"Men are not more logical. They simply lack empathy."

On today’s episode, we are talking about how it’s not women’s intuition… it’s intelligence, and how making that mental re-categorization of calling women’s intuition… actual intelligence will help you and the women around you gain the AUDACITY to share your thoughts and advocate for yourself and other women.

Today’s class is heavily informed by the book How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna.

The premise of the book is that philosophy has long been gatekept from women by men, namely privileged men.

Penaluna writes,

Philosophers have been some of the most consistent and fruitful contributors to theories of women’s inferiority, treating topics traditionally studied by women, such as parenting, caregiving, and other aspects of domestic life, with little interest, while the white male point of view is dramatized in countless thought experiments.

—Regan Penaluna. How to Think Like a Woman.

You might be thinking this isn’t a big problem and wondering why we’re even discussing this in the spoiled girlie support group—after all, who has plans of going into philosophy? It might seem like brainrot; go touch grass, right? But first of all, philosophy is for everyone. It’s not just old men in robes with moleskine notebooks, sitting on a cliff contemplating whether man is truly free. No, philosophy is about thinking for yourself regarding your reality, your existence, and the meaning of your life, among other things.

The issue of philosophy being gatekept from women runs much deeper than you might think. Whether you believe it or not, the historical treatment of women venturing into philosophy and higher learning impacts us regular degular women in our everyday lives. This influences everything from how we verbalize our desires, needs, and opinions to how intelligent we believe we are—or how intelligent we think other women are. Questions like “Are women even worth listening to?” “Are we worthy of having a public voice?” and “Should we even have the right to vote or make choices that directly impact society?” all reflect how society values women’s thoughts and opinions.

As Penaluna writes,

they don’t acknowledge that their skepticism of woman’s intellectual capacity—expressed casually and with an objective air—impacts the self-perception and lives of actual women.

—Regan Penaluna, How to Think Like a Woman

We've talked about this countless times in the spoiled girlie support group, we don't need to teach women how to be confident because we already are confident. We have so much to be confident about! but let's be real, what we do need to teach women is how to deal with the consequences of their confidence.

I wanted to share this book with you because if I didn't love being a woman before, I love being a woman so much more now that I've read this book. I no longer feel like I'm overthinking or I'm reading too much into things, or whatever I want to think about or talk about are pointless topics, that it's not that deep when it really is that deep. I felt so validated after reading this book so after today's class I hope you read it too. Also even the author talks about how writing this book made her feel like it's possible to be a woman and be free.

[this book is] about how I came to feel trapped by the concept of woman and how I’ve been grappling ever since with whether it’s possible to be a woman and be free.

—Regan Penaluna, How to Think Like a Woman

so with that said, let’s get into a lot of the issues the book covers and how it can set you free from said issues.

women and imposter syndrome

First is women and imposter syndrome. According to Penaluna,

“Women are more likely than men, especially in their formative years, to feel like imposters.”

—Regan Penaluna, How to Think Like a Woman

Before we delve deeper into that, I want to first define “imposter syndrome” so we all have the same starting point. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), imposter syndrome is a “behavioral health phenomenon described as self-doubt of intellect, skills, or accomplishments among high-achieving individuals.” This can look like getting a promotion at work or landing a shiny new job but not feeling qualified, even though your resume says otherwise.

Imposter syndrome can also show up in our relationships—if you constantly feel like you’re not good enough for your partner when they’ve done or said nothing to make you feel that way, that could also be a case of imposter syndrome. While this can technically affect anyone, imposter syndrome is often associated with “high-achieving women who are in male-dominated industries.”

Unfortunately, there are numbers that back this up. For instance, a 2014 internal study by multinational information technology company Hewlett Packard found that while men apply to jobs even when they meet only about 60% of the qualifications, women applied only if they met 100% of them. I mean… I really want to know where men get the audacity because I want some!

In 2020, a poll of 750 high-performing executive women just below C-level in different industries revealed that 75% have experienced imposter syndrome at some point in their careers.

women’s occupation is to be occupied (by men and children)

Penaluna asserts that a barrier to women’s engagement in philosophy is a rather obvious byproduct of patriarchy, which is that women have been kept from engaging in creative passions or philosophy because, by default, we carry the burden of housework and childcare. In other words, a woman’s occupation is to be occupied by her husband and her children.

as Penaluna puts it

Philosophy was an expensive activity. To have the leisure to get lost in abstractions and ponder the nature of the universe, a philosopher could not spend his days worrying about dinner, laundry, or the incessant demands of a young child. Where did his freedom come from? You need good luck, said one ancient philosopher. And not to have been born a woman, said another. Or a slave.

—Regan Penaluna, How to Think Like a Woman

One could make the argument that women are still experiencing a form of domestic captivity today in the form of “mental load.” Mental load is a term used to describe the invisible labor involved in managing a household and family, which typically falls on women’s shoulders (yes, even in the most progressive families). Also referred to as “cognitive labor,” the mental load isn’t about the physical tasks that need to be done for the family or around the house, but rather the overseeing of those tasks. It’s about being the one who’s in charge of making a mental running list of everything that needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and to whom those tasks need to be delegated.

A study published in the American Sociological Review describes it as the responsibility of “anticipating needs, identifying options for filling them, making decisions, and monitoring progress.”

A recent report from the children’s nonprofit Bright Horizons paints a pretty good picture of this, sharing:

A child's school day isn't just about the physical jobs of pickup and drop-off. It's also about the perpetual mental awareness of schedules including early release days, carpools, doctors' appointments, play dates, special events, field trips, class parties, science fairs, who needs to bring what, and which day requires special supplies. And those are only some of the items on the family list that require a working mother's constant mental presence. The mind share versus time share equation is at the heart of the mental load—the requirement on women to be not just parents and caretakers but also unofficial keepers of where the entire family needs to be and when and perpetual guardians against anything falling through the cracks.

and if that sounds exhausting, it’s because it is

Lucia Ciciolla, Ph.D., a psychologist at Oklahoma State University, has researched the impacts of this invisible labor on mothers and found that the “mental load” is linked to strains on their well-being and lower relationship satisfaction. Through her research, she’s found that nearly 9 in 10 mothers in committed relationships say that they feel solely responsible for organizing the family’s schedules, a burden that leaves them feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and unable to make space for their own self-care.

If you think this isn’t pervasive, just consider some of the female characters you see in TV shows, particularly the moms. As much as I love Phil Dunphy, his dynamic with Claire in Modern Family, especially in the earlier seasons, clearly depicts how husbands tend to over-rely on their wives to ensure that everything and everyone is in line. In one conversation Claire has with Gloria, she compares their situations, saying that while Gloria lives with two adults (her husband Jay and their very mature son Manny), she has four children (her actual children and Phil).

I know what some people are probably thinking—that the solution to this “mental load” problem is easy: “Just share it with your partner!” “Just ask your husband!” But that mindset actually reveals the deeper problem that perpetuates the mental load issue. When we tell women that it’s still their responsibility to remind their husbands to pull their weight at home, we’re telling them that it’s their sole responsibility to know how to run the household. When it comes to childrearing, chores, and everything concerning the family, men and women aren’t actually partners. It’s like men are supposed to be the “heads of household,” but plenty of them don’t even know how to run it.

As long as these women share a home with their husbands, they’ll be expected to keep a mental tab of all the chores that need to be done or assigned, all the things around the house that need to be fixed, and all the appointments that need to be booked and attended. We still aren’t freeing women from the traditional roles of caregiver and caretaker. If they’re always using their mental energy to fulfill those roles, there’s just not going to be much left for philosophy and higher learning.

the beauty myth

Before we move on to another one of Penaluna’s points, I want to quickly insert some ideas from Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth because it highlights a different yet equally real way that the patriarchy continues to control women today—through beauty. According to Wolf, beauty is more than just appearance or cosmetics. Beyond makeup and fashion, beauty is deeply tied to how societal pressures make women feel. Not only that, but these pressures often strip women of genuine choice and freedom. The beauty myth is designed to make women feel ugly and inadequate regardless of their actual appearance. It argues that the issue isn’t actually with beauty practices themselves, but with the fact that women often feel compelled to engage in them to feel worthy or accepted.

If you don’t think that beauty has anything to do with philosophy or intellectual discourse being gatekept from women, especially today, just consider how there still exists a false dichotomy between the pretty girl and the smart girl—the beauty versus the brains.

Wolf writes:

In order for women to learn to fear one another, we had to be convinced that our sisters possess some kind of mysterious, potent secret weapon to be used against us—the imaginary weapon being “beauty.”

—Naomi Wolf. The Beauty Myth.

You see it all the time in pop culture—women being pitted against each other, conditioned to see each other as threats. Think about Cady Heron and Regina George, Alex and Haley Dunphy, or even Blonde Taylor Swift and Brunette Taylor Swift in the You Belong With Me music video. Because who better to make smart girls feel inadequate than the girl who catches boys’ attention, right?

privilege and philosophy

So, between the mental load and the beauty myth, it becomes even clearer that society today is still designed to keep women from engaging in philosophy. If you’re meant to focus on your husband and children, carry the mental burden of keeping your entire family in line, and obsess over how you look, then how are you ever going to achieve higher self-actualization? This brings me to Penaluna’s next point, which is that philosophy, especially for women, is a hallmark of privilege. In his article titled “Art and Wealth” in The Atlantic, O.B. Frothingham wrote about the relationship between art and wealth.

There has been no great art in ages of poverty; no age of wealth has been without it. The supreme accomplishments of the artist have glorified prosperous times. Witness the period of Pericles, which was the culminating point of Athenian opulence. The energy of the ruler, conspiring with the popular feeling of abundance, raised the Parthenon, and erected those works the loveliness and grandeur of which astonish the world.

Historically, great art is a product of wealthy and prosperous times because it was during these periods that people had more resources—such as time, energy, and money—to pursue artistic endeavors. The same has been true for philosophy, where only women of privilege could engage in the practice. To illustrate, let’s talk about Mary Astell. Born in 1666 in England, Mary Astell argued that women should be educated so that they could pursue personal happiness and contribute to society. However, Mary herself had to face the harsh reality of her times. Without a dowry, she would have to marry beneath her, which would leave her with even less time and resources to prioritize her intellectual growth because she’d be stuck doing endless chores.

That didn’t stop her, though. As quite the trailblazer for feminism, Mary argued that, like men, women had reason and intellect. She believed that God gave women these abilities for a reason and that women must put them to good use. Unfortunately, in the society she lived in, women—especially those belonging to the upper classes—were expected to be anonymous and humble. During these times, humility was seen as a virtue, and because of that, even privileged women had to balance meeting these expectations while still trying to engage in philosophical discourse. And if you thought that women who had successfully nurtured their intellectual growth had been revered, think again.

According to another female philosopher Damaris Cudworth or “Lady Masham,”

A smart woman is intimidating and for this she is mocked and gossiped about all over town. Her local parson is too shy to speak with her. Her doctor worries that she is concerningly peculiar. Because she is intelligent enough to manage her own home, she makes her neighbors uncomfortable, and they rarely visit. Masham says the smart woman is at odds with society whether she wants to be or not; her very being is a threat to the world as such.

But despite Lady Masham’s observations of how smart women were treated in their society, Astell still believed that a happy life was one that was tied to intellectual pursuits

And much like Naomi Wolf, Astell was critical of the idea that a woman’s worth was tied to her physical appearance, stating

To imagine that our Souls were given us only for the service of our Bodies, and that the best improvement we can make of these, is to attract the eyes of men. We value them too much, and our selves too little, if we place any part of our worth in their Opinion.

All in all, Astell was horrified by how society normalized women’s thoughtlessness—how women have been conditioned to prioritize pleasing men instead of nurturing their own intellectual growth. For her, women’s minds were actually better suited to grasp the truth than men’s. She believed that because a woman’s intellectual sensibility is informed by both reason and love, our opinions and ideas could actually be superior.

Penaluna writes of Astell’s argument:

Love plays a critical role in knowledge, because it draws us toward objects… By contrast, the intellectual temperament of men falls short of this ideal. Whether by nature or nurture (Astell isn’t decided), men are far more prone to selfishness and, so, capable of producing only distorted truths.

and unfortunately for women-haters today, this bold claim by Astell is beginning to hold water especially in the discussion of women’s suitability as leaders.

In a study conducted by Dr. Alice Eagly, a scholar on the topic of women’s leadership, she had found that women make better leaders because women tend to be more “transformational leaders” and that compared to their male counterparts, women leaders were found to seek to develop others and listen more effectively, in addition to generally thinking more outside-the-box.

Various reports, including the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, state that the top skills needed to be successful “leaders of tomorrow” are emotional intelligence, empathy, listening skills, coaching and mentoring, and innovation and creativity. Not only that, but research has also revealed that women tend to be better at using these soft skills than men.

And if you’re not convinced yet, let science make the case for women even more: A study by the University of Southern California found that under high-stress situations, men tend to behave riskier than women, often leading to negative impacts and costly outcomes. This is because men and women respond to the rise of cortisol differently, with research showing that a woman’s brain can manage cortisol levels more effectively, allowing her to respond with more grace under pressure.

So maybe, instead of commending a woman for responding elegantly to a highly stressful situation and pinning it all on her “women’s intuition,” let’s call it for what it is: intelligence, specifically the emotional intelligence that results from her physiology and life experiences. We’re talking nurture AND nature… okay?

This acknowledgment that women aren’t actually less than men shouldn’t stop in workplaces. In our relationships, we should also work on dispelling the idea that men are the logical ones and that women are in charge of keeping them emotionally attuned.

In this video, the creator highlights how

“men are not more logical than women. they simply lack empathy.”

Let’s read the comments:

Before you make another excuse for your partner’s lack of empathy when you bring up perfectly valid issues, I want you to question whether logic and emotional intelligence actually are mutually exclusive - spoiler alert: they are not - unfortunately, even with all this data supporting women's intelligence, it still stands that women's intelligence TODAY is still overlooked and downplayed… oh it’s intuition. it’s not intelligence… men are more logical… meanwhile doing the most irrational things ever… men are heads of household… meanwhile not knowing how to run one…

give me a break.

solutions

But of course, there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Now that we’re aware of all the things that are keeping women from philosophizing, we can then ask: what do we do? Well, aside from what I mentioned earlier about unlearning the idea that we’re inferior because we’re women, there are quite a few things that we can practice until they become second nature. Today, I’m going to be sharing three from Penaluna’s book. The first would be to stand your ground in the decisions you make for yourself. It’s going to be really challenging to go against what society expects of you.

Penaluna says so herself:

“It’s often a tougher path for a woman, because society can be a hostile place for her to cultivate her subjectivity. It was true in the seventeenth century, and it was true for me. Maybe, then, the common experience of being a woman in philosophy is to be effaced: your feelings, your opinions, your presence, your life, your works, your impact are belittled, glanced at, or ignored… I took Masham’s recommendation to be: Do not retreat. A woman’s path to self-knowledge requires her to risk losing herself to find herself.”

—Regan Penaluna, How to Think Like a Woman

Unfortunately, us women have been so boxed in by society that even stretching our arms to try and expand the box just a little bit feels so wrong. But we can’t keep ourselves trapped in spaces we know we’ve outgrown just because we’re unsure of what’s waiting for us elsewhere. We’re never going to discover the kinds of new ideas and opinions we can have if we’re not brave enough to live the experiences that will birth them in the first place. The second solution is to uplift your community. According to Penaluna, “to be a self is to be profoundly connected to others, and to be free is to aid in the freedom of others. Perhaps this is all there is to rapture—to free each other to hear our own voices.”

Author Toni Morrison also has a similar quote, where she says

“If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

I think misogyny has been so ingrained in a lot of us that it manifests in ways we don’t even realize. Sometimes, women are also the ones who silence other women in spaces where we already have to fight so hard for our voices to be heard. That’s why I’m fine with the term "spoiled girlie"—I love it! We’re too radical for some people and too regressive for others. God forbid we call ourselves any other label; people will say we’re not this enough or that enough, and once again, it derails us from actually philosophizing. I’m so tired of the no-nuance nonsense—let’s get things done and undone.

Case in point: this whole notion that women are somehow less intelligent. Now that we’re more mindful of how society is designed to strip women of the time, space, and resources to think, we can be more proactive in helping other women reclaim that power. Astell pointed out that men have always had thriving communities that empowered them, and women deserve the same.

Luckily for us, social media is giving us even more opportunities to show our solidarity with women. I feel so blessed to have the spoiled girlie support group where we can come together, support one another, and engage in important conversations. It’s vital for us to discuss matters that affect us, and I’m genuinely happy that you’re here. I try every time to show up for us all… sigh

Back to the topic, I deeply, deeply vibe with Penaluna’s quote:

“I have a hope for the world of ideas, that its stewards will continue to be more open to the ways ideas function and the profound impact they can have on the lives and minds of others.”

—Regan Penaluna, How to Think Like a Woman

Honestly, with the increasing awareness of our generation, I’m full of hope that the issues we talked about today are slowly being addressed. Finally, the third solution I want to share is one you can start right now—literally, this very second. It’s to take ownership of your capacity to philosophize. You’re doing it right now! Just by watching this video and indulging your curiosity, you’re engaging in a form of philosophy.

You also do it in other situations: whenever you share ideas or assumptions, that’s not just you “spilling the tea with your girlfriends”—that’s philosophizing. When you’re typing comments on someone’s video, when you’re creating and recreating scenarios in your head, when you ask yourself, “Why would he do that?”—you’re philosophizing. Even when you’re gossiping, you’re philosophizing. You are adding to the collective knowledge of society.

Your thoughts, your ideas, your voice are important, so you need the time, space, and resources to engage with them, to create a rich inner life, to philosophize.

the way forward

So what does our future look like? Masham initially believed it would take an apocalypse to make men and women equal. However, she later realized that women can free themselves from outdated expectations through the power of reason. The fundamental problem wasn’t that women were prevented from studying the same subjects as men, but that society made rational women feel unattractive and worthless. Believe it or not, this problem also shows us a way forward.

Masham recommended a two-tiered reformation: the first involves the individual, encouraging women to cultivate their own autonomy of thought; the second involves society, advocating for rigorous education for girls. But I would add a third layer. Earlier, we discussed owning your decisions, unlearning self-limiting beliefs about women’s inferiority, and uplifting your community. However, you won’t have the strength to do any of these if you don’t first recognize your intelligence as an asset.

And—AND!—be prepared for the consequences of your newfound confidence. The audacity you’ll have to stomach from others will be real. When you stop defining yourself by their expectations, when you refuse to live by their rules, when you reclaim your power and your voice, and when you begin to trust yourself, they will work even harder to make you second-guess your ability to think and decide for yourself.

But remember this: none of what they say or do from that moment reflects on you; it only reflects on them. It’s not your fault they can’t perceive the truth you deliver. It’s not your fault they lack the emotional intelligence to process the emotions you pick up from others. It’s not your fault they’re slow to put the pieces of the puzzle together or that they struggle to recognize patterns. They’re not as intelligent as you are—and they never had to be… until now.

Bestie, wake up!

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