The Logical Limits to Misunderstanding

Abstract

A widely shared mistake about human experience is that it is irredeemably gender-specific, in the sense that there are things only women, or only men, can understand. As will be shown in brief measure, this is logically unsustainable. One cannot intelligibly both insist there exists a strict dichotomy between gender viewpoints and maintain there is no way to conceive of a gender viewpoint other than one’s own. Further, society at large is disadvantaged by invalidating women’s experience and their voice as a source of authority through the fiction that women’s sensibilities and intuitions are inherently beyond men’s capacity to appreciate.