Solipsism exists in various strength of formulation. The word itself comes from the Latin “Solus” meaning alone, and “ipse” meaning “self“, the position of this philosophy is that one’s own mind is the only thing one can be certain of exists. As an epistemological position, it posits that everything outside of ones own mind is unsure, in terms of metaphysics it can go so far as to say that the outside world and other minds does not exist. The best known formulation from a solipsist philosopher is perhaps Descartes “I think, therefore I am”. From this perspective, it is perhaps the rejection of empiricism, and to some extent the embrace of reason as the guiding force. However, where it becomes interesting is in the acceptance of logic as a guidance for thought.
I’ve often debated the merits of rationalism vs. the merits of empiricism, and the frequently cited issues with rationalism is the concept of self-delusion, as ego investment and time investments in an idea or a theory increases, so does the thinker’s clarity and objectivity of thought. In a sense, it is easy to overlook a logical fallacy, if you life’s work depends on doing so. On the other hand, the issue often cited with empiricism is the reliance on perceived certainty, and interpretation of evidence. Since the reading of evidence, and the drawing of conclusions from evidence are inherently influenced by the interpreter’s insight, intelligence and knowledge.
However, solipsism in the harder epistemological sense, creates a wall between thinker and world, wherein only the thinker’s thoughts are true to exist, something which is shared with female solipsism.
Female solipsism
When the manosphere writers and participants, speak of female solipsism, this is at best an inaccurate term philosophically. It refers to the tendency of females as a group to not have a well developed ability to think outside of her own experience and perceptions.In a sense, female solipsism, as opposed to philosophical, can be defined as “Only my own experience and perception as validated by my emotions can be sure to exist” where philosophers would worship reason and logic as their guidance, to the woman her experience, emotion and her perception of them become her guidance. This explains how a female can at the same time exist as a pack member and as a solitary creature.
This is why a woman can make statements such as “All women are crazy“, but if I man does so, the same woman would be quick to respond with “Not all women are like that“. Because when the woman makes the statement, it is implied that she is actually saying “All women are crazy…. except me” whereas when a man makes the same statement, she takes it to include her. The woman sets herself apart from the set of all women, because in her solipsistic mind, her experiences, perceptions and emotions are unique to the world.
This obviously makes no sense. If I were to draw a Venn Diagram of the statement, the circle labeled Crazy, would overlap perfectly with the circle “All women” in both cases. Put in mathematical terms I’m stating All women = Crazy. We could of course debate the terms, such as “How do you define crazy” but the key is that any statement about “women” is taken by a woman as meaning “You“. This is why many men perceive women as overly emotional and getting upset over nothing, because they take impersonal statements as personal attacks. This is by large a case of set grouping, wherein the single woman, who is a subset of woman, exists in a quantum state, where she is both part of the group and apart from the group.
From an evolutionary perspective, solipsism does make quite a lot of sense, if we perceive the world as it has been for great parts of evolution, with might being right. Men largely were expected to be loyal to their chief, lest they seek to unsurp him, if they gained his power they could also expect to inherit his harem. If you were a woman and you sought to maintain your life and preferred way of living, submission would have been the only option, while simultaneously rejecting your previous tribe and bonds. You have a higher probability of surviving as a war-bride than if you are sold into slavery, or cast from the tribe. If you can settle down with your new warlord, and you can convince yourself that by doing so you are honoring the memory of your tribe, or by mating with him you are also keeping your tribe’s bloodline alive, then it facilitates survival.
Solipsism assists in these actions due to putting less weight on external structures, and more weight on your internal perceptions, emotions and experiences. A woman who had a deep, undying loyalty to her tribe and to the men within it, would have had a lesser chance of survival than a woman who acted as the Romans do when the Romans conquered her tribe. Solipsism lends itself to delusion, because the basic statement of it, is that if you can rationalize it to yourself, then it must be true. Therefore, it follows that solipsism is based on validity, not through the use of an external system (though some adopt it) but validity within a closed circuit. “If I can believe it, it must be true” or as feminists phrase it these days “Listen and believe“.
Summary and Conclusions
From an empiricists perspective, solipsism makes little sense, because an empiricist is one who is not satisfied with pure reason, but who has a deep need to test and experiment to validate his propositions and theories. Therefore, the concept that nothing outside his own mind can be sure to exist is troubling due to the fact that his mind is built based on his experiments and experiences, in effect the outside world is more real to him than his own faculties of reason and knowledge. The empiricist knows because the outside world demonstrates it to him, the solipsist knows because his own mind tells him that it is true. A woman knows that her perceptions are true, because her emotions tells her that they are. It is a case of circular reasoning, which readily becomes apparent when using objective data such as statistics.
When speaking of statistics you will notice female solipsism regardless of the topic. As a matter a fact, here is an experiment for my readers. The next time you find yourself having a conversation with a woman, casually make the statement, “Did you know that 21.8% of American women can be diagnosed with a mental illness?“, please leave a comment with your results.
Probability and generalizations tend to go hand in hand, if you know that 80% of white men who wear Khakis love Kenny G, and you have a group of 10 white men wearing Khakis, statistically speaking, 8 of them would love Kenny G, (the other 2 might just leave when the other 8 start banging each other). This is all statistics is, it is the observation of how often a certain trait appears in a population, it is not personal, if you have multiple sets of statistics measuring different variables within a population it is likely that you will not find one person who has all the statistical traits.
However, when a statement is spoken by a member of an out-group, namely a man, that uses a generalization or statistical data and he applies it to a population, this short-circuits female solipsism. While the man may make a statement such as “Did you know that according to research, most women lie about their number of partners” what she hears is “You lie about your sex partners” she immediately defends herself as if he had made the latter statement not the former.
On the other hand, if a woman makes a statement such as “Come on, all of us lie about our partners” the other women hear “I lied about my sex partners”
To abstract:
- A woman interprets a man’s statements about women as directed at her personally.
- A woman interprets a woman’s statements about women generally as directed at the speaker of the statement.
- A woman interprets statements that she makes about women, as directed at all women except her.
A note:
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