Why is it mostly men who are interested in philosophy?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I don’t know what the answer is to this question, which I saw in another forum, but I have thought about it.

I am a heterosexual, white, though a “Latino” (whatever that means), male. Very few women that I know are interested in philosophy or abstract ideas or theory, for that matter, including those who are otherwise very bright and generally well-informed. Philosophy may be the intellectual equivalent of football, for some reason, boring the hell out of most women – though not all.

I wonder why this is so.

The level of philosophical ignorance among my social acquaintances of both genders – who are middle class, successful Manhattanites – is shocking, though I remain discretely silent on the subject.

If people were to display the level of scientific ignorance that they are only too happy to acknowledge when it comes to philosophy, then we might expect to be surrounded by a population happily living in the mental atmosphere of the Middle Ages.

I guess most people, especially women, don’t feel that they need to wonder about such things. Maybe they’re better off. Some of us don’t have too much of a choice. We have the speculative virus and can’t be cured.

It’s kind of like being a writer. I need to write something almost every day. I don’t know why. If I’m working on a book that I won’t see finished for a year or two, then I have to spin out twenty pages on some philosophical chestnut and post it somewhere. The language has to flow.

Perhaps it is similar to the need for a release of sexual tension, which (sad to say) often results in … well, “self-love.” But then, as Oscar Wilde reminds us: “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”

But yeah, women and philosophy rarely mix. I wonder whether anyone out there can explain why this is so. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I’d be interested in learning that as well.

Like most intellectually-inclined males, I have always fantasized about the whole “Carmen Electra with a Ph.D.” thing, or even (to borrow a cliche from the movies) the attractive young woman in the bookstore who approaches you and, removing her designer spectacles, says something like … “Pardon me, is that a Nietzsche anthology in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

It’s the kind of thing that never happens to me.

2

Because, frankly, in my experience Females with Philosophy BAs or MAs or PhDs are women you wouldn’t want to date in the first place. (and I’m not talking about looks). They have tended to be either mean or lacking a sense of humor.

3

my question to your question is, based on what information have you determined it is “mostly men who are interested in philosophy?”

based on the gender of other students in my classes in college and the fact that many of my profeesors were female and somew of them probly “had it going on” in their day i have to disagree with you presuppostion of your question…

Now the different question as to why philosophers have been historically male, has the same answer as why almost all famous thinkers up until the last century were male…

although, the french psychoanalist/feminist/philosopher Luce Irigaray would make the argument that philosophy has historically appealed to males because the language used to discuss it is a “male” language. cddc.vt.edu/feminism/irigaray.html

i do have to say though that in my research women philsophers dominate on the “philosophy of love and freindship”

4

There are more male academics than female academics, and more male historical figures than female historical figures. This is true across all disciplines.

I don’t agree that philosophers tend to be male. I’m immediately thinking of Anscombe, most notably. Then I think of the majority of females in the university here.

Interesting you should mention the drive for philosophy being similar to the drive for sex. Plato had the same idea of course, although he was slightly more man-loving about it.

5

Thanks for the comments. It’s all much clearer now.

6

Come on…

7

Irony?

8

This has to be a good thing - in terms of re-addressing the gender bias iinherent in philopshy to date. Where will philiosphy end up - do you think - when we reach equilibrium?

9

Well, from my time spent working on my Bachelors (yeah, in philosophy) I would agree with the observation that women, even in (especially in?) proportion to their presence in the academic world, are severely under-represented in the world of philosophy.

Why?

Well, Philosophy is an extremely contentious field. We set up bowling pins and we knock them down. I mean, I’m sure any of you with a degree in philosophy, and probably most of you without one, can think of three decent arguments for the existence of God and three against. Probably more on both counts, really. I mean, we argue. It’s all we do. In several thousand years, have we really ‘finished’ anything? Are any of the “big” questions answered in a definitive way?

Now think about the socialization process of boys and girls in western culture, especially with regards to how we are taught to use language. If you observe little boys in discussion, they generally try to one-up each other. Raised to be contentious, little boys use language in a contentious way.

If you look at little girls, however, you will find them using language much differently. Little girls are taught to use language to build and nurture relationships.

If a little boy says “I’m going to go to Disney World for three days!” other little boys will generally say things like “Well I’m gonna go for a week!” and another will say “I’m going to move to Disney World!”

A little girl says “I’m going to Disney World for three days!” and generally other little girls will say “Oh wow, I want to go to Disney World!” or “Disney World is really fun!”, stuff like that.

In most of my 100 level Philosophy classes, there’s a pretty good gender balance. By the time I got to 400+ level classes, almost entirely dudes. And because it is that way, it tends to remain that way because, well…

…most guys in philosophy classes are kind of jerks. All we do is argue with each other, and most of us (myself included) think our studies are “above” what other people study. This leads to mean behaviour, which tends to dissuade girls from sticking with a philosophy program.

Which really is a shame. There’s nothing in the world nicer than getting drunk, having sex, and then laying in bed and having a fierce argument over the relevance of Grice’s Implicature Structures in Comedy.

10

Suppose Philosophy has an ‘end’. We could say, for the sake of argument, that that end might be the ‘Truth’ or, rather, the validation that ‘Truth’ does not exist.

To make a bad metaphor even worse… suppose then that this quest for ‘Truth’ is not unlike sailing a ship, or hunting for a wild beast, or waging war, and so on.

Typically, it is rare to see female explorers of any sort. The same for hunters and warriors. While there may be exceptions, and a good case can be made that much of what women do is the result of social/environmental pressures, Philosophy, as it has been pursued (heh) traditionally, has been done in such a way that one might term, “Masculine”. On the other hand, if there is something to feminine nature that begets a more nurturing role, the sheer process of argumentation in Philosophy is not conducive to such a thing.

What a woman might grow and gather, men stalk and kill. What a woman might bing forth from her very body into the outer world, men gaze at that world and seek to wrestle meaning from it. Women are also linked, biologically, to some great primal chain that provides as much meaning and ‘Truth’ as any man could ever hope for. Women can produce in the concrete what men can only hope for in the abstract.

Thus Philosophy is tailored for men, as it is men who need it most.

11

Therefore “truth” in philosophy would also not exist which is what I always suspected. It is nothing more than a MIND GAME often with serious consequences.

12

I don’t agree that “philosophy is taylored to men” or anything like that. Maybe that’s only one kind of very limited philosophy. Maybe we’ll get closer to the truth when we get rid of the testosterone and forget about “winning” arguments. “Plato, my friend, and Kant,” asks Nietzsche, “what if truth is a woman and not at all what we imagined? What then?”

13

Most of that argument about women not enjoying contentious or potential contentious subjects is (of course) narrow. There are some societies where this is more generally the case than in others, but in the West (particularly America and Europe) the suggestion that the modern female is any less contentious than a male cannot be right.

Today the world has female politicians, female soldiers and many, many female exectuvies and management professionals.

Historically, well, that’s a different argument.

14

im not being sexist or anything but i think its is because of teh reason of woman being abel to accept an answer of a person though a guy will procide to question that person to find out wether it is true or not thus wasting alot fo time and effort while the woman relaxs at home with a cup of tea…K

15

First off…being a Latino means that you are from Latin descent, meaning that one of your ancestors came from a country south of the U.S. border. Secondly, what does your race have to do with this topic?

Anyway…to the topic:

To put things in a comedic form, I recall a line Jack Nicholson said in As Good As It Gets. A receptionist asked him how he writes his women so well in his novels, he replied: “I think of a man, and then I take away reason, and accountability.”

It has been my understanding that women tend to think outloud more than men. It is also obvious that most women spend a great deal of time focusing on themselves, especially how they look. Women are also more emotional than men, especially when their hormones kick out of control during their periods. The abundance of emotion escapes the use of rationality and reason, causing women to act impulsively.

As Cyndi Lauper said: “Girls just wanna have fun,” we are reminded again that most women act on emotional impulsivity rather than rational thought. To explain a good example, I was watching a rerun of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where the Bajoran spiritual leader (a real bitchy character), Kai Winn, was named as the political leader. Not thinking things like a politician, but still as a spiritualists, Kai Winn risked a civil war on Bajor over a simple matter of farm equipment. She never once took the chance to evaluate the situation logically and come to a compromise. She let her emotions get the best of her.

Now of course, we have this evidence:

and this:

Indeed. This is because women who do take the time to rationalize and study develop a sense of will that allows them to combat the world which they see is against them. As philosophy can become quite an aggressive topic in which debating is the main medium of communication, it would appear most women don’t bother to deal with things that require aggressive action. Aggressive women on the otherhand…

16

I’m curious of how a female-like language would be… o_O’

17

Okay, I have a follow up reason that could be the answer we’re looking for…

Most women don’t deal with philosophy because they spend to much time thinking about more “important” things happening in life. In the past, the woman would give birth to the child, raise it, clean, cook, etc. And while the woman deals with real life issues, all the man has to offer is his thoughts…because of this, women consider men pityful.

18

I think that men like to debate more than women. We often have a certain set of ideas we see as really strong, and we enjoy fighting it out with people who have opposing ideas. Two subjects which lend themselves to debate the most, I think, are philosophy and politics.

19

The answer is in history …

Women weren’t even educated through any kind of schooling until the 19th century. Women couldn’t even vote until 50 years ago. Men, on the other hand, have been going to school since Plato’s (ancient greek) time! No wonder we are more intellectual.

You may say:
Well, that doesn’t account for the women’s potential. Just because they haven’t been schooled, as a whole, for very long doesn’t mean that a current female is incable of learning just as much as a current male.

Easily solved. Isn’t intellegence hereditary? The female sex of our species is greatly less evolved than we are. The only interest of most women is if their looks are “perfect”. “My butt is too big” or “I don’t know what to wear”. But, only because men made it that way by not educating them.

Maybe that helps …

20

I don’t believe there IS an answer to the question “Why are men more interested in philosophy than women?” for two main reasons.

First of all, in my limited experience with philosophy, I have known more females than males to be honestly interested in philosophy; of course this is more entry-level than some of the full-blown theoretical philosophy courses you have been describing, but still; it shows that in my experience there is at least equal INTEREST in philosophy among females.

As far as higher level courses in philosophy…I think one way you can define philosophy is as a “personal search for meaning”. Maybe more women find that more easily then men do, thus negating the NEED for them to decide whether humans are really “Dasein” or not. I DO know that most guys who are “interested” in philosophy really just think of it as an extended field of science that they will eventaully naturally be able to dominate with their logic. So as for real INTEREST in philosophy I would actually give the benefit to females, in my experience.