Alex Johnson Human Nature Analysis

Alex Johnson, a queer nature author, used to think that nature writing only included the pristine, untouched wilderness “minus the parking lot” or “the human footprint.” He writes, “Where is the line between what is Nature and what is Human? Can I really say the parking lot is separate from the forest?” (Johnson, 1). Perceived boundaries between civilization and nature don’t keep the litter in the parking lot from blowing onto the hiking trails, bees from your garden from constructing beehives in your windowsill, and raccoons from knocking over your garbage cans. This displays the unnecessary nature of categorization. When science puts boundaries in place, society can create a dichotomy of power based on roles for each category. Humans are …show more content…
Girls play with dolls, wear pink, and take ballet lessons. Boys like trucks, wear blue, and play sports. The boys who paint their nails and the girls who play football are forced into roles they don’t completely fit. Does this mean people born intersex like the color purple or does the doctor choose for them? You can’t find an “intersex section” for clothing at Nordstrom. Ignoring intersex people for the most part, Anatomy 101 dictates that physical features determine the boundaries between “man” and “woman”. You are born female or male based on your genitalia and chromosomal makeup. Medicine decides the gender identity for those born intersex to make them fit into the binary. Essentially, the way medicine defines gender reduces one to their physical appearance, just as race defines one by their skin color. This division is easy to justify because female-bodied individuals can menstruate and bear children, and therefore have different medical needs than male bodied individuals. The medical division transforms into a social division. However, this absolves society of blame for the creation of gender roles because society holds science to a high standard in that it always should be as close to the truth as possible. This is also why some past scientists searched for evidence that some races of people were above others. Science, …show more content…
Wittig writes “They are seen as women, therefore they are women. But before being seen that way, they first had to be made that way.” (Wittig, 12) to illustrate two different forces of power in creating gender and other limiting categories. There must be one power (science, government, religion) to create the limits of categories and another (society) to interpret them. Society places significant trust and therefore power in science. If science is the ultimate truth according to society, then society’s rules based on science are also true. Society does not stop at science, it also places determining power in government and religion. A medically determined female in 2016 will have the same genitalia and chromosomal makeup as a medically determined female in the 1500’s. Both will be treated as women—but the definition of what it means to be a woman is different across time and space if the definition of “woman” includes how female-bodied individuals are treated. Female bodied individuals didn’t have the right to vote until less than 100 years ago while very recently Hillary Clinton was the first female presidential candidate to make it to the final election. Since gender roles are tangled up in a society’s views on sex, race, religion, and politics it “becomes impossible to separate out “gender” from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and