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- Creators: School of International Letters and Cultures
- Creators: Economics Program in CLAS
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Hiking and Hegemony: Destabilizing the nature/culture and gender binaries through outdoor recreation
Our second framework, titled The Pleasurable Potential of Outdoor Recreation, cites second-wave feminism as a catalyst for women’s participation in wilderness exploration and outdoor recreation. The work of radical feminists and the women’s liberation movement in 1960s and 1970s empowered women at home, in the workplace, and eventually, in the outdoors; women reclaimed their wilderness, yet they continued to employ Framework One’s feminization of nature. Ecofeminsim brought together nature and women, seeking to bring justice to two groups wronged by the same entity: masculinity. In this context, outdoor recreation is empowering for women.
Despite the potential of Framework Two to reinscribe and better the experiences of women in outdoor recreation, we argue that both Frameworks One and Two perpetuate the gender binary and the nature/culture binary, because they are based upon the notion that women are in fact fundamentally different and separate from men, the notion that nature is an entity separate from culture, or human society, as well as the notion that nature is in fact a feminine entity.
Our third framework, Deer Pay No Mind to Your Genitals, engages poststructuralism, asserting that outdoor recreation and activities that occur in nature can serve to destabilize and deconstruct notions of the gender binary. However, we argue that care must be exercised during this process as not to perpetuate the problematic nature/culture binary, a phenomenon that is unproductive in terms of both sustainability and gender liberation. Outdoor recreation has been used by many as a tool to deconstruct numerous societal constraints, including the gender binary; this, however, continues to attribute escapist and isolationist qualities toward nature, and therefore perpetuating the nature/culture divide. Ultimately, we argue outdoor recreation can and should be used as a tool deconstruct the gender binary, however needs to account for the fact that if nature is helping to construct elements of culture, then the two cannot be separate.
The popularity of feminism is growing. Every day more people claim to be feminist and work is done to end the control of patriarchy. Feminism though, because of its different waves and isolated recognition in the media, the actual goals seem unclear to males in particular; it is predicted that this increase in popularity in conjunction with the lack of clarity contributes to the development of toxic masculinity. “Feminism” is defined by bell hooks as a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression and “toxic masculinity” is a specific model of manhood, geared toward dominance and control and fear of the opposite. To understand the relationship between the two, the documentaries The Mask You Live In and Miss Representation were reviewed as well as books by bell hooks and C.J. Pascoe. Popular culture articles contributed to contemporary views at the public level. Using the knowledge gained from the literature, further research was done through one-on-one interviews with males age 18 to 32. Much of the literature does support toxic masculinity being encouraged and reinforced in varying ways including through the lack of acceptance of femininity and society’s strict gender roles. The interviews were inconclusive in defining a direct relationship between feminism promoting the development of toxic masculinity.
The cyborgs in these films, however, refuse to let categorizations like female, or even their status as human, alive, or real, restrict them so easily. As human-robot hybrids, cyborgs bridge identities that are assumed to be separate and often oppositional or mutually exclusive. Cyborgs reveal the structures and expectations reified in gender to suggest that something constructed can as easily be deconstructed. In doing so, they create loose ends that leave space for new understandings of both gender and technology. By viewing these films alongside critical theory, we can understand their cyborgs as subversive, hybrid characters. Accordingly, the cyborg as a figure subverts and fragments the coherency of narratives that present gender, technology, and identity in monolithic terms, not only helping us envision new possibilities but giving us the faculties to imagine them at all.