Yeah, I had a similar experience in Philosophy, which is why I'm now a sociologist. I'm sad to see sociology on your list too, though, because I know it's not always a feminist discipline even though it's often better than most. It sounds like your school is particularly bad at including women's voices in the curriculum. Do they have a women's studies department? I doubt you're the only one feeling this way, so try and find a community who considers this an important issue so you can get the kind of education you actually want and deserve.

Have you tried to read any Simone de Beauvoir? She wrote "The Second Sex," one of the first philosophical works that looks at what it is to be female. I believe it was she who defined sex and gender as separate concepts. You may enjoy this.

Aristotle all but invented biology, logic, and psychology. Many of his ideas on science and the nature of the world have been dis proven. We no longer believe that all matter is made of air, water, earth as he hypothesized... we know it is made of atoms. But without his ideas, we would not have formed new ideas, and kept reaching for truth.

As feminists I think we need to acknowledge his early efforts to understand the world, even if we don't agree with his understanding of women. Instead, I look at what these subjects that have been attributed to him, and think about the good that they are doing for women today.

I'm not up on my Aristotle (BAD religion major. No cookie), but I wonder if "women are castrated men" is an oversimplification of the separation of the androgyne. A lot of (especially later) Greek philosophy and religion theorizes that spiritual beings are perfect and therefore cannot be defined by a gender (because that would limit them, and in Greek thought perfection is incompatible with limits). Various creation stories/anthropologies deal with this in various ways, but the long and short of it is, spiritual substance gets split into male and female during the creation of humanity, and so EVERYONE is flawed until the androgyne is reacheived. This is a big part of early Christian thought, too, FYI.

Not to say these thinkers didn't see the male half as superior to the female--even the ones who thought the opposite weren't exactly feminist, but it's still fairly complicated and nuanced.

I read about Aristotle, too, in Jack Holland's 'Misogyny'. He also mentions Freud, Nisztche (sp?) and others hailed as 'great philosophers' who were really misogynistic creeps. Why do we continue to be told that these people were so great when they were like this? If they'd said the same about black people or whatever, we'd probably be hearing about it and not encouraged to mindlessly accept their 'greatness'.

MaggieF -- from what I understand, that would actually be in line with the stuff the medieval Scholastics (who were very Aristotelian).

natatafish -- don't forget that he coined the very word "metaphysics" as well :)

I think it's really important to make a genuine attempt to understand these philosophers' theories, including the blatantly sexist ones, specifically in the context of their place in the historical narrative of human intellectual history. We should study Dead White Men specifically because they have been so influential -- regrettably, they have in fact dictated the course of western intellectual history much more powerfully than the female thinkers that might have been. But if we really want to understand the basis for the theories we have now and the foundations of the ways we understand things, we have to engage seriously with things like e.g. Aristotle's view of women. That doesn't at all mean that we at all have to agree with his view of women (and as natatafish pointed out, we certainly don't agree with his explanation for e.g. why objects fall towards the ground when we drop them), just that we have to understand what it is and why he believed it to be true.

Also, see my own related post here: http://tinyurl.com/FemPhil

Nettle Syrup: A lot of them did say pretty terrible things about people of other races, if they even remembered that other races existed in the first place. There's some especially weird stuff said by political philosophers after the discovery of America about Native Americans (the most well known and probably most generous of which is Rousseau's conception of the "noble savage")

It might be worth noting, too, that it's an especially complicated issue considering that even the very ability to read philosophy (and the desire to do so), let alone studying and talking about it in a context where other people can be reasonably expected to know what you're going on about, is a pretty priveleged position to be in in the first place.

In my high school philosophy class we didn't read any women. I remember asking my teacher about it. He said "Oh there's a lot of women philosophers, but they mostly just write about feminism." Like that didn't count or that is was an elective, an optional niche.

I'm in college right now and am pursuing a minor in philosophy. I'm more into ethics, modern philosophy and philosophy of science than the classics.

in a philosophy of biology class I took we talked about the changing views in biology. In classics the question was why are their females? Now, in evolutionary biology the question is, why are their males?

Judith Jarvis Thomson, Susan Haack, Patricia Churchland and Barbara Montero are prominent, modern female philosophers worth checking out.

Note: (wonder woman is the same as sinful rib, sometimes my user name changes.)
"Have you tried to read any Simone de Beauvoir? She wrote "The Second Sex," I have bought the book, but I haven't had the time to read it. Have you guys read the book? what did you think about it? "As feminists I think we need to acknowledge his early efforts to understand the world, even if we don't agree with his understanding of women." I agree wiht you on this, but what I was complaining was the fact that some scholars still see Aristotle and Freud as the most intelligent ones with no mistakes. I can see the fact that time periods in history affects the way people view women, men, and other ideas. But what bothers me is what nettle syrup post and I cmpletely agree. " Why do we continue to be told that these people were so great when they were like this? " I agree that to really understand their theories theses philosophers were talking about we should study them carefully. I guess what am trying to ask for it is impossible, why don't we study female's philosophers point of view and take them as seriously as male philosophers. Almost a lot of women philosophers are thrown in feminism, there is nothing wrong with that, but like salad said they are just trhown in another section so that philosophy doesn't have to worry about them. Salad,I'm also going for a minor in philosophy I just barely started college though. I will definitely check out the moder famle philosophers.

Note: (wonder woman is the same as sinful rib, sometimes my user name changes.)
"Have you tried to read any Simone de Beauvoir? She wrote "The Second Sex," I have bought the book, but I haven't had the time to read it. Have you guys read the book? what did you think about it? "As feminists I think we need to acknowledge his early efforts to understand the world, even if we don't agree with his understanding of women." I agree wiht you on this, but what I was complaining was the fact that some scholars still see Aristotle and Freud as the most intelligent ones with no mistakes. I can see the fact that time periods in history affects the way people view women, men, and other ideas. But what bothers me is what nettle syrup post and I cmpletely agree. " Why do we continue to be told that these people were so great when they were like this? " I agree that to really understand their theories theses philosophers were talking about we should study them carefully. I guess what am trying to ask for it is impossible, why don't we study female's philosophers point of view and take them as seriously as male philosophers. Almost a lot of women philosophers are thrown in feminism, there is nothing wrong with that, but like salad said they are just trhown in another section so that philosophy doesn't have to worry about them. Salad,I'm also going for a minor in philosophy I just barely started college though. I will definitely check out the moder female philosophers.

Salad I have a question for you, is philosophy of biology class another of philosophy you can study or can you major in that genre of philosophy specific?