Tuesday 16 October 2012

Women's Brains and Male Upper Body Strength

Stephen Jay Gould, a polemicist of science, who was recently hoisted on his own petard, wrote a book 'The Panda's Thumb' wherein one chapter was dedicated to women's brains, or the lack thereof when compared to men's. A woman called Maria Montessorri featured at the end of his essay. Gould writes of her:

She measured  the  circumference of  children's heads  in herschools and  inferred  that  the best prospects had bigger brains. But she had no use for Broca's conclusions about women. She discussed Manouvrier's work at length and made  much  of  his  tentative  claim  that  women,  after proper correction of  the data, had slightly  larger brains than men. Women,  she  concluded, were  intellectually superior,  but men  had  prevailed  heretofore  by  dint  of physical force.

And Gould then went quoting her at length:

Since  technology has abolished force as an instrument of power, the era of women may soon be upon us: "In such an epoch there will really be superior human  beings,  there  will  really  be  men  strong  in morality and in sentiment. Perhaps in this way the reign of  women  is  approaching,  when  the  enigma  of  her anthropological superiority will be deciphered. Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honor."

It's hard to fault Ms. Monterssori's logick, the legen-wait for it-dary human male upper body strength which has been submitting beasts like lions, tigers, bears, mammoths from eternity:

samson killing a male lion (tautology is sexist)


even sharks are not spared,


Haggar piledriving a shark


or for sending rockets into space,

If only rockets weren't such a phallic triggering symbol....

and the herculean task of keeping earth in position.

shrug it off bro!

How exactly 'technology'(and where this mythological abstraction arrived from) has made force redundant as power is something that is pointless to dwell on. It's more important to consider the sad fact that women like Maria Montessori couldn't enjoy the morality and sentimentality of today's male sex. Or the female sex, if she were inclined that way. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

PS -

Who says women can't have upper-body strength? Misogynists, that's who!

Eat yer heart out Montessori

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