the constitutive other.

Years ago my father would always say on the car ride to some destination, "không có người sấu thì làm sao biết được người tốt?", which loosely translates to the inability to identify a moral person unless present is an immoral. In society today, language, linguistics, lexicon, which are essentially one of the same, help individuals identity our surroundings and ascribe understanding to situations that exist before us. Often times it is this dichotomy of good versus evil which individuals look upon to forge this understanding. But by viewing our surroundings in such a dual way, a chunk of grey, the ham and cheese of the ham and cheese sandwich, is left out. But this claim of constitution is an interesting one.

What is man? Can we define man without defining woman? What is beautiful? Can we define beautiful if we do not know what is ugly? These questions can be asked the opposite way likewise. The ways in which we use to identify what is man is dependent on what is not man; woman. Thus, we must look at the qualities which fail to describe man in the forging of a woman's identity. What is for one identity is a consequence of what is not for the other. Thus we can view dichotomies such as this as co-constitutive. What derives from this idea of man and woman is the applications of masculinity and femininity. Although these are different dichotomized ideas, they often run parallel to one another. Man; strong, protector, breadwinner, leader. Woman; fragile, protected, housewife, supporter. Now does that not sound awfully familiar? Why it should!, because that's how the world, well America (damn the ethnocentric thinking!), views it.

The problem of this dualism of man-woman and masculine-feminine fails to recognize the possibilities of man-feminine, woman-masculine. Without a reasonable doubt, in society there exists individuals who possess both masculine and feminine traits, but such a dichotomized stereotype/label denies the recognition of these possibilities. Essentially, this idea can be seen with any dichotomies existing in society today. Viewing a woman as either gorgeous or heinous leaves out all the cute girls! (reference from picture above)

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