Blog 3
I'm going to take a a further look into power as dualisms (Plumwood). The general concept behind dualistic power, is that we either categorized as the “in-group� or are thought of as being part of the “out-group�. The view of being categorized as the in-group has with it an associated cultural values which in tern make the “in-group� desirable. We can see that these values are assigned culturally by simply examining two different cultures. This value, assigned by the culture, is what gives the “in-group� the notion of superiority over those in the “out-group�.
Using this model of power to examine gender first leads us to very obvious point. We (as a culture) tend to view male/female as a dualism. This is actually a dualism Plumwood specifically mentions. However, following a few other points of the dualistic model, we can find some other interesting relations. Take for example, the dualistic idea of radical separation. Here, we see process of attempting to hyperseparate gender into a partition consisting of only two categories. From a social norms perspective, this explains the awkwardness of not falling into one of the two categories. The dualistic nature of the culture expects us to fall into one of the two, and in addition to encouraging this, actually self perpetuates the dualism. As an act of preforming gender, we should realize that these expectations are founded on the basis of dualistic ideals, which as seen, acts against the idea gender equality. Since these are self perpetuating, in order to decrease/stop the perpetuation, we need to get out of the this dualistic mindset altogether.