The Unconscious Mind: A Feminist Analysis

Society is very much aware of its conscious brain as it works away and leads them throughout the day unscathed. Society may even be vaguely aware of something called the unconscious mind, which they believe exists in the shadow of our conscious and “fills in the gaps” where it fails. However, our unconscious brain has more to do with our daily lives than we may take for granted. When we take a phone call and listen to caller’s voice, an image forms in our minds as to what the caller may be like. This may seem conscious, but, in fact, the image that forms is a reflexive selection of various biases stored within our unconscious brain that are pulled together from the word ‘hello’: deep voice signifies a man, eloquent and perspicacious language signifies a white man/woman, if

From their struggle, we are now aware of how highly the English language is male oriented: the words, “mankind, chairman, family man, manpower, cameraman, forefathers, sportsmanship…” (Hurley). The role of women depreciated, not entirely because the community’s conscious bias did so forcefully, but because the unconscious mind noticed this trend of hidden bias within verbal language. Of course some of this language has been made more “neutral” in order to avoid the “sexist” label to chair member and such, but the bias has not left our psyche. Consider the autobiography of Tina Fey, Bossypants, where she discusses how Amy Poehler did “something vulgar as a joke” and the various male writers in the room commented on how it was, “unladylike” (Fey 129). When we talk about women in positions of leadership they are often called “bossy” or “pushy” or “stubborn”. Gender charged verbal language has discouraged women to lead, discouraged to participate, and even discouraged to speak at