A graceful concession

As she promised she would if the case could be made, Susan Walsh has graciously declared her acceptance of the concept of "female solipsism":

As a female Boomer, I will undoubtedly continue to exhibit robust self-esteem and a somewhat emotional view of the world, processed through the lens of my inner experience. I’ll happily cop to female solipsism, or whatever the guys are calling it these days

On the one hand, it doesn't matter in the slightest if Susan, or anyone else, deigns to accept the concept.  She isn't the Conceptual Police, solipsism either exists or it doesn't, and it doesn't actually matter what anyone, including me, happens to believe.  On the other hand, the discussion has been a very useful one, as concepts that survive this sort of critical refinement only become stronger and better understood.

The discussion also got me to think about the concept in a different way.  I don't know that I would go so far as to describe female solipsism as "a feature, not a bug", as Keoni Galt did, but his perspective did remind me that it exists whether I like it or not, exhibitions of it are not indicative of female failings so much as feminine attributes, and there is nothing I can do about it except accept it and potentially make productive use of it.

And how does one make use of it?  By looking for opportunities to frame the discussion with a female interlocutor in terms of her self-perspective.  For example, if for some reason you want to convince a woman that Volvos are better than Toyotas, female solipsism suggests it will be less effective to appeal to her sense of logic by presenting a set of objective metrics that make sense, and more effective to appeal to her self-perception.  Simply saying "I think you're the sort of woman who can really pull off a Volvo" will likely prove much more interesting to her, and get her thinking about the car much more deeply, than a comprehensive set of performance reviews from Car and Driver and other automotive magazines.

As with all material and scientific concepts, the proof is in the predictive model.  So far, female solipsism appears to be useful in this regard.  I hope to complete the first draft of the Solipsism Quotient test before the end of October; but one need not wait for it in order to test the basic concept in real life.

I would be remiss to fail to point out that this has also been an example of Susan's value to the androsphere as well as showing her genuine openness to our ideas.  Does she tend to have an immediate emotional and negative reaction to anything that promises to offend Team Woman?  Yes, and it is certainly fair to point that out.  But it must also be admitted that she can, and observably has, risen above that immediate reaction to consider a conceptual case on its merits.  Furthermore, if we cannot convince her, whose mind even her more committed critics must admit is at least relatively open in comparison with other female bloggers, then what hope have we of ever convincing women who are more instinctively hostile to the ideas and concepts we are continuing to develop?

There is no question that the vast majority of women, and perhaps the vast majority of men as well, will have to be instructed by rhetoric.  But the more we can convince through dialectic, the better, as they will become our allies in developing the required rhetoric that is not our native language.