Jessica Benjamin emphasizes the importance of mutual recognition, where  people acknowledge each other’s presence. Intersubjectivity is a balance of separation and connectedness, in order for someone to feel they are a subject they need to recognize someone else as a subject while that person is recognizing you as a subject. If someone engages with someone else, if someone doesn’t think you are on the same level with that person as a subject then you can’t make them feel as if that person’s a subject because they don’t  see you in a way to make that possible to do so, it goes the other way as well. When one person in a relationship feels more power it can lead to issues in the relationship. Furthermore, not being recognized by the other person in the relationship will lead to a power struggle. Domination is the consequence, you must have true independence while still recognizing the other person. Lastly, Benjamin goes on to critique the traditional gender roles and how power is associated with them, her goal is to create a more inclusive understanding of power.

 In, “Bonds Of Love” by Jessica Benjamin, she pushes hard to get her readers to understand mutual recognition. We can apply her theories to the real world by looking at relationships. In every relationship it is important to validate and recognize your partner’s thoughts and feelings. Doing so builds a strong foundation for a relationship built on respect and selflessness. Furthermore, being able to reside in a mutual relationship also means there is no toxic power imbalance between the couple. I like her theory and how she presents it to the world. I enjoy her view on how people should be treated with the same amount of respect no matter what role they play in the relationship. I think nowadays the world is slowly moving toward her theory, obviously we still see many power imbalances, however, our world has come a long way in recent years. It illuminates the issues in our world and how we can strive to be better, we could relate this to women. Women used to be primary caregivers, but thanks to the resistors, women today are able to work and challenge the stereotypical male dominance in a relationship.

When we were talking about Jessica Benjamin and her idea of mutual recognition I was perplexed about how it would impact society currently. If we really use the idea of two people seeing each other as equal beings and having the same amount of power, our society’s structure would need to change completely. Right now in most, if not all societies there are people who make decisions for a group of people for example in America we have different branches of our government who make decisions for what’s best for our society.

If we were to go through with Benjamin’s idea to create mutual recognition, then we also have to worry about the economy. The number of people whose jobs are to make decisions and take leadership in life would diminish a lot and many people would have to find different jobs or get rid of how we work our economy. In America, I don’t understand how we could keep capitalism in this new society so we would have to go to something more equal based. Going to the teacher and student idea, I think we can work around this by having the teacher help with making discussions and letting the students explore ideas while the teacher serves as a guide in what they are learning. But presidents and people with power would have to share that power and disperse it.