Aristotle Thought Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men

So as we mentioned in our presentation yesterday…Aristotle was pretty sexist.  And by that, I mean extremely sexist.  (He was, like, wayyy worse than Plato.)  It wasn't JUST that he thought women have fewer teeth than men.  And yes, I understand that he lived in the 300s BC, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t sexist.  If he could go on to become one of the most influential figures of Greek philosophy, he could get it through his skull that women aren’t actually inferior to men.  He challenged and formed so many notions of his time period that I don’t see why it would have been so difficult for him to understand such a basic concept.  I mean, he had not one, but TWO wives!  How was he so thick that he had no inkling of the capacity of an entire gender?

Luckily enough for women, though, Aristotle did say women were higher than slaves!  Thanks, Aristotle!  I just LOVE this quote from one of the most renowned thinkers of history: "The slave is wholly lacking the deliberative element; the female has it but it lacks authority; the child has it but it is incomplete.”  Great, glad to know he undermined not just women but also people whose freedom had been cruelly stripped from them.

So he also thought that women were deformed men.  Umm.  Did Aristotle ever looked in a mirror, or any sort of reflective surface?  Based on depictions of him, it’s not like he was that attractive either! 

Now, some modern scholars claim that Aristotle’s ridiculous and contradictory views on women and slaves were really meant to be some sort of sneaky attack on society’s views of these groups of people.  I think that’s giving too much credit to him.  If Aristotle was ambitious enough to explore intellectual pursuits to the point that he is still widely regarded as one of the most intellectual men in history…he could have plucked up the courage to say something about the unfair views on women and slaves.  Or, at the very least, he could have kept his mouth shut if he was going to be so ignorant.  I know, that’s kind of harsh to say; but I think Aristotle deserves harsh criticism for his views.  Like, thanks a lot, Aristotle, for influencing Western culture to think women are inferior!!!  Did you guys know that his astonishingly unenlightened ideas about women were quoted until the end of the Middle Ages?  And those views still permeate our society today, which is just plain sad.  So, again, thanks a LOT, Aristotle!

Still, we should all be understanding of Aristotle’s position, and should try to read him in his context.

Just kidding.  Maybe I could forgive Aristotle if he was just some run-of-the-mill guy with limited intellectual and creative thought, but he wasn’t.  And sure, he was a brilliant philosopher, but so what?  He still needs to be held accountable for his backwards views on slaves and women, views that later influenced Western thought and contributed to the societal oppression women experienced and in many areas still experience today.  Here’s the truth: Aristotle was a misogynist.  Change always comes from somewhere, someone has to be the first to speak out, and someone always has to be at the vanguard; and that’s why I don’t think we should excuse Aristotle just because he lived way back when.