On Misogyny and Logic

I was a misogynist until very recently. I’ve always identified more with men than with women and so had a bit of self-loathing for my sex. It has always appeared to me that women are substantially less rational than men, have much more of a permanent need for games and unspoken communication, whereas men are upfront about what they want and thus (despite women’s urges for them to articulate their feelings) are actually much more honest, in general.

Lately, however, I’ve begun to despise this feature of men, because it strikes me as far from a simple love for the rational and an ultimate truth in logic and straightforwardness. Rather, what I observe is an overwhelming passion for being correct, or, possibly, a passion for being accepted as correct by others. The logical process is not what they love, nor the philosophy behind the process, but rather its ability to give them accurate results that they can state with confidence.

Of course, I generalize. Not all men are exactly like this, certainly my good friend Brad acts as a strong counter example, but three of the men with whom I converse most often seem to have this obsession with correctness.

Furthermore, I doubt they would deny it. In a very simple logical way, correctness is a perfectly good aim. Logic is an internally consistent system, and ultimately the world operates on answers, not processes. However, I’ve gained much more appreciation for the humanness of the thought process and the impossibility of actually getting answers from any system besides straightforward logic. Considering that a person has to incorporate many factors other than logic into an argument or thought process, there is an ultimate intrigue to the method they will use, and there is no reason to suspect that what seems like the closest approximation to logic necessarily accounts for the randomness of the problem presented, i.e., that it actually is the closest approximation to logic.

I realize that an “appreciation for the humanness” is hardly a logical reason to like something. But transitioning between systems is difficult. I’ll let you know when I find a logical reason, supplemented by reality, why I should move away from logic and into a more abstract system of thought.