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Cake day: March 31st, 2025

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  • I want to understand why some women seem to enjoy movies and video games that use the damsel in distress trope, despite knowing that in feminist theory it’s often considered harmful. I realized that Godel and Cohen proved a very similar result and wonder if their techniques can be applied here as well

    Actually, now that I think of it, we can add axioms to ZFC that decide CH. For example, V=L implies it’s true, and proper forcing axioms imply that it’s false. Can we also add additional axioms to decide whether or not the damsel in distress trope is harmless fun, or sexist against women?



  • I mean in the same way that the continuum hypothesis is independent of ZFC. Godel constructed a model of ZFC where it’s true, and Cohen constructed a model where it’s false. We now have two models, both equally valid and satisfying all the axioms of ZFC, but in one, CH is true and in the other, CH is false, proving that CH is independent of ZFC.

    Likewise, we can find one woman who enjoys the damsel in distress trope and think it’s harmless fun, and we can find another women who thinks it perpetuates sexist stereotypes against women. Just like in the case above, we have two women, whose views are equally valid, but coming to opposite conclusions. Therefore, we can conclude, just like Godel and Cohen did, that the statement about damsels in distress is independent of the axioms.