As with the dichotomy between public and private, counterexamples to the woman/nature versus man/culture linkage exist, such as the mythical American West, where “cultured” women tamed “natural” men when they brought in schools and churches, or Nazi Germany, where women were praised as the bearers of culture and morality. There are also nature/culture divisions that are not especially gendered, such as the sharp contrast in many West African societies between a cultivated area associated with humans – in which all human activities, including sex and burial, had to take place – and the noncultivated bush. Ortner herself has modified her conceptualization somewhat, though she still asserts that the opposition between human agency (culture) and processes that proceed in the world apart from that agency (nature) is a central question for all societies, and in most of them gender provides a “powerful language” for talking about this opposition.
The nature/culture dichotomy is often related to one of order/disorder, though the way these correspond may be different, with nature sometimes representing order and sometimes disorder. This linkage is itself gendered: when nature is conceptualized as orderly, as in Confucian understandings of the cosmic order, it is usually linked to male superiority; when it is regarded as disorderly and capricious, it is linked to women. The order/disorder dichotomy is sometimes expressed in psychic terms, as an opposition between the rational and the emotional or passionate, with men generally representing the rational and women the emotional. As noted previously, this gender dichotomy was often qualified by class and racial hierarchies that limited the capacity for reason to one type of man, however, with certain types of men, like women, seen as closer to nature and less rational.
Along with binaries that split men and women, there were also binary categorizations within each sex that shaped ideas about gender and the norms and laws that resulted from them. One of these was that of purity and impurity. Women in many cultures were regarded as impure or polluting during their menstrual periods and during or after childbirth, and many taboos or actual laws limited women’s activities or contacts with others during these times. Women were sometimes secluded or sent to special places during menstruation and childbirth, and then went through rituals that reincorporated them back into the community once this period was over.
Menstrual and childbirth taboos have generally been regarded as representing a negative view of women, judging them as unclean or dangerously powerful simply as the result of natural bodily processes. This may have been the opinion of educated or prominent men, but both historians and anthropologists have discovered that women often developed their own meanings for such rituals. They regarded menstrual huts as special women’s communities, and demanded rituals of purification after childbirth (often termed “churching” in Christian areas), sometimes despite men’s efforts to end such rituals. Contemporary women have, in fact, devised new rituals to celebrate certain bodily events such as menarche (first menstruation) and menopause, arguing that in earlier societies these were important and positive markers of life changes.
In many cultures, men also went through periods of purity and impurity that shaped their abilities to undertake certain activities, particularly religious ones. Very often this was related to a discharge of bodily fluids or sexual activity, but in some religious traditions any contact with women also made male religious personnel impure.
Purity and impurity are closely related to one of the most studied cultural dichotomies, that of honor and dishonor or honor and shame. Honor is a highly gendered quality, with male honor generally associated with action of some type, while female honor is associated with inaction. Men gained honor by protecting their families, demonstrating physical prowess, exercising authority, and showing courage, while women simply maintained honor by preserving their sexual purity. Women were thus divided into two categories on the basis of sexual honor, sometimes labeled “the virgin” and “the whore,” while men’s honor was more variable. Honor was very often shared among the members of one’s family or clan group, so that the actions of any member reflected on the others. Loss of honor in some societies resulted in legal punishments, as did charging someone with being dishonorable if those charges proved to be untrue. Even more often, however, honor was affirmed or disputed through popular rituals – waving bloody sheets the morning after a wedding (which still continues in some areas) or throwing rotten food at husbands suspected of being cuckolds. Historians studying honor have emphasized that, as with all norms, care needs to be taken not to confuse ideals with reality. Even cultures that seem to be obsessed with female sexual honor sometimes offered ways for women to quietly regain their honor after it was lost; in early modern Spain, for example, women pregnant out of wedlock frequently sued the father of the child for damages, which then became a dowry and allowed them to marry.
Along with purity and honor, physical attractiveness is another dichotomous category that has been intimately shaped by, and in turn shapes, ideas and norms of gender. What characteristics make a woman or man attractive are, of course, highly variable both among cultures and among subgroups within a culture; some people would argue that beauty is so subjective that it is truly “in the eye of the beholder” and cannot be discussed at a more general level. This argument appears to be countered by the remarkable lengths to which people have gone throughout history to make themselves appear more desirable to themselves and others, or to conform to hegemonic standards of beauty. Cosmetics were common in many of the world’s earliest societies, and products that were thought to increase beauty or sexual appeal were traded across vast distances because they could bring a high profit. Cosmetics have been enhanced more recently by cosmetic surgery, with both of these in the modern world more often associated with women than with men, although this is changing. Particularly for women, purity, honor, and beauty have been linked in various ways; the directors of women’s protective shelters in early modern Italy, for example, explicitly limited the women they took in to those who were attractive, for, in their minds, ugly women did not need to fear a loss of honor and so did not merit protection.
Motherhood and Fatherhood
Just as it is easier to find information about women as a conceptual and legal category than about men, it is easier to find information about mothers and motherhood than about fathers. Many psychological theorists view one’s relation with one’s mother as the central factor in early psychological development, with some arguing that this is not culturally specific but innate. (Psychology has been criticized as a field, of course, for just this type of assertion.) Whether one accepts this view or not, the fact that women can become mothers has certainly shaped many of the laws and norms regulating women’s activities and behavior; what is usually referred to as the “sexual double standard” could more accurately be labeled the “parenthood double standard” (a phrase that might also be used to describe the realities of parenting in many households).
Though the possibility of motherhood has led to restrictions on women, motherhood has also been a source of great power, a much stronger and more positive role for a woman than being a wife. Many of the world’s religious traditions, including Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islam, view strong relations between mothers and sons as ideal, and interviews with contemporary people in societies as disparate as Jamaica, the Solomon Islands, and Japan have found that mothers are viewed as central to people’s lives while fathers are perceived as indifferent or distant. The power associated with the role of mothers has also been disturbing, however. Legal sources often refer to “wife of so-and-so” rather than “mother of so-and-so,” even in cases involving a woman’s relations with her own children, thus emphasizing a clearly dependent relationship rather than the one in which the woman has power over others. Stories and myths from many areas revolve around bad mothers, though because criticizing mothers directly is often viewed as unacceptable, the evil character is generally a stepmother or mother-in-law. Sometimes these myths affect the way real women are treated; in the witch trials of early modern Europe, for example, witches were often portrayed as bad mothers, killing or injuring children instead of nurturing them.
Nazi Germany and other European fascist regimes in the twentieth century provide excellent