Editorial note: We have recently uncovered an important paper that was somehow rejected by traditional, patriarchal peer reviewed journals that oppress womyn and silence their voices. We made arrangements for us to publish this piece for the first time, so the world may know the truth and explore important new areas of higher mathematics. –DE
TOWARD A FEMINIST CALCULUS
Osulle Pmi-Samoht
Professor of Gender Studies
Abstract
This paper responds to recent literature suggesting that disparities in math abilities arise from biological differences between males and women. This response scaffolds its argument on a feminist perspective that resists hegemonic masculinities which have dominated math, and provides a place for feminist notions of temporality, uncorrupted by phallocentric physics which subordinate time and space. We commence with a study of how an inclusive math was decimated by the first fundamental theorem of the calculus and the toxicity of Classical Newtonian Physics. We close by suggesting a return to a gyno-centric calculus which values women’s ways of knowing.
Part 1: Background
Calculus can be divided into two sub-disciplines: the integral calculus and the differential calculus. We theorize that the differential calculus subjugates the integral calculus. We suggest that these performative forms flaunt their oxymoronic effect by shaking the pigeon pair of their masculine and feminine origins.
We believe the Integral Calculus is the more appropriate tool to model the physical world, for it disembodies marginalization in favor of intersectionality.
Foremost, in its semiotic iconicity, the integral manifests wholeness in its fluid S-curve as evinced by Figure 1.
The S curve represents the “feminist-as-producer” of textual meaning and bridges the chasm between mathematical symbols and written words. This form was created in response to the destruction of the fertility goddess cultures an an attempt to keep the memory alive and react to the domination of “equation over word.”
Specifically, curved visuals, such as two dimensional circular lines and other free flowing forms devoid of closed surfaces enable feminism; while males are privileged by three dimensional hard cylinders with defined edges.
We can find this form, this intersecting fluid S-representations of the goddess (Figure 2). Such forms suggest the umbrella of a gendered performativity capable of sexual reproduction without patriarchal hegemony – one that denies, and with success, the infusion of sperm.
The overarching goal of integral calculus is to span the boundaries of mysticism and to totalize knowledge and “women’s ways of knowing” (WWK). It is to accumulate, accept, convolve and involve the sum total of effects. It does so by recognizing the value of every interval adding to the sum. The integral calculus is exquisitely non-performative: it exists. Integral non-performativity can only be understood as a process of iteration – a regularized and constrained repetition of norms necessitated by processing. Feminist calculus repeats itself until it gets it right, even when it’s wrong.
Part 2: The destruction of fertility: the arrival of the male.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz first eschewed the beauty of integral calculus by mathematics, performatively, it to a world view of separation: the differential calculus. Unlike the integral calculus and its respect for WWK, the differential calculus tramples; it destroys, separates and rapes. The focus of such a male calculus is differentiation: rates, change velocity, speed and acceleration, hurtling normative cultures from one big bang to the next, restrained by masculine terror, violence, rape and the spray of seminal fluid.
We argue that the very symbolic representations suggest male-oriented normativity. Consider the ostensibly innocuous forms.
- Figure 3. Time differentiation (with a superposed dot):
- Figure 4. Space differentiation (with a superscripted prime):
But dare we explore the hidden meaning in these symbols that, in themselves, are the cause of the disparity in math scores between feminists and males? The clue can be found in the Leibniz notation: in long lost archives recently unearthed. The dot, upon microscopic examination, reveals its essential symbolic duality: the two testicles reaching toward infinite domination. For this is the original intended notation laid bare. The prime, upon microscopic examination, is representative self-extending male hegemony: it is the phallus.
- Figure 5. A microscopic inspection of time differentiation
- Figure 5. A microscopic inspection of space differentiation
Can it be no wonder why males outperform feminists in math? The very semiotic nature of the language dissuades feminists from working with males when these two symbols are juxtaposed, one on top the other.
Figure 7. Juxtapose time and space differentiation symbols
These are no accidents.
The differential calculus is a rapacious mathematical formulation demanding power over time and space, obliterating the communion of place: Feminists’ Place. It represents the first world-wide manifestation of rape culture and enables male math domination over feminism. Essentially, feminists are locked in a room by males Preventing Participation (PP) in higher abstractions.
Part 3: The split in integral wholeness
Early feminist theoreticians attempted to fight this onslaught of male domination. Initial attempts to refute differential calculus were successful in the creation of two forms of integration studies to combat differentiation. This split was presaged my early feminists rhetorical studies. The result was inevitable: the only way a feminist calculus could save itself was by giving birth to another form of itself, like the Madonna herself.
In a valiant attempt to resist the marauders of the feminine mystique, the integral calculus split itself into two forms: the definite integral and the indefinite integral, the latter resisting understanding and dissection in support of Women’s Ways of Unknowing (WWU). Ostensibly confusing, these two forms represent a misrecognition that necessitates a narrative reality: definite integral = WWK; indefinite integral = WWU.
Simply put: the definite integral attempts to maintain WWK, while the indefinite integral ventures forth into WWU. To put this more clearly, women know and women unknow and unknowing is a knowledge not known by males who un-know the knowing known by feminist knowers of knowledge.
Both the definite and indefinite integral present not necessarily fixed, exhaustive, or universal categories of how women (vis-a-vi males) know in direct disagreement with the ruthless brutality of knowledge that endeavors to perpetuate the hegemony of masculinities.
However, the saving grace of the indefinite integral and WWU was soon obliterated by the arrival of Issac Newton.
When Newton postulated the First Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, he linked the Differential and Integral in the duality of hetero-normative relationships. The success of this theorem put an end to the advancement of the integral form and its more natural feminine mystique. In doing so, Newton made the more holistic integral calculus subservient to the differential through an insufferable (yet reversible) process that subordinates matriarchal and other gatherer-societies.
(In a follow on paper, we will discuss how the definite and indefinite integral beckons the notion the butch-fem dialectic and its potential to rebuke normativity and undergird transitions between gendered performances. Until such time, we endeavor to put forth a feminist call for action that abandons the first fundamental theorem of the calculus.)
It is time to reject the first fundamental theorem of the Calculus as misogynistic.
Proposition for feminist action: Rejection of the first fundamental theorem of the calculus.
We infer this to mean that we reject the first fundamental theorem of the calculus.
Part 3: The defilement of matriarchal mathematics
We reject all fundamental classical mechanics based upon the first fundamental theorem of the calculus, particularly the laws of motion.
Newton presaged a violent rape of integral knowledge and WWK/U by proposing a toxic formulation of motion:
F = ma
Figure 8. The Patriarchal Law
We must interpret this in the context of rape culture that pervades our campuses, today. “F” is the accepted symbol for the act of male penetration by force, domination and conquering: the rapist. It is a vector. Like all vectors, it protrudes and extends in space; it rapes space; it Fucks space. The origins of such vector masculinities are found at the time of increasing European and American power and the rise of global imperialism and global capitalist economy. In other words, modern masculinity has had to do with global violence and its seminal spray directed by the vector.
In contradistinction, the ultimate icon of woman is the Marxist valuation of the feminist: the goddess, the integral S form, the mother (“mom”, “matriarch”, “mommy” or the more ubiquitous “ ma “). We herein reveal that the fundamental law of motion, F = ma, reveals itself to be a rape equation: the essence of the male desire to conquer and contain the female form: to fuck the mother: F.ma.
Simply put: Men’s Rights Activists, patriarchs, those concerned about the welfare of men and boys and professors of applied mathematical physics are mother fuckers.
We feel that such a framework of motion works a-productively as both a category of self-identification and a category of other-attribution and moreover, that at times it might de-negotiate a gap between one’s sense of self and one’s public legibility as gender variant.
CALL TO FEMINIST ACTION: F = ma is a rape equation that must be banned from college campuses.
This package of thought first arose in the 17th-18th centuries, as a philosophical account of why Newtonian science was superior to its scholastic predecessor. According to this account, the feminist predecessor science, which represented objects as intrinsically possessing secondary qualities and ends (allowing for WWU), confused the way things are with the ways they are related to emotionally subjugate human knowers (Male Ways of Knowing: MWK). Males then erroneously projected their own mental states and value judgments onto things. Adoption of the objective methods enabled the successor scientists to avoid these errors and achieve an “absolute” conception of the universe dominating knowledge.
Feminism objects to each element in this package as a normative ideal and as a general description of how science works. We desire a return to a world of Unknowing and propose an alternate dialectic based on a revised algebra.
5. A Feminist Algebra to subvert the masculine Calculus
SEMIOTICS OF ALGEBRA
In linear algebra, the letter “x” is often used to denote the independent variable; the letter “y” is used to represent the dependent variable. In algebraic instruction, this reveals itself as
Figure 9. A masculine algebra
Is this not a surprise? The letter “y” is symbolic of the male chromosome. The letter “x” is symbolic of the feminist chromosome. A close inspection reveals the theatricalized trajectories of a notation which, while inducing “border as metaphor”, lowers math scores between feminists vis a vis males, empowering marginal positionality. This was then cast as parenthetical “ (” and “)” prison noted symbolically here as (“()”) in which the feminist forms have been ensconced in strikingly representative vaginal openings. Ostensibly it has freedom and independence; but it is confined. We insist and demand a change from masculinities. Henceforth, we point toward a more inclusive feminist functionality – an icon freeing the ovulating x chromosome from its patriarchal prison.
Figure 10. A Feminist algebra
However, we joyously point out that recent theorists have been suggesting more daring algebraic forms to invigorate feminist performativity in mathematics. And we agree such forms have greater potential to level the playing field in feminist mathematics such as this miraculous statement that clearly reveals WWU:
Figure 11. An improved feminist algebra
Finally, we take the necessary step of also repudiating linear algebra and empowering the non-linear with its dizzying sense of feminist amusement. Surely F(M), M(F) and the more hyperbolic F2F(M) and MM-1(F) more appropriately pathologize the masculine continuum.
Indeed, how joyous!
Summary
We demand a formal algebraic representation that undergirds female confidence in mathematics. We support the interrogation of methods through which this subjugation merged. We suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with citational and clitoral traces to force a re-imagining of our historical legacy and place within it.
Conclusions
In summary, we repudiate the differential Calculus. We seek the disuse of the First Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus. We reject Newtonian Mechanics and all three laws of motion. We aspire to a feminist math where things do not move: we deny acceleration and force. We affirm inertia. We insist that WWU (unknowing) is the most suitable framework for feminist theory.
We call on a new order of feminism premised on a provocative taxonomical confusion that subordinates knowledge.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Gloria Steinem; without whom, no fish would have bicycle.
