weren't talked about often.

I suspect that if there were female constructed space, it would have been easier to accept them - though Steve is right to say that this requires understanding why there was no assigned female space to begin with.

Which in turn mght have something to do with the idea of men taking over traditional female roles (cooking, again, for example)... Although often seacooks were sailors who were no longer capable of filling other shipboard roles due to age or infirmary... Anyway.

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I'm with Rum on this one. It's begging the question to say that the lack of gendered space made women taboo, without answering why there was no gendered space.

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Ahh, I see what you are getting at now. the point of my paper, though, is to look at why ships are socially constructed the way they are - this is just sort of a potential follow up to that - a possiblity that I might want to look into depending on what I can determine from my initial research. Like I said, i'm just throwing out ideas.

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Interesting. Given that not all spaces are gendered, is there good (archaeological or textual) evidence that ships were thought of as specifically masculine spaces, as opposed to being neutrally gendered or non-gendered, during the period you're looking at?

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As far as I can tell, it isn't a question anyone has ever thought to investigate. Which is why I wanted to write this paper ;p

Although as Charles pointed out, we do have the whole ship *as* female thing to run with too (at least in English).

Which makes, I've thought, an interesting contrast to the sea as female (but with diferent, more dangerous, qualities).

Maybe I just ought to focus on gendered space in/on ships eh? :V

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I wasn't sure that she actually said that, which is why I couched my question differently.

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elanya

random paper thoughts

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December