In “Throwing Like a Girl,” Young conceptualizes the idea of “inhibited intentionality,” in which the capability and movement of bodies are limited based on gendered ideations. In other words, gendered notions teach us about how we are to move our bodies, with girls being told to not move so freely and boys being told the opposite. With this, I am reminded of a story from my mom’s childhood.
As she recalls this story, my mom once slapped one of her younger brothers in the face due to him making her overwhelmingly upset. Based on other stories that she has told, I figured that this was a common occurrence. My mom is the oldest of five, with two younger brothers and two younger sisters. She always laughed as she remembered the instances in which she got into physical fights with her younger sisters; yet, for some reason, this story with her brother was not as funny.
“I felt bad because I had felt like I made him feel like less of a man.”
“He was only a teenager, and I felt like I attacked his masculinity.”
As she recalls this instance, she expresses remorse and regret. She had no problem fighting her younger sisters, but when she physically slapped her brother, she thought she had crossed a line as a woman. Not because she was in the wrong, but because she felt she had taken up too much space. She moved in a way that should have been restricted because she now had committed the “crime” of stepping beyond the restraint of gendered movement.
As Young states, “feminine bodily existence is an inhibited intentionality, which simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an “I can” and withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed “I cannot.” In the case of my mom, she had stepped outside on these ideations and realized that she “could.” Yet, because of the expectations set for women and their bodies, my mom felt the self-inflicted reaction that she “shouldn’t.” In other words, once she realized that she “could,” her first thought afterward was that she “shouldn’t have.” And ever since, she still feels the same way. Instead of withholding her movement, resulting in a self-imposed “I can’t,” my mom fully committed and resulted in a self-imposed “I shouldn’t have.” In this sense, it becomes clear the ways in which we are socialized to not only police other bodies but also our own. Once we learn what we “can” or “can’t,” we try our best to maintain those limits. However, if we go beyond them, we do our best to compensate by replacing the ”I can’t” with an “I shouldn’t have.”
Unruly Bodies 
This resonates with me because growing up I grew up in a very traditional household. I have my mother and father and an older brother. My cousins on my moms side were all girls and my cousins on my dads side was all boys. When I would fight with the girls it was “okay” because we’re just girls and all we are is “drama” my dad would say. But, when it came to fighting my older brother, my boy cousins, or even my dad, arguing or snapping back was extremely disrespectful and punishable. This really never occurred to me until I became older. As I gotten older I realized I struggled with relationships because I could never explain how I felt because in my head it was wired in me that expressing my emotions to a man is disrespectful and will cause “drama.” Which happened to feel true when I was dating someone that wasn’t for me and reassured those negative feelings that were instilled in me from such a young age. Now that I’m in my twenties (which everything seems to change so fast in your twenties) and I don’t have a relationship with my dad and I don’t date the guy who made me cry when I wanted to explain how I feel, I am happy to say that I was able to grow from that experience. I’ve learned how to find the right people to be in my circle and find the right partner who can let me express my feelings and validate my feelings even if it does cause some sort of “drama.”
As I read your post, I couldn’t stop thinking about similar experiences that I have had growing up with my twin brother. A level of violence and aggression was expected of him because he was socialized as a boy. “Boys will be boys” was a common saying in my household, typically used after I came home crying because my brother said or did something. When we would get into fights when we were children, it inevitably ended in my brother either kicking me out because I was a girl and couldn’t play with the boys, or with him starting a physical fight, which I would always lose. I wonder how many of those fights I lost, not because I wasn’t capable of being strong, but because I was taught both outwardly and subliminally that I couldn’t be stronger than my brother, simply because he is a man? How many times in my childhood did I pull a punch or bite my tongue for the sake of preserving another’s masculinity?
I don’t have siblings but this reminds me of an experience I had when I was very young, maybe 3 or 4. There was a boy at my daycare who was always yelling at and hitting me, and one day I hit him back and immediately got sent home. The boy was sent home occasionally but the very first time I fought back, I was punished. I carried the guilt of that with me for years. It makes me wonder how much of that situation had to do with the idea that boys are allowed to be tough and physical, but girls have to be gentle and demure.