Binary Oppositions

Do binary oppositions reflect some inner belief of gender roles?

In a class assignment that put lists of binary oppositions into two distinct columns, I was surprised to see the varied results that arose from each of the groups in class. What I found most interesting, however, was the way that we related the binary opposition of man/woman into our previously developed list.

In our list of binary oppositions, we related the words premeditated, traditional, success, urban, light, and parent to man. The counterparts we related to woman included spontaneous, unorthodox, failure, rural, dark, and child. I found it interesting that we associated words that conveyed a sense of strength and stability with man, while we grouped woman with words that seemed to convey a sense of instability. Our associations made me recall The Madwoman in the Attic, a text that argues the "madness" of women as a metaphor for their repressed anger.

In response to our lists, I wondered if societal beliefs were to account for our associations. Why do I relate words such as strength and parent with men? Did I really believe that men are stronger and more stable than women? While I don't think that I necessarily believe men to be more successful or stable than females, I do believe that there is some sort of societal construct that sends that message.

What I found really interesting about the binary oppositions and the lists produced as a result of our associations was the way our class produced different associations for man/woman. Certainly Structuralists would argue the differences in our class lists are purely incidental, and to some extent, I would agree that these varying associations seem to be purely incidental. Media and society send very strong messages about male and female roles, and I think that our perceived notion of men as more successful, established, and stable is probably a universally accepted notion, whether or not it's correct.

I find the whole notion of binary oppositions to be interesting, and I'm especially interested in the discussions that develop as a result of these oppositions. It seems that in the case of our class exercise, binary opposition lists do indeed reflect some inner beliefs, whether these beliefs are held true or not.