Difference-based feminist critique aims at less dualistic culture, not traditional roles

Evidence

Plato’s proposal for women guardians does nothing to change the definition of reason and of the good life as the province of elite males, opposed to the lower order of nature and the feminine; it does not make Platonic cultural values or reason itself gender-neutral or androgynous. Platonic feminism is, at best, the feminism of uncritical equality, and this appears also to be the form of feminism endorsed by Bluestone herself. Bluestone is wholly uncritical of Plato’s politics and of the construction of reason in these oppositional ways. … These arguments turn on the question of difference, and Bluestone’s discussion persistently misinterprets these as arguments for a return to women’s traditional roles. Bluestone overlooks the alternative that such arguments are arguments for social change and for the development of more integrated, less dualistic forms of culture and of reason in which women will be able to participate fairly and fully. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 305

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how the ecofeminist difference critique is misread by uncritical-equality feminism.
• XREF: connects to: Rejecting nature-culture dualism improves feminist accounts of reproduction — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 162; Ending gender dualism needs both continuity and difference recognition. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 263; Feminism analyzes how women were inferiorized and connects sexism to other dominations — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 678 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Feminism analyzes how women were inferiorized and connects sexism to other dominations #expands (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 678