Well, the evidence seems to suggest that this is so.
On Start the Week,
on Radio 4, tonight, Jeremy Paxman asked Professor Susan Greenfield,
avowed feminist and well-known neuroscientist (and Director of the Royal Institution) "You
claim, don't you, that the more emotion you have, the less mind you
have?"
Thus, Prof
Greenfield is saying that the more 'emotion' you experience, the less
'mind' you have.
Now, which of the
two possible genders, statistically speaking, experiences more emotion -
and would claim to?
Hmm. The female
gender, one would suspect.
And it would follow from
Professor Greenfield's beliefs,
therefore, that, statistically speaking, this gender has less 'mind'. It
is less in 'contact' with it.
Putting this another
way: Relatively speaking, compared to men, the conclusion must be that women are less often 'accessing
the past, or the future, or anything 'inside' ' - statistically,
that is.
Well, that's what
follows from Professor Greenfield's observations.
All in all, therefore, women seem to function less 'mindfully' than men, or, putting
it less euphemistically, less 'intelligently'.
Statistically speaking.
it is men who are the focused,
the possessed, and the obsessed
In addition, it cannot have
escaped even the most ardent feminist's notice that it is men who are
the focused, the possessed, and the obsessed. It is men who push forward
the boundaries of science, music, technology and art. It is men who
build great cities and great religions.
It is men who tinker
well into the night, studying and prising apart the boundaries of even the most
obscure and intractable.
I knew one man who
spent six years studying locust legs.
Not locusts.
Locust
LEGS!
FOR SIX YEARS!
And he is probably still at it.
I knew another man who
was a mathematician and who struggled daily, FOR YEARS, with some
obscure problem in which only one other person in the entire world
seemed to have any interest - and it wasn't me.
Just look at any
science programme on TV and notice the 'workers' labouring in the various
scientific fields. The 'experts'. The ones who sneak into their
laboratories even on Christmas Day to skulk around engines, chemicals,
computers or insects. The ones who spend hour upon hour, year upon year,
squashed into their little rooms to study the contents of test-tubes or
tissues. The ones who wander into the most hostile and desolate parts of
the planet to scrub around for clues, artefacts and ideas.
They are mostly men.
It is men who lead, explore, push forward and
calculate.
the intelligence of men must
creep forward more quickly, and further, than that of women,
And, to the extent
that intelligence is based on factors in the environment, as opposed to genetics, or
based upon learning and studying, as opposed to 'emotionalising' (and,
so, losing 'mind') then the intelligence of men must creep forward more
quickly, and further, than that of women, throughout their lives -
because, statistically speaking, they choose to take on more of the
intelligent-provoking 'environment', and they interact with it in much
more of an objective and emotionless way (i.e. with more 'mind').
When it comes to
intelligence, men have got what it takes. They drive in straight lines,
they focus their attention, they do not multitask, they obsess, and they
do not spend so much time emotionalising.
And they actually increase
their intelligence by doing such things.
And the whole species benefits
from their pursuits.
Statistically
speaking, men are taller than women. Not much, but significantly so. The
picture below is of some men and women. Some of the women are actually taller than
some of the men.
But now look at the
next picture.
The very
same men and women have fallen in love, and they have partnered
each other. They are so happy. But, notice that EVERY SINGLE man
is TALLER than EVERY SINGLE woman.
And the same thing
happens with intelligence. Just as it is that women, statistically
speaking, prefer men who are taller than them, and richer than them, and
socially higher up the ladder than them, so it is that they prefer men
who are more intelligent than them.
Not only do women admit to this last
aspect, recent research also shows that most women believe that their
partners are more intelligent than them.
And they are!
The situation is
exactly the same as for Picture B. Simply think of intelligence instead
of height. All the women in this picture have chosen partners who are
'more intelligent' than them, even though it is true that, statistically
speaking, across the whole population, there are millions of women who
are more intelligent than millions of men.
And until such time
as women CHOOSE partners who are less than, or equal to, themselves in
terms of intelligence, the statement that 'men are more intelligent than
women' will remain true even when looking at the issue as it relates to
partnerships between men and women.
men are MOSTLY more
intelligent than their female partners.
Putting this another
way: When it comes to looking at men and women as they function within
their relationships, men are MOSTLY more intelligent than their female
partners.
But, of course, we
all know this instinctively.
We just cannot say
so.
But it is clear that
both men and women CHOOSE
things to be this way - statistically speaking.
As Germaine Greer
puts it, "Women are not valued for their
intelligence."
Well, Yes, they are. But they are not
loved for it, nor are they found attractive as a result of it -
statistically speaking.
In her book, Sexual Personae,
Camille Paglia said that,
"If
civilization had been left in female hands, we would still all be living
in grass huts."
She has a point,
because if women had, indeed, been the dominant gender, then they would
have used their influence to promote further 'emotionalising', and the
result would have been less achievement with regard to developing other
things.
Like wheels.
And this, of course,
partly explains why the educational systems in the west are currently
failing so miserably to produce high standards in their pupils. There is
too much emotionalising going on, and not enough thinking; i.e. not
enough 'mind'.
And, in the past, those little societies
that spent their time emotionalising, instead of creating, inventing and
progressing, had no chance in evolutionary terms. They lost the battle
long ago. The men were killed and the women were carried away. And they no longer exist. They have been statistically washed
away.
Camille Paglia also said that, "Women
have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio
training or expensive materials.
But
in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and
paper.
Male
conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.
I
am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have
been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.
.
. . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the
woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating
derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of
crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human
species."
Men are, indeed,
more intelligent and creative than women, on the whole. They work at it.
They strive for it. They value it. They are loved for it. They are
wanted for it.
And the mental
environments in which they choose to spend their time definitely develop their
talents even further.
That is, they give
much more time to their 'minds'.
And this is mostly why
women, STATISTICALLY
SPEAKING, will never be able to
compete successfully with men intellectually and nor, therefore, in any
task or job which requires intellectual endeavour.
Finally, not only do men develop their intelligence by CHOOSING
to engage more so in activities that enhance it - as opposed to
emotionalising - (and so, to the extent that the
environment affects intelligence then it will do so more for men than
it will for women) but it is also the case that, thanks to the Y
chromosome, the genetic variability of men is greater than that of women,
so spreading the range of their intelligence more widely. The
consequence is that at the bottom range of intelligence there will be
found to be far more men than women, and in the top range the SAME will
be true.
Further, and for the
same reason, both the highest and the lowest intelligence levels of
men are more extreme than are those of women.
at the high-flier levels,
women haven't got a hope of competing with men
And the upshot of all
this is that at the high-flier levels, women haven't got a hope of
competing with men either in terms of their number or in terms of their
achievements - unless, of course, the men are deliberately handicapped
in some way.
Thus, there is not so much of a glass ceiling created by
sex-discriminatory men holding back the realisation of statistical
parity between men and women in the higher echelons of the world, the
women's relative lack of success in these lofty places is far more due to
the choices that they make and their less-variable genetic makeup.
Neither of which is the fault of men.