She was a bit surprised at my choice of words (we were basically in agreement on the main topic, but the moment I said "Rational" she reacted badly) because in her experience "rational" is almost a bad word, because (according to her) it is banded around (by men) to belittle their counterpart in a discussion.

I told her that I had just finished an online course on IA, and therefore I meant "rational" strictly in the sense of "rational agent" as per Wikipedia: a rational agent is an agent that has clear preferences ... and always chooses to perform the action with the optimal expected outcome for itself from among all feasible actions.