re: #696 I am smarter than you

Geometry offers a great promise for Feminist Mathematics. Take tangents.

You have a line intersecting a circle and sharing a single point in space. The line (obviously the “male”) does not attempt to bisect or otherwise shape-rape the circle (obviously the “female”). Instead, there is a platonic intersection at a single point which neither can claim as an exclusive domain.

Tangents offer a model from which all of mathematics can be recast.

However, I feel strongly that the semiologist community should be engaged to purge the name “tangent” of the word “gent”. Again, phallocentrism stains the sheets, as it were.

As with the primacy of the number 0, we see in geometry that the fundamental figure is a point. And what is a point but yet another iteration of the circle-shape? Like the great Goddess, infinitely divisible yet always herself, inviolable no matter what shape-rape may be committed.

I hope you’ll consider reworking the Dot and the Line: a Romance in Lower Mathematics. See how the dot is cruelly portrayed as ‘fickle’ and shallow!

Youtube Video

And shouldn’t semiologists change their name as well? Phallocentrism continues to stain the sheets, and the Gap dresses, of us all.