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Articles

What Women?

Marcia Yudkin remembers almost choking at Cornell.

“We should look upon the female state as having as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature.”
– Aristotle, The Generation of Animals, 4th century BCE

When I was a student there in the Seventies, every other Monday evening the Cornell University Philosophy Department convened in a tournament called ‘Discussion Club’. The event began promptly at 8 o’clock. The night’s presenter would gallop out onto the field for no more than twenty minutes, kicking up dust with a position on so-and-so’s objections to whoever’s theory of such-and-such. Then a challenger trotted out for ten minutes, letting his banners fly as he charged the lead rider with cunning thrusts of reasoning.

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