Nature & Animals Quote by W. L. George

The barb lands because it mimics the voice of “reasonable” condescension and then quietly exposes it as animal husbandry. George isn’t just reporting that men have belittled women; he’s anatomizing the dodge. Deny women “intellect,” but offer consolation prizes - “instinct,” “intuition” - categories that flatter while keeping power intact. They sound mystical, even complimentary, yet they function as a political technology: if women know things only by “intuition,” they can’t claim authority, they can’t be credited with method, and they certainly can’t demand the institutions that recognize expertise.

The final comparison is brutal on purpose. By saying men treat women’s reasoning “much as a dog connects its collar with a walk,” George spotlights the way misogyny reframes pattern recognition as conditioning. It’s a strategy of dehumanization dressed up as pseudo-science: women can “correlate” but not understand; they can react but not think. The precision of “cause and effect” makes the insult sting more sharply, because it’s exactly the cognitive capacity being denied in the first clause.

The subtext is about who gets to define intelligence in the first place. The male gatekeepers aren’t neutrally assessing women; they’re curating the vocabulary of competence so it always points back to male rationality as the default. Read in its early-20th-century atmosphere - suffrage fights, “separate spheres,” pop-evolutionary theories about sex difference - the line becomes less a complaint than an accusation: the culture’s compliments are often just restraints with better branding.