Abstract

In this chapter, we explore the relationship between ToM and gender using linguistic knowledge and literary samples, as both help us to cover the main tool by which people connect: language and stories/discourse. We argue that ToM is not a unitary ability, but rather it is a complex set of mechanisms influenced by gender in a diachronic androcentric socio-cultural context. We conclude that we need to go back to the origin of the sex/gender system as it ultimately underlies a primordial opposition of animacy both linguistically and discursively.