Understanding the Feminine Mind: Backwards Rationalization
I’ve used the term “backwards rationalization” several times on this blog, so I wanted to take a few minutes and explain just what I mean by the phrase.
First off, BWR is a psychological escape hatch that both men and women use. I believe women use it more frequently (especially modern Western women, because they’ve been taught to follow their feelings so relentlessly), but men do use it too.
A regular rationalization is coming up with a rational reason to serve as a stand-in excuse for something we just don’t want to do for emotional reasons. For instance, if I am deathly afraid of airplane flights but tell my boss I’d rather travel by train because it’s “more economical”, that’s a rationalization.
A backwards rationalization is the same process, only doing it after the fact. It’s saying “I did X because of logical-reason-Y” when, in reality, you did X for a completely different (and probably emotional) reason, or (just as likely) you had no say in doing X at all.
The Backwards Rationalization Background
Why does BWR exist?
Psychologically speaking, most people want to believe that they are consistent in their thoughts and actions. You might call this “self-confirmation bias”. We don’t like to be shown up as having made “bad” decisions — thus, we will often revise our future actions so they are congruent with our supposed beliefs, in order to avoid looking bad. That revision is the backwards rationalization process in action.
A simple example: have you ever seen a cat stretching on the edge of a couch so luxuriously that it ends up accidentally falling off onto the floor? Even though it lands on its feet, it often looks like it’s trying to pass the fall off like it was intentional. The same thing happens with people who trip a little on the sidewalk; if it’s not too glaring, they’ll maybe skip or hop a little, as though it were intentional.
This is simply trying to regain their lost pride in messing up. What’s so illogical about it is that there is no shame in tripping on the sidewalk, or falling off the couch — it’s just a mistake.
BWR is the process of people doing the same thing with their beliefs, opinions and larger-scale behaviors. They become so wrapped up in their identity, and identify so closely with the things they think or believe or do, that to change one of those beliefs/behaviors, or have it proved wrong or mistaken, would be like major internal surgery.
People cling to their sense of self as it is represented by their beliefs and choices, and are willing to backwards-rationalize or “lie in reverse” in order to protect that identity.
BWR In Action
So, to review: A “backwards rationalization” is a psychological process that most people use in order to justify their future actions against past statements/beliefs or actions, in order to stay congruent.
How does this look in actual practice, with women? Here are some examples.
Scenario 1: You’re chatting with a woman. The vibe in the conversation falls (i.e. it starts dragging, or becomes dull and boring)…and you eject, leaving the woman alone.
Female BWR: A woman will often assign the last characteristic in the conversation (vibe falling….boring) to YOU, and her backwards rationalization will be that she wasn’t that attracted to you…and THAT is why the conversation ended.
Actual Reality: There was just a momentary dip in the conversation, and you, feeling awkward, chose to eject….she liked you 10 seconds before that and right up to the point you left, but after you left she BWR’d that you left because she DIDN’T like you.
Scenario 2: You’re chatting with a woman. The vibe in the conversation gets REALLY GOOD (and the woman’s attraction for you SPIKES)…and you eject, leaving the woman alone, just as her friends come up to talk to her.
Female BWR: Her friends chased you away! Just when she was really getting interested! Damn those friends!
Actual Reality: Of course her friends had NOTHING to do with you leaving, it was just an odd coincidence. Poor friends, they’re not to blame — you are — but rather than blame YOU (who she is newly attracted to) she blames her friends and “fights” them off in order to get your attention back. If she didn’t have the ability to BWR she’d just have to admit that you walked off right when she was starting to enjoy the interaction, and admit to herself it was sort of a dick move. But because she wouldn’t EVER be attracted to a guy who was a “dick”, she has to BWR that “something else” came in between you too, preventing her from continuing the fun interaction.
Scenario 3: You’re making out with a woman. You just met her 30 minutes ago, and now things are progressing to a heavy make-out and petting in a dark corner of the club. This woman has never made out with a strange guy in a club before.
Female BWR: “I feel the most incredible connection to this guy,” or “He’s THE ONE”….because she can’t admit into her reality the idea of a cool guy walking up and being skillful enough to flip all her attraction switches at once, and she DEFINITELY can’t cop to a “slut” or “easy” label.
Actual Reality: The girl has never met a cool, socially-calibrated guy who understands women before, so when she DOES meet him and he plays the same instant-make out game with her as he has with 100’s of other girls, it has to be because he’s SPECIAL. Admitting that female attraction can be flipped on and off as easily as a light switch by a skilled guy would wreck the whole social perception of women as “choosers”, so she can’t do it and has to BWR instead.
Scenario 4: You’re “dating” a staunchly religious virgin who wears a Promise ring. You are messing around and making out, and she gets so horny that you wind up having a brief moment of intercourse.
Female BWR: You didn’t penetrate her “all the way”, so what happened doesn’t count as intercourse at all and she’s still a virgin.
Actual Reality: Technically speaking, intercourse DID happen, but accepting that would have disastrous emotional and self-image/identity consequences for the girl (”I broke my promise” and “I’m a slut / no longer a virgin”) so instead she BWR that it “didn’t count” because of X, Y or Z technical definition of intercourse, rather than simply admitting that she is a horny girl who wants to have sex and actually DID have it (if only for a minute).
NOTE: Virgins and intercourse are where you see some of the craziest BWR. Apart from the common (Catholic) girls who love anal sex but still claim to be virgins, I’ve heard of some girls claiming they were still virgins (to other guys) after intercourse because their first partner *didn’t come inside them*.
If that’s not the height of backwards rationalization, I don’t know what is.
Two final (extreme) examples: and I present these just to show the extent to which BWR can get people into trouble, or allow them to take really nasty, unhelpful perspectives on the world.
Extreme Example #1: The guy who, after finding out his girlfriend is pregnant, is convinced she must have cheated on him in order to get pregnant, rather than accepting that he is partly responsible for the baby.
Extreme Example #2: The woman who, after finding out she is pregnant, accuses some guy of rape rather than face the consequences of admitting she let herself be impregnated.
BWR is a Defense Mechanism
In most cases, a backwards rationalization is something that people pull in only in cases where to do otherwise would force them to face some massive cognitive dissonance.
In other words, when what they’ve done runs so counter to everything they thought they believed in — in the cases of losing virginity, getting pregnant, having a one-night stand, etc — a BWR is a useful tool to pull in to save face, and save oneself from having to confront the hard question of “How could I have let that happen when I am so ideologically opposed to it?”
The reality is, of course, that there are few areas of life where ideologies are more likely to be shattered by reality than sex.
Thanks to feminist teachings and a modern Western “follow your heart” and “trust your emotions” mentality, I think an increasing number of women use backwards rationalization in ordinary, everyday situations (as the first two examples showed), or literally any and every time it would even be a little convenient to put it into play.
Because of this, I happen to think that modern Western (and especially American) women are more divorced from reality than women at any other time since probably the Victorian era.
But, I could be wrong.
January 25th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
You’re right, all humans do this to some degree…better known as “sour grapes.”
However, women tend to do this A LOT…where it’s known as “chick logic.”
January 31st, 2007 at 4:40 am
If I read you right, the BWR occurs whenever the person is challenged in a way that conflicts with their basic identity, whether that identity is made up of loose and changing combinations of beliefs about oneself, or whether it represents a more integrated ideology such as feminism. If this is right, then it forms a type of intellectual tyranny - one thinks to its strictures, understands by its forms, champions its values - and is so dedicated to it that one is willing to alter the truth of one’s own past experience so that it does not conflict but conforms to that “basic identity” of belief. Now I understand why woman have no use for philosophy.
January 31st, 2007 at 6:02 am
Hey Ted,
Thanks for the comment. I think your analysis is exactly right.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it? Women may dabble in philosophy in their younger years, but it’s passing interest for them and far too abstract (and not social enough, look at Carol Gilligan’s work for proof of that).
Of course we must not generalize. Some older women do get heavily into philosophy. But most of the women who do, have not been “westernized” to the extent that modern feminism allows.
February 15th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Nice post!
I dumped my ex GF 2 weeks ago, and just a week later found “the community” (funny name). I know her 2 years ago on a blog. I love wath she writes! She was studying philosophy, this year is in politics. She liked to talk with me. And I see her with her girlfriends speaking in greek therms and names and concepto (love it, its so unusual! Even make horny, some of them are hot!). But still its the exception for the rule.
Mostly womens (men too) work in that way.
Where you take this concept from? Beside girls, I mean.