Making Gender Visible

Like several of my classmates, I struggled with comprehending the material however I believe I understood more of Keller's article. Throughout the article I followed her ideas related to invisibility. According to Christine Froula writings, "the archetypal association of maleness with invisibility and of femaleness with visibility" (516). In other words, women are seen generally purely in the physical form whereas men are viewed intellectually thereby giving them power. This ideal is further supported when Keller asserts “the invisibility of nature’s interior, like the invisibility of women’s interior is threatening precisely because it threatens the balance of power between man and nature and between men and women.” To continue the initial idea, she implies that women's "interior," aspects of themselves beyond the physical are invisible. Likewise, nature's interior may also be ignored by acknowledging only the beauty of nature on the surface and disregarding the true power of nature. In both cases, males lack of acknowledgment for both women and nature creates an environment of inequality in that men have all the power and everyone else is simply ignored and disregarded.