Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

Which Sex Is Smarter?

(Reprinted from the issue of January 27, 2005)

A university president has created an uproar with some offhand remarks: Lawrence Summers of Harvard University wondered aloud, at an off-the-record conference on the progress of women in academia, why so few top scientists are women. Is it because of “innate” differences between the sexes? Summers was soon babbling apologies and complaining that his comments had been misconstrued.

Nancy Hopkins, an MIT biologist who was present, walked out during Summers’s talk. “I felt I was going to be sick,” she told reporters later. “My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow. I was extremely upset.”

But Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist, reacted differently: “I left with a sense of elation about his ideas. I was proud that the president of my university retains the inquisitiveness of an academic.”

The first thought that strikes me is how remarkable it is that a man should become president of Harvard University without knowing the current taboos against free speech. Even the college janitors must know what’s what by now. As Shakespeare’s Enobarbus puts it, “That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.”

On standardized tests, as is well known, women outscore men in verbal skills, while men outscore women in math and science. If these results indicate “discrimination,” it would seem that both sexes are victims. Maybe we should look for another explanation.

Nearly all the most prominent mathematicians and scientists have been men. This must be evidence of something, but what? Not long ago, three of the world’s top chess players were girl prodigies — sisters, in fact. That suggests that women are fully capable of abstruse thinking, even under pressure. So do innumerable other female achievements.

Why, then, do men usually outperform women in objective achievement? I don’t know, and I often wonder. Everyday experience doesn’t suggest that women are mentally inferior to men. So what is the difference between the sexes that we all sense, and whose effects show up in many ways, but which we have trouble identifying?

Men and women have different interests. They apply their intelligence differently from childhood on. Little girls play with dolls; they look forward to parenthood, fascinated by their own ability to bring new life into the world and playing at being the mothers they will someday be. They know they will possess the mysterious power of motherhood.

Little boys, on the other hand, don’t like dolls and don’t think of themselves as future fathers. They aren’t even aware yet that they will be capable of reproduction! What excites them is competition: They play at being soldiers and athletes. They may even continue their childhood dreams in later life as couch potatoes. Or they may pursue different, more mature kinds of achievement.

Even boys who adore their fathers and mothers don’t imagine themselves as parents. They imagine themselves in adult life distinguishing themselves from others by force of will. They don’t sense any mysterious potential in themselves. It’s hard to imagine two little boys talking about the distant prospect of marriage and parenthood. At least I’ve never heard of such a conversation.

This doesn’t mean there are “innate” differences in intelligence, but there may be other differences that spring naturally from the innate ones of biology. Given these early self-conceptions and the ambitions they generate, so profoundly different, is it any wonder that the two sexes go on to perform differently when they grow up? Women can do, and do well, countless things men can do; but no man can do the one thing nearly all women can do.

We’ve all heard little girls say, “Girls are smarter than boys, ’cause they can have babies and boys can’t.” Well, it may not be a matter of being smart, exactly, but they have a point, even if they express it childishly. They have a potential far more important than merely being smart. I can understand a woman’s preferring being a Harvard professor to being a mother; what I can’t understand is her taking childish offense at the idea that men may be, in some narrow respects, smarter than women. Why doesn’t she just laugh?

The whole error of modern feminism lies in the notion that men are the measure of women. This assumption underlies the “gender-neutral” etiquette that 1) denies fundamental differences between the sexes, 2) rests on men’s conceptions of achievement, 3) demands an impossible kind of equality, and 4) produces a lot of silly squabbling.

“Diversity” has become one of the great Ivy League shibboleths. But the greatest and most enchanting diversification in the world is the difference between the sexes. Men don’t appreciate it enough. But neither, it appears, do some women.
 
Inaugural Buzz

As so often happens, Washington is buzzing like a vast insect colony over something that will be forgotten in a few days — probably by the time you read this. I refer, of course, to President Bush’s inauguration.

There is much grumbling about the lavishness of the festivities. Their expense will amount to the budget of a standard Hollywood film, or as much as the U.S. Congress spends every few seconds.

Protesters will try to spoil the event, but are apt to be frustrated by paralyzing security precautions. Sparing the president embarrassing scenes now seems to fall under the heading of security, if last fall’s campaign is any indication.

Bush is the most hated American president since Lincoln. He’s hated not only by the opposition party, but by much of the rest of the world. Europe despises him; the Muslim world loathes him. Nothing seems to help, neither conciliatory gestures nor offering relief to tsunami victims.

As one who has often found him irritating and worse, I understand this hostility, up to a point. When Bill Clinton was president, his opponents not only saw him as a brazen evildoer, but were driven nuts by the feeling summed up in the words, “And he’s getting away with it!” It’s one thing to have an enemy. But an enemy who goes unpunished, remains impenitent, and even finds it amusing that he infuriates you — that’s past endurance!
 
Stressful Jobs

Bush annoys liberals in another way: He’s a professed Christian. For liberals, any expression of belief in God is insufferable sanctimony and, moreover, a threat of intolerance. Bush recently said he didn’t see how anyone could bear the pressures of the presidency without faith in God.

Well, it would appear that some of our presidents have done without much in the way of faith, and I wonder if being president is really all that much harder than being head of state in other countries; in fact, plenty of other jobs must be at least as stressful as the presidency (ask school principals, or coaches of losing football teams).

Nevertheless, Bush’s remark was just the sort of thing that keeps his enemies boiling.


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Joseph Sobran