Week Three Blog
Plumwood thinks that power stems from social organization, and that power is formed through hierarchies. She also believes that power is formed from a dualistic way of thinking. It's when one subject or group of people is compared to another as being better or worse.
In the case of norms, we try to fit these norms as a society. We work, whether we know it or not, to fit in with what the norms are. By fitting these norms it is then when we compare things and make one better or more important than the other which creates dualistic power. The norms create what each group is like and that leads to "giving" certain groups more power by finding the differences between them and other groups.
This affects how we live, because as we "do" gender we are performing in order to fit the norms. We "do" gender in order to be acknowledged as something in our society. We want to be recognizable. By doing this we are fitting into the groups that are then compared with one another. By doing gender we are just fitting ourselves into groups that may have more power or less power than other groups. This is how we work, this is how our society works. It's natural and it's something everyone does, but by making certain groups have more power than others it creates differences in a dominating and sometimes overpowering way.