It reignited an internal debate I've been having for a number of months now. Pretty much settled on my answer - but then something will happen which will make me wonder again ...
This post has the has the potential to make all my female friends a little cross with me, and for the record I will say up front here and now that when it comes to the perception and intuition department I am rather lacking. Actually I have NONE!! Or if I do it takes about three months for me to figure out that there is something I should be paying attention too, and then more often than not I put the pieces together wrongly anyway.
So here are my thoughts on Feminine Intuition. It seems to me that perception/intuition/or what ever else you want to call it, is really just imagination on steroids.
You see someone do something so then you imagine the reasons and motivations for why the person did that thing, acted that way, made that face ...
Women tend to jump straight to reasons and motivations without consciously registering that they saw the action or facial expression or whatever it is that set them off. So then they call it intuition. And just because they're sometimes right in guessing those motivations and reasons doesn't change the fact that it's still imagination. Because when it comes down to it, no-one can see inside another persons head.
I'm very interested in peoples thoughts on this ...
I think the girl in the image is pretty OTT myself, I don't know anyone who does that! Nor do I actually know of any woman who would say she has "feminine intuition". I think FI is a social construction meant to dismiss women and their attitudes. The whole perception/intuition thing in general is not just a female phenomenon - Men talk about hunches, being able to quickly judge people (in business situations) based on flimsy evidence, getting a feel for something and so on.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in any sixth sense of intuition - but I do think that some people are better at noticing and attending to those around them than others. Some people live so much in their own heads that they don't really notice or pay attention to other people while others pick up on every little nuance.
There are some signs that are pretty tell-tale - someone smiles at you with their mouth only or what they're saying and their expression don't match - but most things are way too subtle to make any judgements on IMO. It's when there is that subtlety that some people let their imagination take over & yep, that is just plain silly.
I agree about the girl in the piece, but I think that was the point of that particular piece, to higlight the over-the-topness of peoples thinking.
ReplyDeleteHowever I do know lots of women who claim to have feminine intuition - they use it to justify their opinions about people and circumstances.
I agree you about it not really being a women only phenomenon, just a name that is given to the female version of a hunch - if I was a guy I'd still be writing the same opinion, just be complaining about hunches!!
I'm not saying that it's wrong to notice little signs that people give out - just to assign meaning to them. For example it's one thing to say "She looks sad." It's a completely different thing to say "She looks sad - I wonder if her marriage is OK." Thats sliding into dangerous territory. Same with things like "He just gave me a really nice smile - I think he 'likes' me." Maybe he was thinking about his new electronic gadget and didn't even notice you were there!