Is Logic a Tool of the Patriarchy? Here’s my Intuition….
It was 1998 when I was first told that “logic is a tool of the patriarchy.”
Since I have seen this same idea expressed a number of times recently, I figured this was a great opportunity to put my foot in my mouth.
I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on this, and here is some of what I have seen staring back at me…
The statement was originally explained to me like this. “Logic is a masculine way of knowing, and by validating only this way of knowing, it invalidates more feminine ways of knowing. Since the dominant culture respects logic only, it teaches logic only, which favors men, invalidates women’s strengths, and perpetuates a masculine perception of the world, thus reinforcing patriarchy. “
This caused a bit of confusion, discourse, and a lot of reflection.
(I was resistant to the idea for sure, partly because it was new to me, but also because:
a. I was a man and felt a bit defensive of the proposition.
b. I highly valued logic and I couldn’t imagine that logic was oppressive in any way- in fact I viewed it as liberating.
c. I didn’t see logic as particularly gendered. My mother is one of the most eminently logical humans I have ever known, though she has keen intuition as well. I, myself, am an intuitive man, though I find great comfort in sound logic.
The statement was so upside down from my experience that I was intrigued…was I the one who was upside down?
[Disclaimer]
I find that assigning gender attributes to broader phenomena is a dangerous game. Sometimes it is quite helpful and elucidating, at other times it’s restrictive, and can become dehumanizing stereotypes.
My perspective is that all people have both masculine and feminine attributes, and such a gendered framework is only helpful when it is descriptive, rather than prescriptive.
Meaning, there are plenty of true statements along the lines of “in general men prefer X and women prefer Y”, but that doesn’t mean that ALL men ALWAYS prefer X, and it certainly doesn’t mean that men are SUPPOSED to prefer X, or that women aren’t ALLOWED to prefer X. It just means we can talk about observed patterns among people.
Attributes can also be gendered by association, i.e. if something is phallic, like an obelisk, or a penetrating mind, it is said to be mascuine . If something is vulvic, like a reflecting pool, or depth of thought, it is said to be feminine.
The line between statistics and stereotypes can be thin. Caution is advised, and goodwill is requested.
What I DO find to be generally quite helpful, is to look at polarities, dichotomies, or pairs of complementary opposites.
(I am far more comfortable viewing these opposites in terms of Yin and Yang, as those terms are abstract and remove the personal allegiances and implications which easily get tangled into a gendered view. But that is a framework which takes getting used to.)
…To my non-binary friends: I hope that this playful exploration of a dichotomous construct is of some value to you. One way of dealing with the inadequacies and restrictions of binary thinking is to abandon the binary. My approach is to embrace multiple binaries…
If logic is masculine, what is it’s feminine polarity? …Intuition? Emotion?
Is this more accurately a triad? Crap…forget I said that.
Keeping with the original premise, let’s call logic masculine compared to both intuition and emotion.
Logic is linear relative to both intuition and emotion, and is comparatively more brain centered than body centered. Its single pointed gaze penetrates the dark unknown.
Intuition and emotion, by contrast, both draw power from hidden and mysterious depths, and whether they manifest as a flash of insight, or a slow persistent knowing, they both embrace gaps in awareness which can be felt, but not seen.
While I agree that in the dominant culture, logic is more highly regarded and more explicitly trained than intuition, I also cringe at such homogenized depictions of “culture”. My life has woven through a beautiful tapestry of subcultures and countercultures, each with a different value ranking between logic, intuition, and emotion. While it might be obvious that artists and musicians tend to place a high value on intuition, so do experienced police officers, high level martial artists, and military special forces.
But if I were to stereotype American culture, it is one which disregards intuition and is inept with emotions.
What does “Logic is a tool of the patriarchy” even mean?
Well, if it is a call for everyone to stop logicing, I’ll pass on that.
But what if this statement is simply an expression of the sense that there is more to the world, more to ourselves, and more ways of knowing and perceiving than are generally accepted?
What if It is a call to inquire into what else there is, or is possible?
What if it’s a way of saying that: most people are stuck in their heads to such an imbalanced degree that they are barred from valuable ways of knowing, disconnected from their subconscious needs and drives, and numbed from the sensual experience of living. That they have traded the mysterious for the predictable, and have repressed the chaos of freedom for the tyranny of security.
If it’s an acknowledgement that modern humans are suffering isolation and loneliness from the rest of creation, because we are taught to study things rather than to relate with beings, and causing catastrophic damage because of it. If it’s a call to deep embodiment, to developing all aspects of our being, to healing our relationships with each other and with the biosphere, to respect the more sensitive among us, who feel and know things that others miss.
Perhaps it's even a rejection of linear causality and the mechanistic model of the universe, in favor of a multidimensional panpsychic explanation of the improbable miracle of existence…
If that’s what we are talking about, then I’m most intrigued…
Let's explore.
logic vs emotion…
If logic is masculine, and emotions are feminine (don’t get mad at me, i’m just exploring the construct), then perhaps emotional repression in favor of dis-passionate reason is how “logic is a tool of the patriarchy”.
I certainly agree that an over emphasis on intellectual development keeps us from fully inhabiting our bodies, experiencing our true depth of emotion, connection, passion, our own internal drives, and a deep sense of purpose. And I agree that this emotional numbing is required for the mundane atrocities of materialism.
So, is Mr. Spock the posterboy for the patriarchy?
In the Star Trek mythos, Spock’s people, the Vulcans, shared a common ancestry with their rivals, the Romulans. After their ancestors almost annihilated themselves by allowing their passions to rule, the Vulcans fully dedicated themselves to cultivating logic.
The Romulans however, embraced their passionate nature and became extremely warlike. (and had much better parties.)
I’m not sure that calling the Vulcans “masculine” and the Romulans “feminine” is useful or accurate. And I can confidently assert that the Vulcans are not “patriarchal”, since discrimination based on gender is highly illogical.
But the fact remains that logic and passion seem at times to be in a contest for rulership.
Perhaps the narrative itself is one-sided, for while it is true that unchecked passions can lead to annihilation, so can the logical efficiency of global industrialized capitalism.
Passions, and the fullness of emotion, make life beautiful and worthwhile. Passion is also a classic instigator of violence and war. May cooler heads prevail.
Logic allows forethought and overview. It allows us to choose our actions according to the results we want, rather than being driven by impulse. Logic also allows us to dismiss our own emotional guidance, and to “rationalize” harm on individual and systemic levels. May courageous hearts free us all.
The inhibition of passion is part of the modern epidemic of depression, and sanitized emotion shows up in the loneliness and isolation of the modern world. How to quell rage without suffocating life itself?
Unable to process painful or confusing emotions, many of us retreat to our heads. This disembodiment can be a trauma response, but it is also a cultural default if one doesn’t have access to emotional guidance and wisdom.
Is logic, or even “disembodied intellect” really the problem here, or is it just a symptom of unhealed emotional trauma and a pervasive lack of emotional guidance?
logic vs intuition…
Keeping to the original construct, let’s assign logic as masculine, and intuition as feminine. That does seem to fit with broad patterns and general perceptions, despite my aforementioned family anomaly.
(The fact that “intuition” encapsulates several distinct ways of knowing is worth revisiting)
While the dominant culture may respect logic, most people aren’t actually trained in logic. Not by a long shot. I’m American, so that’s the experience I’m coming from.
American educational institutions have been intentionally gutted for decades, not that they were fantastic before then, but logic was once explicitly taught in most schools. Most Americans have not been educated in logic, deduction, or reasoning skills.
They’ve been trained to think lazily and loudly, to memorize “facts”, and to defend their positions. This is a pseudo-logic, full of thought but devoid of reason.
Logic is a process, not a conclusion. And it is largely a process of weeding out illogical conclusions. Poor logic, which is most American’s reference point, is just weak intellectualism.
Every human has The innate ability to develop logic, for some it is more natural than others, but in every case it must be trained.
The same can be said about intuition: every human has the innate ability to develop intuition, but for it to be accurate it must be trained. In the western world, this is rarely valued, and even more rarely is it developed.
Undeveloped intuition is more accurately called superstition, belief, or faith. Which is precisely why it is derided by intellectuals. But this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you’ve never seen something done well why would you put the time and effort into developing it?
Here’s the kicker: sound logic and sound intuition dovetail beautifully. They are best friends and understand each other easily.
Their opposite perspectives complement and reinforce each other.
Poor logic, and poor intuition, are at bitter odds… threatened by the other, yet insecure in their own position. It’s a shitty relationship.
In my life, I have a few examples
Mathematical intuition:
I had the great fortune of attending a high-quality Montessori school from the ages of 2 1/2 till 10. It was here that I was first taught the interplay between logic and intuition.
Montessori method is not generally regarded as intuitive. Some of the criticisms I have heard in favor of other methods include Montessori being too logical, too left-brained, not including imagination and play enough, etc.
The irony of Maria Montessori’s method is that it facilitates intuitive leaps through streamlined logic.
For example:
The way I was taught math from a young age was through direct interaction with my environment, using what are called “ Montessori manipulatives”. This included using things like beads and geometric shapes to demonstrate mathematical concepts. A child easily learns the relationships between a line, a square, and a cube. And they soon learn to identify the side of the square as the square root, and an edge of the cube as its cube root, without any mental anguish, usually between the ages of 5 and 8.
Tangible exponents.
This is all simple logical sequencing, but a child learns to make intuitive leaps in mathematics before they learn how to read and write the language of math. Concepts are not abstract, these are things they can hold, manipulate, and verify for themselves.
By the time a child learns mathematical language, it’s clearly just to make life easier by being able to communicate things they have learned through their senses and through their body.
But most schools teach math the exact opposite way. Starting with an abstract language to represent concepts that aren’t rooted in tangible sensory experience.
Kids learn that math is difficult, complicated, and maybe even arbitrary. They learn math through their head, and through the painful process of memorizing and interpreting an abstract language.
This method also relies on an authority figure, rather than on the students observation and pattern recognition skills.
This whole approach is both illogical and prevents intuitive leaps, because mathematical intuitive leaps come from being able to solidly visualize the concepts, and visualization is best trained through tactile and kinesthetic manipulation of objects.
I watched my children struggle to learn math through this unnecessarily cerebral process, and none of them experienced the enchantment of learning math as the secret code to the universe, as I once did.
Poor logic is intellectually oppressive.
Is mathematics masculine? Well, compared to what? Literature? Oil painting? Kickboxing?
Is a tactile geometric approach to math more “feminine” than a “masculine” symbolic intellectual approach?
Hmm, a case could be made…”material” derives from the Latin mater, meaning “mother”. “Pattern” derives from the Latin pater, meaning “father”. One could argue that building familiarity with the material form of creation is feminine compared to an abstract pattern seeking approach.
Clearly, balance requires both, and the conspicuous absence of this tactile and geometric approach inhibits both logic and intuition in students trained in only the cerebral method.
Physical intuition:
physical intuition, or a sense of bodily knowing, is a desirable state in sports, martial arts, and other physical endeavors. In sports this is referred to as “flow state”, and in East Asian martial arts by terms such as “mushin” /no-mind, or “wu wei”/spontaneous right action.
All of these refer to instances where the body knows what to do before the mind does, and most importantly- the mind stays out of the way and trusts the body to do it. That’s the hard part, the trust. And that trust is built through experience, and that experience typically relies on logical progressions of drills, repetition, and controlled chaos.
It is very common for someone in this state to move in ways they didn’t “decide” to, only to discover that it was the perfect thing to do in that situation.
Is trusting body knowledge the feminine polarity to a masculine approach of collecting an encyclopedia of techniques and having a clear strategy? Perhaps..it is certainly an under-developed skill in the modern world,
but talk is cheap, It only matters if one can tap into it.
Sensory intuition:
At any given moment, our sense organs are transmitting millions of bits of information to our central nervous system. We can only consciously process a few bits of this information at a time, as most of our nervous system is actually designed to weed out extraneous information, otherwise the sensation of our own clothing against our skin would drive us mad.
The vast majority of this information gets processed in the many layers of the subconscious mind, but it is still received and processed by a part of our mind, just not the conscious part.
Our subconscious mind has a remarkable ability to collect and analyze metadata, and to find patterns and rhythm.
The conscious mind is far more articulate and precise. It has a linear orientation of time, and seeks order and predictability.
According to this framework of the mind, much of what we call intuition is simply being in better communication with the subconscious mind, and allowing it direct agency at times.
Quick story:
I was about an hour into splitting wood for the season, and I was in the woodsplitters trance, where the rhythm of the motion carries you, and every success of a clean split brings a little dopamine hit. Where knots in the wood are a puzzle to be worked through, imbued with the personality and personal history of the tree.
I reached for a piece of black locust, and before I could extend my arm, my body froze in place with an electric tingle along my spine and back.
I didn’t know what to think, and felt the impulse to ignore this glitch in my plan to get more wood, but instead I heeded the warning.
I grabbed a long stick and used it to push aside the block of locust I had almost reached for. The space beneath it contained a copperhead, curled up with its head facing me. Had I grabbed the log with my hand, I would have placed my fingers right in the snake’s face. Something prevented me from receiving a venomous bite that day, and it wasn’t “logic”
which came to my aid.
Most people wouldn’t call this example intuition, as this experience was much more than a hunch. It was a complete hijacking of my nervous system, as if I was a student driver cruising along towards danger, and the instructor slammed on the brakes.
Many people dismiss stories like this as nonsense, while others would explain it in a magical, mystical, religious, aliens, snake telepathy, crystal blue persuasion kind of way. I can’t refute any of that, and wouldn’t try to. They are just a different conceptual framework than I use.
I am quite convinced that many people have experiences such as this but don’t talk about it openly. These anomalous events are difficult to place in the world of logic, and we sound nuts if we talk about them.
And then there are those people who DO talk about such events, as if they understand them. My experience is to be very cautious of these people. So read the next few paragraphs with that warning. But I’m not trying to sell you anything, or ask you to join my cult. I’m just trying to describe how I explain the world to myself..
According to the framework of conscious and subconscious processing that I mentioned, I comfortably call this experience intuition. My explanation being that I have always had a healthy fear of snakes. They are faster than me on land, water, and in the trees, yet they have no arms and legs. It just freaks me out. Oh, and some can kill you with one bite, while others cozy up to you while you’re sleeping and sing lullabies while they gently squeeze the life out of you. So my nervous system is on high alert about snakes.
There was nothing I sensed overtly which caused me to think that I was about to grab a venomous snake. But perhaps I caught a subtle whiff of its musk, maybe I had seen a trail of snake scat and dismissed it as just mud on a log. Perhaps I glimpsed a brief flicker of its tongue or a flash of it’s eye. The size of the space underneath the log was larger than others in the wood pile, maybe something about it looked like a cozy snake cave.
Any of these signals by themselves would be easily dismissed by my preoccupied mind, but put several of them together and a pattern emerged to my subconscious, which sounded the alarm.
Or maybe it was snake telepathy. I like that better actually…
In classical Daoist categorization, the subconscious mind is yin (feminine principle) and the conscious mind is Yang (masculine principle).
So do women have a stronger relationship with the subconscious mind, and men more so with the conscious mind?
Perhaps…this might sound like a page out of the patriarchy playbook, but many feminists have told me the same thing over the years, including an influential herbalist who refused to teach men, because men just weren’t in touch with their senses or intuitive enough to be good at the job.
While this gendered division of skills may be relevant at the high levels, that’s a bit like refusing to teach kindergarten students who don’t show promise as a doctoral candidate. There is a whole lot of basic education to be had on the way. An integrated being is everyone’s birthright, (at least in my utopian fantasies) , and communication and cooperation between the conscious and subconscious mind is part of that integration.
Is this separation between our conscious and subconscious selves what is being referenced by “logic”, as in “logic is a tool of the patriarchy”?
Possibly… Regardless, this schism is an epidemic problem.
Is the patriarchy not only “phallocentric”, but “cephalocentric”? Is it the cerebral tyrant who proudly inserts itself between us and our own perceptions? Naming, categorizing, judging, and dismissing information before it even reaches our conscious awareness, so subtly that we believe we are perceiving “the world”, when in fact we are only perceiving what this Grand Censor has allowed. Like the Mac Daddy of social media algorithms, this information filter perpetually reinforces a skewed experience of the world.
Is patriarchy also the tyranny of the cerebral cortex?
I think that has a catchy ring to it, but I doubt it’s what most people mean. What I am certain of is that modern western humans are far more neocortical than is in anybody’s best interest. And there is certainly something oppressive about that.
Was this the inevitable consequence of our 555 million year old decision to develop a linear (read: phallic) nervous system, with a dense concentration of nerves at the tip? Did our cousins with a more radial and diffuse (read: vulvic) neuronal organization sidestep this problem? Perhaps Jellyfish, Starfish and Octopi have their own set of problems. (Circular thinking would be my bet)
Perhaps the antidote to this cephalocentrism is to actively diffuse our awareness throughout our body and senses: cut out the middleman and more directly experience our internal and external environment.
What if “Smash the Patriarchy!” also means “Decentralize the Nervous System!”, with the dangerous revolutionary ideology that we can bypass the bloated central neural bureaucracy, because the “mind” is not actually contained in the skull, but stretches from fingers to toes, from the hairs on our back to the cillia in our duodenum, and maybe even beyond our apparent physical boundaries.
This de-privileging of the cerebrum, especially the problematic left frontal lobe, often feels threatening to entrenched ways of being. I wish I could promise a smooth re-integration into a cooperative network of decentralized and expanded awareness, but that would be propaganda. Revolutions of this magnitude can be absolutely chaotic, and tend to be safer and ultimately more effective if done in stages, and with the guidance of elders. The myriad voices of the repressed, suppressed, displaced, and oppressed, all must be heard. Buried traumas, forgotten heartbreaks, ignored pains, suppressed fears…these are just some of the gatekeepers on the path to healing and integration, and the possibility of liberation.
Maybe this cerebral tyrant only became a real problem later in our ancestral lineage, after our hominid ancestors traded big guts for big brains, tripling our brain size in the last 2 million years, while reducing our guts by about half. Maybe this “enteric brain”, which is much older and still has more neurons than the brain in our skull, is the natural counterbalance to our incessant headiness. Simultaneously derided and romanticized, these “gut feelings” may be an ancestral modus operandi.
I suspect that this whispered visceral dialogue accounts for some of our vague understanding that there is more going on behind the scenes…that we are actually having experiences that we aren’t fully cognizant of. That there are conpiracies we arent privy to.
So is logic a tool of the patriarchy or what?
Well, I hope you didn’t come this far expecting a neat and tidy answer. I am much more interested in the questions, and in what the questions actually mean.
If “logic is a tool”, then its effects are determined by the user. But if all you have is a hammer, then it’s hard to paint like Monet. I actually believe that logic may be the crowning achievement of the intellect, I’m just not convinced the intellect deserves all the praise it gives itself, especially when compared to the multitude of faculties contained within us.
