The Death of Binary Opposites

What is a man? He is the opposite of a woman. What is a woman? She is the opposite of a man.

This mirroring way of defining semantic concepts, though it might seem totally irrational and superfluous to many of us, had actually been regarded as the most legitimate method for thousands of years, ever since Plato (427-347 BC). In the era of structuralism, binary opposites prevailed: light/dark, white/black, master/slave, civilized/uncivilized, masculine/feminine. They helped us make sense of the world. Many have gone so far as to proclaim that the binary system underlies most cultural, philosophical and linguistic manifestations, and are the fundamentals of metaphysical beings. For example, Ferdinand de Saussure, a prominent 19th-century Swiss semiotician, stated: “The binary opposition is the means by which the units of language have value or meaning; each unit is defined in reciprocal determination with another term, as in binary code.” But dualistic thinking implies an endless mirroring that necessitates an ultimate element on which meaning can be built—hence the dominance of one term over the other in a binary pair.    

But the question remains: After binary opposites, what? How do we navigate ourselves in this brave new world? How do we define and categorize people with different social identities?

And so back to the issue of gender. Because most societies started out as being patriarchal, masculinity assumed superiority, and the great world cultures scrambled to come up with traits that were synonymous with males (other than the possession of the phallus). They all agreed on what can be summed up using the term “Man Box,” a term introduced to us Exonians by Mr. Eric Barthold during last Tuesday’s Assembly. A man is strong. He is muscular, reliable, calm, stoic, courageous. A woman is everything that a man is not. You step one step outside of this “Man Box” and you freefall into that other category, the inferior one. Then all your neighbors, as good neighbors must, attempt to bring you back on the right track by labelling you a “pussy,” or another similarly derogatory term.

For centuries, this binary system smoothly functioned as the sole governor of social positions, not only regarding gender and sex, but also regarding race, ethnicity, religion,…and was accepted by all. Nobody dared to question its validity, knowing that in doing so he or she would challenge a long-standing tradition and risk being ostracized.

Yet the whole system is falling apart. It has been, ever since slaves demanded to be free, colored races demanded to be enfranchised, women demanded to be men and the LGBTQ community emerged, demanding stubbornly that they not be either women or men but somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Fortunately for all of us progenies, we have inherited a world that is significantly more fluid, more accepting and more open to discussions than it ever was, thanks to the strenuous fights that our fathers and mothers fought, the many small acts of defiance that they executed. The age of post-structuralism has dawned, and it is our mission to facilitate the change.

But the question remains: After binary opposites, what? How do we navigate ourselves in this brave new world? How do we define and categorize people with different social identities? Is it at all possible to define and categorize people with different social identities?

Or is it ultimately impossible and dehumanizing to relegate people to biased one-word labels?