Binary Opposition

Yesterday in class we talked about binary opposition and its importance. It is key to know that binary opposition assumes that one of the terms in question will be dominant. An example that was used to represent this was the Westerner’s thought that the male is dominant over the female. The male seems to have more authority over women and without women going along with this notion the male obviously would not be able to have the power that he currently does. This idea of binary opposition is the opposite of deconstruction. Deconstruction says that something will not favor one over the other. So if we were to look at the male domination over female example, there would not be more power in the hands of the men.
The domination of men over women is demonstrated a lot in today’s advertisements. Many fashion magazines have spreads where there are scantily dressed women and men and a lot of the time the men are shown standing over the women, or many men are in a room or a space with one woman and the idea of a “gang bang” may come to mind because of the way in which the faces are expressed. Although there is a lot of inter-textuality in these photos involving violence to women, or the silencing of women for example, we accept them because we understand that they are just ways of showing the clothing or jewelry that the fashion industry is selling. Also, many of these photos show extreme skill in photography and grab our attention in that way and are not meant to be read in the way that us CMC majors are analyzing them. This display of empowering men is something that our society is used to and does not even think about half of the time because it is a binary opposition; you cannot have one without the other. We are used to the ways in which our lives are run and to change them would, in many people’s opinions, take too much effort.