Provide a synopsis on (Is Female to male as Nature is to Culture by Sherry B. Ortner) 1-What key points and augument are offered by the author. (2) What is it in the reading most significant, interesting or challenging? why?

PHILOSOPHY

Introduction

It is a universal fact that women have for a long period of time shared a secondary status in society. However, within this fact particular cultural conceptions as well as symbolizations of a woman are beyond ordinary diversity and mutual contradictions. In addition, the actual handling of women along with their relative authority and input vary tremendously with cultures. Furthermore, the trend changes over different ages in time depending with specific cultural traditions (Ortner, 1974).

Sherry takes a closer look into the social structure and realizes that this structure gives an overview of the perception given by most societies on the significance of sons in addition to the supreme authority that belongs to the father in the family. This type of patriarchal governance in homes contributes to divisions in the actual responsibilities of either men or women, the power along with the influence wielded.  Nevertheless, though the woman is encompassed in negative valence it is essential that there is equal interaction and operation by the two principles for the world to survive (Ortner, 1974).

Thus Sherry concludes that female is not to male. The worldwide devaluation on women is determined through biological determinism. Male species have inbuilt genes that lack in the female species that naturally make men the overriding sex. Consequently, besides women being naturally subordinate they are in general contented with that position. This owes to the fact that they feel privileged to be protected and having the chance to make the most of their maternal pleasures which according to them gives extremely satisfying life experiences (Ortner, 1974).

Female subordination is interpreted taking into consideration other factors in the universe that are built into structures of mainly the generalized situations of human beings in any culture. The fact that all human beings have physical bodies with sense of minds that are nonphysical shows that they are part and parcel of a given society comprising other individuals. It also indicates that they inherit cultural tradition and should have some relationship with nature or else the nonhuman kingdom for them to survive (Ortner, 1974).

Culture is interested in continuity as well as survival in that every individual is born and eventually dies.  This momentum rises above the lives as well as deaths of specific people. Therefore, since the giver of life is a woman the question remains as to why every culture places a lesser value on women. Culture can be equited with the schemes of thought along with technology through which humanity has power over nature (Ortner, 1974).

According to Connell, institutions like family, state and capitalist industry are structural characteristics acting in unison to generate the required gendered experiences for labor markets. Part time employments for women or the labor reserve army are working examples. Nevertheless, such deeds in concert are not essentially deliberate, nor harmonious in all instances (Connell, 1987).

Connell through his designed framework specifies the structural scrutiny of the experience of women in oppression in various societal institutions at any given time. His framework for the social examination of gender results to a framework that is meta-theoretical. It advocates on identifying the specific constitutions of power, labor and cathexis with an aim of understanding as well as analyzing the gender associations in whichever institution within any socio-historical framework (Connell, 1987).

There are considerably diverse social structures that stipulate the associations between men as well as women in relevantly different ways. One is forced to face up with inequity in training, promotion labor division, housework and childcare organizations, labor markets segregation, division between paid and unpaid work and establishment of jobs for men and others for women. These are definite structures that are crucial to consider as elements of structures that are related in causing gendered splitting up of labor (Maharaj, 1995).

I am surprised to discover that in the whole universe despite the major developments that have come with time and technology, still, business and state hierarchies practically exclude women. Additionally Connell stipulates that there is interpersonal and institutional violence in opposition to women along with sexual surveillance and regulation, domestic influence with the competition of such influence. This is namely division of authority or power depending on gender (Connell, 1987).

Cathexis recognizes the social structure of sexuality. The distinguishing of sexed bodies is done ethno methodologically via particular abstract lenses that draw from precise configuration, of our society, of social organizations. Connell adds that sexuality is neither in existence before nor outside social customs in which people form and carry on relationships. Sexuality is endorsed or conducted but not expressed. Cathexis is a structure that shapes the emotional attachments of people (Connell, 1987).

A woman has been brought in a limited space of her own. She is supposed to continually survey herself in everything she is and everything she does right from childhood. On the other hand the role of the man is to make things happen thus an agent of power. Male is the active participant and is attributed with an erotic look, one with the power to gaze. He is the spectator and the woman is the spectacle. In addition, due to the pressure from the society to act woman, women have found themselves socially restricted at home, community and place of work (Maynard, 1998).

Nobelius in his research gives us a clue on the behavior of women revealing that there are noteworthy differences in men and women in their posture, gesture, movement and overall bodily comportment. A woman is more restricted and they tend to have an imaginary space surrounding them to which they are cautious to move into. This resistance to stretch, reach and extend the body is a clear manifestation of her confinement and unwillingness to meet resistance.  A loose woman will violate these rules, which will be manifest in her free as well as easy way movement, morals and speech (Nobelius, 2004).

The movement of a woman along with her posture and gesture conveys grace and a measure of eroticism that is held back by modesty. She makes herself object and the same time prey. Men act but women appear; men stare at women while they watch themselves looked at. The surveyor is male and the surveyed is female. This is the case in all scenarios of life and therefore we cannot equate male to female owing to the fact that their physical and natural aspects do not match up (Berger, n.d.).

Conclusion

Culture and nature are conceptual categories that lack boundary in the real world whilst some cultures strongly oppose the two categories. For instance primitive people do not distinguish the two aspects but the western world has gone an extra mile into creating self-consciousness regarding the disparity between the two aspects, nature and culture. Nevertheless, every culture declares that proper associations between the existence of human beings and the natural powers depend solely on the application of the powers of culture to control the processes of life as well as the universe.

REFERENCES

Berger, J. (n.d.). The Social Construction of Gender. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/farberas/arth/arth200/gender.html

Connell, R. (1987). Gender and power:society, the person, and sexual politics. California: Stanford University Press.

Maharaj, Z. (1995). A SOCIAL THEORY Of GENDER. Feminist Review , 49, 50-65.

Maynard, S. (1998). Homosexuality, Masculinity (Psychology), Labor, History, Men. Labour (42), 183-197.

Nobelius, A.-M. (2004, June 23). What is the difference between sex and gender? Retrieved July 21, 2011, from http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html

Ortner, S. B. (1974). Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture? Woman, culture, and society. , 68-87.

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