Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!haven!uvaarpa!mcnc!ecsvax!skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
From: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Women and Logic
Summary: Taking a step back to explain the women and computers point
Message-ID: <5683@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 28 Oct 88 20:30:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.5683
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
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Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu

I'll try to describe the women and logic point a little better.

There are two ways to look at this issue:  sociologically and
physiologically.

First, in our culture, logic is generally considered better than
emotion.  A group of people is more likely to believe Joe Engineer
who lists statistics than Joe Shmoe who cites poetry, his feelings,
and so on.  [People are often moved by emotion--but seem to like
to deny it.]

Especially in academic/business/professional settings, logic is
supposed to be best.  It is a kind of weakness to show emotion.

Sometimes this attitude is called logocentrism.  Just as ethnocentrism
means that people of one ethnicity make their ethnicity the center and
assume everything else is some kind of fringe, so logocentrism means
that some people put logic at the center.

1)  Sociologically.  Women are socialized to be more emotional.
Men are trained to repress emotions.  [Note, however that in many
relationships, men will use their wives or lovers to express emotions
vicariously--that is, they will encourage their wife or lover to get
emotional about an issue and then say, "Don't get so upset."]

Also, women are often ridiculed and/or shut out from discussion due
to their being emotional about a discussion.  You can sometimes see
discussions of rape or pornography or something which is likely to
get a stronger reaction from women during which a woman is told that
her "emotional" reaction is not appropriate, or means that she should
stay out of the discussion since she can't talk about it rationally.

Sometimes, that amounts to a power move.  In groups you can sometimes
see a man goad a woman (slam feminists, crack dirty jokes, call her
honey, make misogynist comments) and if the woman calls him on it,
will say, "Calm down.  Can't you take joke?"  He wins.

2)  Some people think that women are physiologically less comfortable
with logic and are more at home with more flowing forms of language.
This is NOT because women are stupid or have less spatial perception
or something.  It is supposed to be because logic mimics the male
method of dealing with world--logic is like the phallus--it is something
which separates things, which is itself a separarable entity (that
invokes an odd image), which dominates.  The male sexual experience
and hence, physical experience, is a discrete experience with an
identifiable beginning and end.  This attitude is supposed to be
carried over into perceptions of the world.

Women, however, are more into flow.  

I'll leave all this here right now, because I don't feel comfortable
explaining a theory with which I don't have much sympathy.  I really
wish someone who does feel a lot of sympathy with this would explain
it.

-Trish