Letters to the Editor
-
@SB4609
If we accept your contentious characterization of verbal proficiency as a feminine trait, then you have certainly developed the basis for a model of "feminine" intelligence in addition to the patriarchal intelligence that would, I assume, lend itself to the mastery of the physical world and its inhabitants by calculating missile trajectories, and so on.
Well, first of all, it wasn't my contention, it was that of Charlotte Allen. From what I've read, the differences are barely significant, and there's more variation between individuals than there is between the sexes. My mother, for example, has outstanding spacial skills. Mine aren't bad. They're better than those of the average man, if my test scores mean anything, but they just aren't as good as my verbal skills.
Also, language isn't just a form of expression and relation. Grammar and vocabulary have a lot to do with how we construct our ideas, something that becomes fascinatingly obvious when you start digging into a second language, never mind a third or a fourth. This brings up the question of why mastery of the physical world should be thought to indicate greater global intelligence or skill, which brings me to this:
You may be making it easier to accept my hypothesis that women are "playing dumb". In your own words (your specialty) competing with men "on their own ground" strikes you as a waste of time. Apparently our ground is quantum mechanics not language (Shakespeare et al. aside).
To me this suggests some fundamental intuition of the law of comparative advantage. In this case, whether or not you are better than the average man at math, you are more better (irony) than him with respect to language skills, therefore you focus your time on reading and writing rather than math and science (so as not to waste it).
Well, yes. Why screw around with something I'm comparatively okay at when I have something I'm really, really good at and that I can take much farther? That's not playing dumb, it's playing to my strengths. Could I have gone into engineering? Sure, but that leaves me in a position where I'm pitting my weakness against other people's strengths, while simultaneously neglecting my own strength.
Waste of time, not to mention stupid in a strategic sense as well as in terms of allocating resources. The world needs people who understand language just as much as it needs people who understand physics.
I'm not going to walk away from an asset just to make a point, and my verbal skills are a stronger asset than my spatial skills.
In terms of risk, it means that I can take greater risks with language than I ever could as an engineer precisely because I can take language much farther. This is, in fact, what I'm most frequently paid for, pushing limits with language.
I'd be wasted as an engineer, in part because I couldn't take the same level of risks in science, nor would I be as well rewarded for the risks I could take. I'd much rather blaze my own trail than follow someone else's.
Of course, language is preeminently social, isn't it?
Not necessarily. Again, language isn't just about interpersonal communication, and remember that a lot of writers are introverts. I can personally attest to the fact that verbal and social skills don't necessarily go hand in hand.
Whereas math, physics, engineering, etc. seem, at bottom, anti-social (assuming the mastery motif).
Not necessarily. All of these things have very social applications, and advancing past a certain point usually requires collaboration, which is a social activity.
My mother's an engineer, and my work is probably more physically solitary than hers.
You see the dilemma.
I don't, because the language it's framed in makes assumptions that aren't confirmed. To put it in logical terms, in order for your conclusion to be true, you have to demonstrate that your premises are true, and you haven't.
Social intelligence is inherently risk-averse (don't offend or confuse), inclusive, in many ways invisible, though ultimately successful (self-preservation par excellence, paradoxically through self-negation). This could explain the reported "bunching" of women around the middle.
Well, no it doesn't. Men are outliers on intelligence for the same reason they're more prone to baldness, hemophilia and red-green color-blindness. The physiological basis for intelligence is genetic, and a fair chunk of it seems to be carried on the X chromosome.
Social intelligence isn't inherently risk-averse, either. Someone who is socially intelligent is in a position to take greater social risks so as to reap the rewards involved in greater social status.
For example, a man with poor social intelligence is impaired in finding a mate in part because his actions are more likely to misfire than those of a man with high social intelligence, which in turn makes him less likely to act. This is risk aversion in a social setting, and it applies to women, too. Women with poor social intelligence have an even more difficult time finding mates than their male counterparts.
Don't forget that sports radio is essentially guys arguing with the host and each other 24/7. How many women tune in to Oprah to argue with her?
Loads. The idea that women blindly follow Oprah is another unsupported assumption.