Sunday, March 30, 2014

Yesterday my friend Carlene sent me a note about an article she'd been reading, which mentioned an 1879 remark by 19th-century social psychologist Gustave LeBon regarding the intellectual capacity of women.
In the most intelligent races, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without doubt, there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as for example of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely.
A desire to give them the same education, and to propose the same goals for them, is a dangerous chimera. The day when, misunderstanding the inferior occupations which nature has given her, women leave the home and take part in our battles; on this day a social revolution will begin, and everything that maintains the sacred ties of the family will disappear.
Carlene told me, "I guffawed!" and, yes, I laughed too because this is a very funny/terrible comment--not least because of the grammatically ambiguous placement of "as well as poets and novelists." But my laughter was fraught, and I imagine that Carlene's was as well. It is exhausting to keep stumbling into this crap. It is exhausting to feel that simply existing in this world as a woman requires constant negotiation with such idiocies. It is exhausting to sense in myself a kernel of doubt about whether or not such crap is truth.

So here's a photo from last night's show. Let's hear it for miracle of those three men in the band, as well as for the miracle of the rest of you men: those of you who read this blog, those of you who don't, those of you who share your lives equitably with women, those of you who have never once believed that the females in your lives, whether family or colleagues or even antagonists, "represent the most inferior forms of human evolution." Thank you.




4 comments:

Carlene said...

Amen.

Dawn Potter said...

Giving birth apparently counts as an inferior occupation. Monstrosity, however, makes a fine pen name.

Anonymous said...

No, not inferior and that's the problem. It is clear to every man that his mother could have smashed his head against a stone when he was born or left him to die in his own excrement. No, this is a debt that cannot be paid back and that is why boys are supposed to love their mothers. In fact, the entire Tibetan Buddhist practice is based on exchanging self and others based on the fact that everyone has been your mother in past lives and let you live and therefore you should be eternally grateful to everyone. Since men can't actually nourish and bear a child the best they can hope for is to conceive another little bastard and wait and see if his wife lets it live. No, this is inexcusable and must be punished. Is this not clear? In plain English: A superiority complex is always founded on an inferiority complex. And so finally, for women to rage at their treatment: abuse, rape etc. etc. etc. is the height of insensitivity. Get it??

Dawn Potter said...

Sigh. Only too well.