Feminist Numerology

Is there a gender to numbers? In a series of experiments on how gender is seen, Wilkie and Bodenhausen looked at this issue.

They looked at how people thought of the gender of babies based on their faces and names. Random numbers shown with these faces and names changed how people thought about their gender.

What does it Mean to be a Feminist?

feminist: noun:  A person who wants women to have the same rights as men.
The idea that men and women should have the same rights and chances in life. 2: a group of people who work together for women’s rights and interests. Feminism gives us a lot of words.

The 4 Types of Feminism

Feminism is a political movement that aims to fix sexual inequality, but its methods for making social change are very different. Feminism comes in four different forms:

1. Radical
2. Socialist or Marxist
3. Liberal
4. Difference

These are sometimes called the “Big Three” schools of feminism. Since the end of the 20th century, there have also been new kinds of feminism.  Some types of feminism more or less follow the political leanings of society as a whole, or they focus on certain things, like the environment.

11 Signs you Know you are Feminist

1. You’re confident & comfortable in your body
2. You’re not ashamed to talk about your menstrual cycle.
3. Adverts targeting women annoy you
4. When you hear sexism, discrimination, or misogyny, it annoys you.
5. You won’t “behave like a lady.”
6. You don’t like that old white men are in charge.
7. You don’t want to take the last name of your partner.
8. Its upsets you that not enough people know about women’s rights.
9. You believe that men and women should get the same pay for the same work.
10. You don’t like it when men blame your moods on your period.
11. You don’t need someone to look after you.

Why is Feminism Such an Uncomfortable Word Now?

Young women are becoming more and more afraid of feminism for fear that it will make them outcasts. They are also afraid to join the often heated conversation about what it means to be a feminist in modern times because they don’t want to be talked down to or misunderstood.

Famous Feminist

1. Eleanor Roosevelt. 
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Madonna
4. Maya Angelou
5. Angelina Jolie
6. Oprah Winfrey
7. Emma Watson
8. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
9. Coretta Scott King
10. Marlene Dietrich. 
11. Barbara Walters
12. Betty Friedan. 
13. Gloria Steinem. 
14. Simone de Beauvoir
15. Angela Davis. 

 

 

The Feminist Theory

Feminist theory is the application of feminism to fields of theory or philosophy. It includes work from anthropology, sociology, economics, women’s studies, literary criticism, art history, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, among other fields.

Feminist theory tries to figure out why there are differences between men and women and focuses on gender politics, power relationships, and sexuality. A lot of feminist theory is about promoting women’s rights and interests while criticizing these social and political relationships.

Feminist theory looks at things like prejudice, stereotypes, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, and patriarchy.

In the field of literary criticism, Elaine Showalter says that feminist theory has gone through three stages as it has grown.

She calls the first one “feminist critique,” in which a feminist reader looks at the ideas behind literary events. The second one, which Showalter calls “gynocriticism,” is based on the idea that “the woman is the creator of textual meaning.”

The last phase, which she calls “gender theory,” is about “exploring the ideological imprint and literary effects of the sex/gender system.”

Julia Kristeva, a feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher, and Bracha Ettinger, an artist and psychoanalyst, have both made contributions to feminist theory and feminist literary criticism. But as the scholar Elizabeth Wright points out, “none of these French feminists align themselves with the feminist movement as it appeared in the Anglophone world.” Recent feminist theories, like the one by Lisa Lucile Owens , have focused on defining feminism as a movement to free all women.

 

Feminist psychology

Feminism in psychology started as a criticism of the male-dominated way of doing psychological research, where only male perspectives were studied with all male subjects. As more women got Ph.D.s in psychology, women and their problems became legitimate subjects of study.

Feminist psychology puts a lot of emphasis on the social context, the experience of living, and qualitative analysis.  There are now projects like Psychology’s Feminist Voices that try to keep track of how feminist psychologists have changed the field.  

Feminism in Numerology

In particular, odd numbers were seen as masculine, while even numbers were seen as feminine.

In the first study, explicit ratings of one-digit numbers were looked at. We were able to confirm that odd numbers seemed like men and even numbers seemed like women.

This pattern was seen in both men and women, but it was stronger in women. We also looked at whether this pattern holds for both automatic and planned responses.

We live in nine-year cycles, and your position in the cycle is determined by a single “personal number” calculated from your birthdate.

Suppose you are born on 23 June, and want to know your fortune for the year 2001. June is the 6th month, so you write down the number 2362001. Add up all the digits: 2+3+6+2+0+0+1 = 14, and if (as in this example) you get a two-digit number, add the digits again so that you get a single digit: 1+4 = 5.

That is your personal number. When you have worked it out, you then you can refer to the magazine’s relevant column to find out what 2001 holds for you (and about half a billion other people around the world with the same personal number).

There is a certain mathematical interest in the way the personal number is calculated. It is in fact the remainder when the original date is divided by 9. In our example, 2362001 = 262444 times 9 + 5. 

In general, to find the remainder when a number is divided by 9, you simply add the digits of the number, and repeat the process until you get a single digit. This will be the required remainder. In particular, if the remainder is 0, the original number is divisible by 9. 

The proof that this process works is quite easy. If N is an integer, we denote by S(N) the sum of the digits of N. So if N is for example a five-digit number abcde, then S(N) = a + b +c + d + e.

Now N = 10000a + 1000b + 100c + 10d + e,
so N – S(N) = 9999a + 999b + 99c + 9d,
which is clearly divisible by 9. 

It follows that N and S(N) have the same remainder when divided by 9. Thus repeating the process of summing the digits of a number until you get a single digit gives you the remainder when the original number is divided by 9.

This is an interesting little piece of mathematics, and is the first step into some very important ideas such as check digits and error-correcting codes, which are central to the information revolution. But that is not the subject of this article, numerology. Unfortunately, there is no more mathematics in numerology than what has just been described. 

Numerology is a bogus and essentially worthless subject, even more so than astrology. There is no basis for the belief that everybody born on January 1 has the same future as everybody born on January 10 or January 19 or January 28, but that is what the author of this article would have you believe. On what basis does she base her advice to a woman with personal number 1 to be cautious about changing her shampoo, or have a baby if her personal number is 3, or take up religion if her personal number is 7? 

Numerology is the field of cranks and charlatans. It is quite possible that the article was published in the full knowledge of the author and the editor of this magazine that it is all hokum, but fun. Never mind, they say, it will be read avidly by our more gullible readers and boost the magazine’s sales. 

But there is a more serious question. Is there a connection between the tendency of women’s magazines to promote pseudoscientific rubbish and the fact that the professions based on mathematics and the hard sciences are dominated by men? 

Prof Webb of the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics is a key role player in the International Mathematics olympiad as well as the Pan African Maths Olympiad. Here he gives us his viewpoint on the pseudoscience of numerology.

Prof Webb of the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics is a key role player in the International Mathematics olympiad as well as the Pan African Maths Olympiad. Here he gives us his viewpoint on the pseudoscience of numerology.
– by Prof John Webb