Gender Symbolism in Logic

Andrea Nye developed a thorough rejection of logic in her book *Words of Power*. I take the book to be a form of “intellectual impression,” in which Nye articulates an interpretation of logic based on her lived experience as an outsider of the field, not part of the “gentlemen’s club,” and told about a way to access universal knowledge with maximal abstraction. Instead of presenting her perspective by way of arguments, her book is a response. I’ve been writing about this, and it’s a challenging text to write about, especially because it isn’t written to provide articulated reasons. But I fully respect the approach because I don’t think that logic is necessary or even sufficient for effective (read convincing) communication. Rhetoric has many tricks up its sleeve, and articulated reasons aren’t always the ones to favour.

While Nye may not present arguments in the traditional sense, she writes in coherent ways, which according to "Logic in the Wild," is all you need for logical reasoning to be established. What she’s not submitting to is the practice of seeking coherence with the strict logical standards of Twentieth-century logicians, those to whom the critique is ultimately directed. What’s her response? That logic is a male-fabricated tool that has liberated men in the public and academic spheres, eventually elevating them to the level of God and universal knowledge via abstraction, while keeping women away from it, back in their households, with their private knowledges.

One thing I find particularly difficult to write about is achieving fairness towards Nye’s belief about the difference in knowledges between the sexes. There’s a difference between saying that logic is masculine and passion (or emotion?) is feminine and saying that there are different ways of accessing knowledge—via logic or via passion—and that the former is traditionally ascribed to men, the latter to women. To say that logic is masculine is to commit the fallacy of gender symbolism, i.e., to ascribe gender to inanimate things. Gillian Russell’s reply to Nye isn’t to deny the impression she articulated but to rectify the slippery gender symbolism in the articulation.

References:

Nye, Andrea. Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic. 1st ed. Routledge, 2019. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367854447

Russell, Gillian. “Logic: A Feminist Approach.” In Philosophy for Girls, by Gillian Russell, 79–98. Oxford University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190072919.003.0007