ABSTRACT
The feminist critique of reason investigates the roots of this connection between reason and masculinity and develops alternative ways of thinking. Selecting some paradigmatic texts, this chapter shows that the problem of masculinization has been attributed to different concepts, or at least different aspects, of reason. Traditional methods of research obviously lack sufficient mechanisms for warding off masculine bias. The ways in which experiments are arranged, data are interpreted, and research findings are presented tend to be influenced by views from the everyday life of the scholar—including masculine bias. Studies devoted to uncovering androcentrisms are already informed by another conception of scholarship in which the idea of scientific rationality no longer has masculine connotations. The central point of the feminist critique of reason lies not in the thesis of the irrevocably masculine character of the rational but in overcoming the traditional masculinization of reason.
