Women are smart, it says here

[imomus]

Back in 1999 my friend Suzy Corrigan -- a Riot Grrrl when I first met her in 1990, and an American journalist based in London -- edited a book of short stories published under the title Typical Girls: New Stories by Smart Women. I got involved in the planning and promotion of the book, reading early drafts and designing the flyer for the launch party.

Right from the start, though, I hated the title and begged Suzy to change it. "Typical Girls" was fine -- I liked the Slits reference. The bit I hated was "Smart Women". It just sounded so patronizing, so weakly petulant; a "defiant" pat on the head that was meant to ennoble the book's contributors but instead belittled them.

Just what exactly was that "smart" doing there? Was there some assumption that people, on hearing the word "women", would immediately think of stupid people, and need this impression corrected? Since some of the world's greatest writers have been women, that didn't seem like a realistic fear. And what about the tension between "typical" and "smart", or the tension between "girls" and "women"? Were we to assume that all women (typical ones) were smart, contrary to expectation (and the law of averages)?

Assurances that women in general are smart (or becoming smart, or recently got smarter) are a staple of a certain kind of "femininst" article -- the kind that gives the impression that feminist writing sometimes encodes just as much (unconscious?) misogyny as any other kind of discourse.

In today's Observer, for instance, Mary Riddell interviews Tony Blair about his appeal to women. Why Asda Woman matters to Tony Blair tells us that "there are 80 years to go before equal pay; women earn £300,000 less than men in a lifetime; childcare costs up to £16,000 a year... flexibility often means part-time jobs, in which women, on average, earn 42 per cent less per hour than men".

So far so good. Income inequalities between all sorts of equally-qualified people need to be exposed mercilessly. The "smart women" meme makes its appearance here:

"When Blair started out, many women submitted to rubbish pay for dead-end work. Now a new generation, intelligent and hard-working, wants a career and enough support to make life tolerable and promotion possible."

Here, I guess, the assertion of women's intelligence is meant to remove any possible justification for those iniquitous pay figures. But it still seems unneccesary and patronizing. The figures condemn themselves. Nobody is reaching for phrases like "women are stupid" or "women are lazy" to justify them.

The current issue of art magazine Frieze is themed around Feminism in the art world. In the editorial, Polly Staple writes:

"In one stroke Stark deftly elucidated the dilemma of being a working woman and a mother while attempting to explore the subjective reality of a given situation. In other words, she was smart and funny, created her own framework for her contribution and proposed, like so many women before her, another way of simply getting things done."

Here again we see the combination of the idea of "the typical" with "the smart". Artist Frances Stark is a "housewife superstar", a "superwoman" who is both "smart and funny" and "like so many women before her".

I cringe and puzzle when articles explicitly tell me that women are intelligent. For a start, it's exactly the sort of essentialism that the writers usually decry -- a blanket statement made about all women. Clearly, as a blanket term, it's meaningless rhetoric anyway. If the sample group is "all women" or "all men", and if "smart" is a relative term referring to comparative intelligence within that group, they can't all be smart.

It really begins to look bad, though, when we try the substitution test. Articles about men talk far, far less frequently about how men, in general, are "smart".

Google finds 446,000 instances of the phrase "smart women" but only 184,000 instances of "smart men". The phrase "smart girls" gets 285,000 hits, the phrase "smart boys" only 71,100. The sentence "women are smart" scores 19,300 hits on Google, the phrase "men are smart" a paltry 691.

"Smart men" is obviously considered some kind of tautology. Or is it that men just don't need that "encouraging" -- and meaningless -- pat on the head?

Comments

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

The entire crux of the feminist movement up until recently was to claim victimhood and demand reparations in the form of preferential treatment.

If this paradigm is destroyed, then feminism will lose most of its luster, right? In modern times, being a victim is the ultimate superiority.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< The entire crux of the feminist movement up until recently was to claim victimhood and demand reparations in the form of preferential treatment.
>>

the thing about women. gosh. i really wish I could be a better person. But hey momus I

[freesurfboards.livejournal.com]

[Google finds 446,000 instances of the phrase "smart women" but only 184,000 instances of "smart men". The phrase "smart girls" gets 285,000 hits, the phrase "smart boys" only 71,100. The sentence "women are smart" scores 19,300 hits on Google, the phrase "men are smart" a paltry 691.]

I found this very interesting, though does making it an issue assume that women need our help to overcome this? It becomes very recursive.

[deepblack.livejournal.com]

That's the charm of masculine power though - the fact that it is invisible. We don't need the term "smart" to precede "men" because it's already assumed that most men are smart. For example, in journalistic reports on crime, you never see the word "male" in front of the word "perpetrator" or "criminal," even though the overwhelming majority of crimes (speaking in American terms here) are committed by men. But when a female commits a crime, a feminine modifier is necessary to make the crime stand apart from the rest. Anything considered a minority just automatically needs an extra adjective. I often do it myself when I refer to people: "that black man" or "that lesbian woman" - but never "that white, middle-class, male."

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

It makes sense for criminals since the vast majority are men.

But for something like, how to genericalldy describe someone, as you said, it is horrifying. "White, middle class male" is normative and everything else is a deviation from that.

I mean, look at high school physiology/anatomy textbooks. Usually, the human model or illustration is a thin, white male.

Do your part! Begin identifying people as "that white guy." I know I do.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< some assumption that people, on hearing the word "women", would immediately think of stupid people, and need >>

Hi momus I sure wish I could be smarter than you are really one time a long time ago

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

by the way I so dislike stupid women but then I said what's so wrong with stupid chicks, I really wish those girls

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Good points, all.

Living here in the World PC Headquarters, it's still hasn't ceased to amaze me, the lengths some go to to overcompensate for the institutionalized discrimination and patronizing of the past. I'd like to imagine some hypothetical sweet-spot that existed between the first wave of feminism and where we are now, but I doubt it was there.

And no, men aren't presumed to be smart, it's just presumed to not really matter if they aren't. Look at American popular culture -- what has become more established of a stereotype than the stupid husband/father/boyfriend? "The Simpsons", "Family Guy", "American Dad", "King of the Hill" -- nearly every TV show that I've seen even a few minutes of is required to depict the man of the family as the bumbling, belching oaf, while the woman is hot and competent.

It often gets me in trouble, but I feel almost a compulsion to not conform to the implicit notion that reverse discrimination is benign. It would be nice if we could all just approach each other as equal individuals without referencing some kind of handicapping sheet, to see where we stand. But what do I know? I'm just one of those stupid white males.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Good points!

[akabe.livejournal.com]

but that dressing-up in adjectives is directly mirrored in women's relative ability to more fluidly shift roles and other things you seem to appreciate. You couldn't have one without the other.

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

upward mobility and choices generate a lot of fluidity,but does that make women better people?

[(Anonymous)]

Or is it that men just don't need that "encouraging" -- and meaningless -- pat on the head?

Maybe it's because men are dumb, haha.

...sigh.

Anyway, I hear what you're saying, and I feel the same way when people talk about the need for strong, independent, and fiercely-intelligent women in fiction.

I mean sure, cool, whatever, but it kind of assumes that women aren't those things, and that someone needs to invent strong, fake women for real-life, weak women to emulate. It's really wierd.

--Michael

[phuongphan.livejournal.com]

The qualifier "smart" in "smart woman" or "smart girl" comes across as overcompensation. maybe it's to make up for the discrepancy in income or better yet the subconscious perception that women really aren't so smart.

I have to take into account that the Frieze article has a lot of cultural historical baggage from the dawn of Feminist Art 60s-70s when women starting to enter public, intellectual, artistic, economic spheres. It was a radical shift for the Female-Stay-at-Home American middle class bourgeoise myth (women in the working class had always worked - no domestic myth there).

BTW, the cover of Frieze is very much about the dehumanization, objectification of the female figure. It's also de-sexualized in a way w/ slabs of "meat" cut out.

The show is okay; art historical. I went to the members' opening this evening. I'll post images and impressions later.

[klig.livejournal.com]

Often thought so myself. Right on the money.

[schizo-robot.livejournal.com]

there are plenty of things that annoy me about how sex/gender is accepted to talk about. an english teacher i had always corrected me when i tried to make things gender-neutral in class, like addressing a group of individuals with "you" instead of "you guys" or using "their" instead of his or her. the thing that boggled me was my english teacher didn't change her last name when she got married, she hyphenated it. i figured she'd understand, but she said "well, that's how the english language goes!" or something.

it's like how my parents have 3 pets, and they refer to them all as "him" although they're all female. kate bornstein said that in this society we're male until proven female, which i feel rings true most of the time.

also, i like feminist theory a lot, especially bell hooks' take on it, but the only thing i don't get is that, on the equal pay issue, sure it's definitely unfair to pay men more than women for the same work, and should be stopped immediately, but i don't see why a "higher up" job in an office or what-have-you defines anyone as "successful" or "smart." my sister and i were having this conversation. it's like america's vicious cycle of hi-school grads. going to college only so you can have a better job and buy more things and be happy because capitalism is awesome. i understand what i'm saying though, and yes i think women are just as qualified for these jobs as men, but i don't see how a woman who works retail is any less respectable than a woman who is a CEO of some company, and that issue seems to be so stressed in feminist theory. get the better jobs! you know? but i think a woman who has a "normal" job can be just as feminist. i could take either side here, but i feel like it's sort of accidentally advocating capitalism sometimes. otherwise though. i agree with your post.

[(Anonymous)]

Why on earth would the perfect majesty of capitalism want to tell someone they are "less respectable" for any reason? Or differentiate in pay? Where is the profit in that? And luckily it doesn't! Malicious tattle, lop-sidedness and sloppy journalism hail from people who haven't grasped the rules properly. "Greed Is Not Enough", for one. If only they could 'submit and succeed' instead of trying to dominate themselves (and others!) Pioneer yourselves into the gutter, bohemians! (Another proof that the system works flawlessly - pioneers are replanted where their pioneering is useful - in ever-poorer areas). But you are right - smart (as an internal, personal attribute) is a total hindrance, and can be overcome by working together. Surely pay difference is the result of an anti-capitalist trying to be smart - fiddling with the engine?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_ponytails/]

odd that no one has allowed for the idea that calling a woman "smart" may be a distinction between two different women and not a blanket statement for women as a whole.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I do think there's a bit of that sense in "Typical Girls: New Stories by Smart Women". As in "we've only picked the very best women for the attention, the smart ones, and thrown the rest away". This of course clashes with the "typical girls" bit, because typical girls implies that the smart women are also representative. We then have to take "typical girls" to be the stupid ones.

Or is it more like "they (ie patriarchy) think we're dumb, but we're smart, and smart is typical for us"?

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning
bedroom for trapped children at 3 AM, flames rolling above your head,
your palms and knees burning as you crawl,
the floor sagging under your weight as the kitchen below you burns. >>

So careful if you say it so could be

xactyly what you want me t I believe that's the only be the only be the way I could be

[(Anonymous)]

I think that the word 'smart' picked up additional connotations in the UK in the nineties. "Work smarter not harder." "The smarter way to bank." It was less about knowledge, more a kind of business shrewdness. Thatcher-savvy.

[faeuboulanger.livejournal.com]

Forgive me if this is implicit in what you are saying, but I would like to note that women--smart and less than smart alike--are trained to act dumb. Even when educational institutions and the politically correct masses sware otherwise, there remains a societal pressure to look pretty and not say too much. There is an understanding that a woman cannot be distinctly feminine or pretty and still be intelligent. Men, on the other hand, are taught to act capable.

So, I'm not sure that I am bothered by Corrigan's use of the word "smart" or view it as patronizing when we live in a world where many highly intelligent women act like idiots for the sake of satisfying weird, vestigial societal expectations.

[mellowtron.livejournal.com]

I think this is where the irony lies. I'm not sure people are necessarily saying that women are dumb (with the notable exception of Larry Summers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Summers), former president of Harvard) but we are often slotted into that role - told not to act too smart, not to ask too many questions, or appear smarter than a man for fear of never getting married.

I know this sounds awfully 1950s, but I think to some extent it's still true. Not every man is comfortable with his partner making more money than he does, even if he is ok with it in theory.

"Smart" in the title of Momus' friend's book is really just code for "assertive." And by saying that women are getting smarter, of course, biology is not changing that quickly, but women are getting more comfortable with making their needs and opinions known than they have in decades past.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

I'm more concerned by the article's "a new generation, intelligent and hard-working" - which is meant to differentiate this generation from what? The "stupid and lazy" generation that went before? This isn't necessarily anything to do with equality (and surely that, as part of a wider debate, is what we are talking about, not 'feminism') but a lot to do with lazy generalisations.

It has for a long time, as has been pointed out above, a comedic staple that men are dumb and that that the woman is the smart one: from the Simpsons, to Cheers, to Everybody Loves Raymond. This has as much validity - or as little - as the Google hits above.

The financial figures are interesting, but I'm not absolutely convinced by them as the figures quoted conflate a whole raft of things (such as "childcare costs up to £16,000 a year", which is an example of stereotyping all by itself, and the current nature of part-time work) to make a general conclusion based on gender. I'd like to see figures that exclude everything other than like-with-like comparisons. I suspect that there'd still be a discrepancy but they'd at least something more tangible to examine, or at least offer us a why (which, if it's something that needs changing, is surely the most important thing). It might also be interesting to see how things like length of service - which counts towards pay differentials - play a part in skewing the figures.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, was sitting in a boho student pub the other day where they were playing an averagely dull selection of punk/indie music (as per bloody usual). In the middle of all the whinging vocals and clanging guitars came Typical Girls, which sounded as fresh as the day it was recorded. I think that Cut was quite possibly the best, and smartest(!), thing to come out of the whole period. It still seems, sadly, sui generis.

happily ignorant

[(Anonymous)]

smart women sounds like a politically correct translation of dumb blond,

rinus

Re: happily ignorant

[(Anonymous)]

This discussion makes me nostalgic for the Momus/Nabisco debate:

http://www.ilxor.com:8080/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=46954

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

But I am smart. I am the very sharpest of dressers.

[me-vs-gutenberg.livejournal.com]

Sad as it is, being smart while female is still a subversive thing in 2007. Perhaps even more so than in 1997.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

hey, man. mainz bleibt mainz.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

What do you call a smart blonde?





A golden retriever.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

tried boots chestnut mare? washes out quickly though.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Feminism is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

I'm all for it personally.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

In all seriousness, I'm fairly ambivalent about feminism. My mum smoked throughout her pregnancy as a protest against 'Necessity and the Penis,' leaving me with withered extremities and an inhibitively short tongue. I look like a polio victim who was weened on Tizer.

Anyway, I think Momus has got a good point here. Then again, show me the female Shakespeare, Mozart, Nietzsche, Leonardo and Einstein etc.

Only joking.

Delia Smith is a genius.

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

So if we're going to correct the income inequalities between men and women maybe we should work on correcting the suicide rate inequalities as well!

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

And the lifespan inequalities.


"Sorry ladies, but this 7 years thing is just too much. I'm afraid you'll all have to be buried alive with your husbands. Don't cry now, it's all in the name of fairness!"

[iloveacomputer.livejournal.com]

I don't know, the 'smart women' thing just always seems like reverse psychology designed to make women say "yeah, yeah I am" and be satisfied with that as their lot and not question things any further. Like that horrible Dove campaign for 'real women' or 'real bodies' or whatever it was, with the size 16 women in their pants. So you aren't being sold an ideal that holds you down because you are 'fatter' but you're still almost naked and selling for a mutinational corporation...

[mme-furiosa.livejournal.com]

There are certain vulgar assumptions about race, class, gender, and intelligence that are ubiquitous to virtually all societies, sure.

I think a good corollary is politician Joe Biden referring to Barak Obama as the first "articulate, clean" African American candidate for president. Googling "articulate black" yields an impressive 17,600 instances, while "articulate white"a mere 1,330.

The qualifier of "articulate black" or "smart woman" is necessary only in a culture where both subjugated groups are still struggling for equal footing. So, perhaps the inclusion of such statements actually reinforces the problem.

It's funny though--what one person may see as throwing a bone to one group, another may see as throwing yet another log on the fire. It's all subjective.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Another thing I want to add is that the rhetorical device smart = typical contains a trap for the people it seems to praise. When used of women, it contains a hidden misogyny.

The other day Charles Hatcher linked to a YouTube video, a sketch by Harry Enfield called "Women Know Your Limits":

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Now, this mocks 1940s-style sexism with 1990s-style sexism. We go from women being expected to act dumb, be seen but not heard, etc -- in other words, be "veiled in public" -- to women being expected to be astrophysicists and economists, far more informed than men. (Another example would be the recent Hollywood thriller where Jody Foster plays an aeronautical engineer who uses her intimate knowledge of the wiring diagrams of a Boeing to find her missing child.) This is the "typical = smart" meme in action, and the misogyny is that it continues to be voluntarily blind to the abilities, qualities and concerns of the majority of actual women. It proposes ludicrous, unrealistic scenarios of female genius, and uses them to "veil" actual women. It also, obviously, aligns with equality of opportunity rather than equality of result. In other words, the system whereby one Condi Rice justifies everything black people and women endure.

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Well, Miss Foster is an ectomorph, so that would make her intellectual prowess a tad more believable now, wouldn't it?

[(Anonymous)]

1. Book came out in 1997 in the UK and '99 in America. I really, really hated the cover Nick is showing here (the US one)

2. The 'smart women' thing is *entirely* contextual to 1996 when I was compiling it; ladette culture was overwhelming and heavily marketed to sell massive amounts of booze to girls through encouraging them to behave like female chauvinist pigs. I worried that we were entering one of those eras where the dirty work of keeping women down was being done by other women while men got on with watching lapdancing and earning on average 20 per cent more than us for the same jobs (alors, plus ca change). It was also when all the post-Bridget Jones chick-lit (aaaargh) was starting to emerge so it was important to distinguish from that because I personally never want to know which Home Counties fop the plucky heroine will marry, and I knew a ton of other women who concurred and hoped to reach them by telling them they were smart and right to object to the status quo.

As to wondering if it is patronising to address a female group as 'smart' I'd have to disagree; in my experience and that of other women who found intellectual discourse outside their upbringing, there is an emotional blackmail issue at the heart of playing dumb and also, if I had a nickel for every woman I've met that has had to overcome being called a thick piece of shit by people (often other women) who purport to love her, then I. Would. Be. Fucking. Loaded.

Women, Know Your Fiction!

[(Anonymous)]

Not feeling succinct today-- sorry!

[mandyrose.livejournal.com]

I tend to look at things as being feminine or masculine, instead of strictly male or female. This seems to acknowledge the natural biological binary, but also allow for the gradual "Girlish Boy/Boyish Girl"-ing of our modern culture.

That said, I do feel that "smart"-ness, referring mainly to pointed intellectual discourse, is inherently masculine. It's not that women can't be gifted at this. Consider the penis (and why not? They're lovely!): it has one direction, is single-minded. Pointed, focused, precise. I believe this is why men have statistically have higher test scores in the maths and sciences: where else but in scientific method can you isolate one element from everything else? No one expects the ocean to produce a mathematical proof, or to turn a boulder into a smooth, rounded pebble in a day.

These designations are not insulting to me, as a woman. I know that I am intelligent, but consider my intelligence masculine. I also consider the biological processes that would enable me to have a child, unspoken and feminine. The resourcefulness (a different kind of "smarts"-- aha!) that it takes to raise a child to maturity, is feminine.

It reminds me of what I see to be the differences between, say, Christianity and Shinto. I would see Christianity as more masculine, with an emphasis on the "Word", total allegiance, authority, conquest, retribution, submission, paternal hierarchy, separation from nature, etc. I think this is also why Christianity and rational science have made such a productive binary for so many centuries. I would consider Shinto to be more "feminine", with emphasis on reverence for natural sites, ancestors, less written text, storytelling from one generation to another. It's not that I think one is preferable to another; simply that they are complimentary and thus should be balanced homeostatically.

With all this talk of Something and its Other, I remember yin and yang. No one would really posit that night is preferable to day, one SEEMS more productive than another. But we need both, and in fact they define one another. In a similar way, I believe that feminine gifts enable the world to go around, but are largely in the shadows thanks to their diffuse nature. And set aflame by masculine ambitions. But as a woman, I don't feel the need to shout it out on the cover of a magazine. We're all standing on the floor-- do we ever write paeans to it? When's the last time we called our mothers? Look at a female duck--- does she care if she's not as colorful as the male? She's too busy doing what needs to be done. It seems to be a Western phenomenon, not admiring/validating our differing gifts as disparate races/sexes.

Re: Not feeling succinct today-- sorry!

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

I like this post because it doesn't say that one set of gifts is better than the other, but recognizes that each set of gifts is there to compliment the other and both make the world go round. If male traits were the only thing we needed, then we'd have a single hermaphroditic body like lesser forms of life. That we are two genders speaks volumes as to the necessity of BOTH genders.


Nothing will make you more glad to be the gender you are than when you can truly love someone of the opposite gender and realize how well their gifts compliment yours.