Have women lost the battle of the sexes before we ever got a chance to fight?
According to Sherry Ortner, the answer is, yes. In ‘Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?’, Ortner argues, from an anthropological perspective, that women are universally subordinate to men, suggesting “the secondary status of woman in society is one of the true universals, a pan-cultural fact.” In this article, Ornter provides us with three pieces of evidences for her position and then elaborates on each:
“(1) Woman’s body and its functions, more involved more of the time with “Species life,” seem to place her closer to nature, in contrast to man’s physiology, which frees him more completely to take up the projects of culture; (2) woman’s body and its functions place her in social roles that in turn are considered to be at a lower order of the cultural process than man’s; and (3) woman’s traditional social roles, imposed because of her body and its functions, in turn give her a different psychic structure, which like her physiological nature, and her social roles, is seen as being closer to nature.”
Ortner argues that woman is subordinate to man because woman is closer to nature for physiological, social, and psychological reasons. This fact of woman being closer to nature forces and or allows man to create culture. Ortner claims that nature is inferior to culture because nature is perishable, while culture is composed of “lasting, eternal, transcendent objects.” Therefore, women are inferior to men, because women are closer to nature (inferior), and men are responsible for culture (superior).
Ortner posits:
“…The onus is no longer upon us to demonstrate that female subordination is a cultural universal; it is up to those who would argue against the point to bring forth counterexamples.”
Endicott and Endicott provide one such counterexample with the Batek peoples of Malaysia. The Batek are one of few (if not the only) known gender egalitarian societies. Gender egalitarian, here, is defined as “neither males nor females are prevented from doing whatever they want to do (short of things that are biologically impossible).” With the exception of terminologies for differentiating females from males during puberty and in the nuclear family (for example, pre-pubescent males and females are simply comprehensively referred to as “children”), gender is not a relevant or necessary divide in Batek culture.
“To Batek, gender was just one of many qualities of people-including personality, position in the kinship system, age, and ethnic identity-that might be relevant in particular situations.”
Although the Batek recognize the physiological differences between males and females, such as physical strength, these physiological differences do not inhibit either sex from undertaking various tasks and or activities. One such example is tree climbing, where Batek women are recognized as not being able to climb as high as men, but this physiological fact of women’s lesser “arm strength” does not make women inferior to men, or deter women from participation.
It is, in my opinion, that cultural constructs are responsible for the subordination of women, for gender roles and for gender norms. While gender hierarchies may be a cultural universal, strong feminist women and men are making (and achieving) great leaps at challenging and overcoming the sham system.
Ornter is living in the past, or, at the very least, around some very sexist individuals and should immediately find a new social group. While I cannot disagree with Ortner that women’s bodies and its functions are different than men’s, I disagree that woman’s physiology makes her inferior, and that woman’s ability to birth children places her in a different and lesser social role. I don’t see how the female anatomy can be considered lesser because of it’s naturalness. Aside from the fact that males and females are both mammals, both natural beings – just because a man can’t birth a baby doesn’t make him any less apart of “species life” – Ortner, how do you think babies are made? Sure, being pregnant causes women to become a little “slower” during pregnancy but I have known women that run every day during their pregnancy (stopping maybe around the 8 month mark). I have known a female CEO who worked at her office until her water broke and then stopped at her office on the way back from the hospital to pick up briefs. Breastfeeding? So far, I have known two female doctors who have had their babies at work with them every day so that they can do their jobs and breastfeed their babies. Woman’s physiology causes her confinement to the domestic sphere? It was already 23 years ago that my best friend’s father became the first male employee at BC Rail to take paternity leave. Ortner’s example of “women as teachers” and “men as professors”? From my high school, the only individuals to become teachers were male, and this term, 4 out of 5 of my professors are female.
While these are just my experiences, and that scale is too small to make any landmark statements, it is, in my opinion, that female is both nature and culture, just as male is both nature and culture. I cannot argue the universal facts that Ortner posits, that is, I do not disagree that much of the world is still living in the dark ages of gender hierarchy, and that the feminist movement has a ways to go – but Ortner’s evidence doesn’t allow for the clear change that is happening, for the advancement of women’s rights and roles in society.
The following video gives a brief synopsis of some of the feminist philosophies presented in Simone de Beauvior’s ‘The Second Sex’:
This next video is a Ted Talk by speaker Jackson Katz, following the topic of ‘straying away from blaming women for the oppression of women’, Katz discusses the necessary movement away from domestic violence as a “women’s issue” to domestic violence as a men’s issue.