"Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture"

In "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture", Ms. Sherry B. Ortner's argument is not only biased, but flawed as well. She constantly jumps to terrible conclusions in attempt to drive home her own personal beliefs without actually thoroughly backing them up. It is wrong to assume that because the man is the breadwinner and that the mother is the one taking care of the household that she is considered in any way "subordinate" or "less important" than the male. She makes blanket statements that woman's "secondary status of woman in society is one of the true universals". She jumps to this conclusion using only one (poor) example to back it up. 

Some, including myself would argue this. Yes, the male has traditionally been considered the breadwinner of the family. It is his job to provide for his wife, his children and in their old age, his and perhaps his wife's parents. In these societies. the role of the female has been to rear the children at home. But, to what effect is this a belittlement? To what extent is this job any less important?  Nowhere in the entirety of this paper is the well-being of the children mentioned. Whose responsibility is that? If both the male and the female are working, then there is little structure in the home that would create order in future generations. The necessity of these children to be reared by a parent, and not by an external paid caregiver (a poor substitute for a parent in many cases) is vital to the proper continuation of society. The profound possibility that there is more than what meets the surface of a traditional woman's role is devastatingly lost in this paper. 

Now to this effect, in modern society, I'm not advocating that traditional gender roles must be gender specific. Nor am I advocating that women are indeed "lower class" to men. However, Ortner, instead of producing new positive discourse, she perpetuates ideas that we perhaps unformulated prior to her writing. By stating that there is a "pan-cultural devaluation of woman" (11), she is giving validity to the very discourse that she is trying to disprove, without actually proving that this particular discourse was even in effect, herself inviting the Foucauldian power of validity to the very discourse that she is trying to disprove. 

She does the same thing when she states that that women are "identified with... nature, as opposed to man who is identified with culture and that "culture's project is to subsume and transcend nature" (12). Where did this discourse come from, and where is there proof that the nature of culture is indeed an attempt to overthrow nature?

The fault of this paper, and therefore of the entire feminist movement lies within these arguments. It would be a more compelling argument, in my opinion, that the idea of traditional gender roles is not incorrect, but rather that assigning a gender role to a specific gender in the dichotomy of a relationship is the incorrect method. The gender roles have worked for thousands of years for a reason. They helped to rear our future generations for society and allowed the child parental care and guidance that is needed. The problem today is assigning the gender roles to a specific gender; saying what is a mans job vs. a woman's job. These roles in society should be based on what each couples needs are. In a world where the role of sexes has blurred, it is important to make sure that every role in the family sphere is fulfilled by a member of the family and not overlooked. 

It is perhaps the role of homosexual partner now, in this day and age,  to lead the way in this change in gender roles, and open up the discourse to prove that any gender can take on any role within the family structure.