Plato’s subordination targets the feminine as a category, not actual women

Evidence

It is not women themselves as a sex, then, who are the problem so much as the feminine: the behaviour, characteristics and areas of life associated with women. Such behaviour is equally or even more problematic when indulged in by men. The feminine is explicitly and repeatedly associated in Plato with the lower order of nature as opposed to reason, associated with formless, undisciplined matter or primeval chaos (Timaeus 50): with disorder and ungoverned emotion (Republic 605 D-E), with idle gossip and opinion (doxa) (Republic 304 C, 111, 395), with moral evil (Timaeus 91), incompetence (Republic 455D), animal nature and distance from logos (Timaeus 76), with lower, slavelike nature unsuited to the public sphere (Republic 455D), and with the baser self and bodily appetite (Timaeus 70). — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 297

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes women-the-sex from the feminine-as-category — a distinction that does much analytical work.
• XREF: Extends the reason/nature dualism genealogy at the heart of this book and connects to Merchant’s Death of Nature read alongside. — connects to: It is not Plato but Bordo’s account that makes the world-soul female. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 286; Modernity recodifies Plato’s form-change hierarchy as a hard-soft gendered division — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 446; Male-authored justifications of female subordination reflect self-interest, not truth — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 59 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Worth checking which specific dialogues support each association listed — a possible close-reading angle for the course.

Broader Connections

• Modernity recodifies Plato’s form-change hierarchy as a hard-soft gendered division #expands (0.85) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 446
• Plato’s devaluation targeted internal nature for discipline, not external nature for control #complicates (0.85) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 411
• Hyperseparation from the feminine makes others only contingent means to self-contained ends #expands (0.78) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 529
• Male-authored justifications of female subordination reflect self-interest, not truth #qualifies (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 59