Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!michael@wind.bellcore.com
From: michael@wind.bellcore.com (Michael Muller)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: lacan
Message-ID: <5649@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 24 Oct 88 14:45:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.5649
References: <5636@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
Organization: Bellcore, Morristown, NJ
Lines: 63
Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu


In article <5636@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Anonymous@ecsvax.uncecs.edu writes
(or writes about a friend's views, I'm not sure which):
[Anonymous writes TR]

>My personal opinion is that this theory is nothing more than very
>thinly disguised sexism. Only someone who has never kept a house could
>imagine that there isn't plenty of logical cognition in traditional
>women's work. Who do you think figured out how to can vegetables?  Sew
>clothing?
>
>Further, the opposition of emotions/feelings and logic is also false.
>Situations involving emotions, connections, and relationships are as
>logical as everything else, but they are COMPLEX.  The false
>distinction results from equating simple and simple-minded.

I agree strongly that the division between two different modes or
or styles of mental activity is peculiar -- and that it serves
to maintain a power differential.  Many people have written about
the ways that women have been described (mostly by men) as "having"
certain kinds of knowledge and attributes, and the ways that people
(mostly men) have punished women for "having" those qualities.  
Susan Griffin (_Pornography_and_Silence_), for example, writes 
very persuasively on these topics.  In the example that Trish
raised, it seems to me that women are being described as "having"
attributes which make them _inevitably_ and _unchangeably_ outsiders
to the realm of male power.  But is the description of women
accurate?  And is the proposed opposition of logic vs. emotion
accurate?

In my own language, I agree with what I think Anonymous was saying:
There isn't much in the way of logic without a component of emotions 
and connections and relationships, and there isn't much in the way 
of emotions and connections and relationships without a component
of logic.  I hope that people will at least question the dichotomy
in the linguistic hypothesis.  It is to me an oversimplification -- 
but an oversimplification that serves a purpose, a potentially 
political purpose.

That doesn't mean that there aren't preferred emphases in cognitive
style, and it doesn't mean that we haven't been socially trained
into what are supposed to be gender-appropriate (sic) preferences.
But we all know many personal counterexamples to the biology-is-destiny
linguistic hypotheses that Trish described.  Yes, there's a 
statistical basis to the _observation_ of preferred cognitive styles.
For some people, that observation leads to a sexually-dimorphic _theory_
of types or styles of intelligence.  But the observation can also give
rise to other, more environmentally-based theories of the kinds of
things we (women and men) have been differentially trained to think about.
Or to interactionist theories, or to many other alternatives . . .

Maybe the question(s) should be:  How can we support people in a free
choice of their preferred cognitive style?  How can we develop a theory
of thought and feeling and action and connection (i.e., as a unified entity, 
not a set of disjoint attributes) that is less susceptible to turning
one attribute (or one person) against another?

Thanks, Trish, for raising a challenging question.

Michael Muller  Bellcore  444 Hoes Lane  Piscataway, N.J.  08854  US  
                ..!bellcore!ctt!michael  (201) 699 4892
                michael@bellcore.com

I am not a spokesperson for my employer, but sometimes I wish I were.