SOURCE: "Woman Is Not a Rational Animal: On Aristotle's Biology of Reproduction," in Discovering Reality, edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983, pp. 1-16.

In the following essay, Lange argues that while Aristotle's conception of woman as a "privation of man" may be "unacceptable," Aristotle does, however, provide a thorough explanation of this notion within the context of his own thought and theories.

Aristotle … pretends that women are but monsters. Who would not believe it, upon the authority of so renowned a personage? To say, it is an impertinence; would be, to choak his supposition too openly.

If a woman, (how learned soever she might be), had wrote as much of men, she would have lost all her credit; and men would have imagined it sufficient, to have refuted such a foppery; by answering, that it must be a woman, or a fool...