LAWRENCE SUMMERS TARRED AND FEATHERED
FOR SPEAKING TRUTH…
Every day, this nation becomes more child-like. I blame a lot of it on the current administration which is busy reducing us to teenagers, or worse, to children, crying and kicking our heels on the floor when we hear something not to our liking
An example is the fuss in the nursery over Mr. Summers remarks about the difference between the abilities of men and women. Naturally, the Administration loves this. On two fronts: The President may have gotten by on a "gentlemen's C" but that doesn't stop the neocoms from hating Harvard and all that it represents: Money that many of them don't have. Connections they don't have. Intellects they don't have.
The dust up over male and female intellects is yet another nice little diversion from what we should actually be arguing and fighting about.
Of course men and women are different. Of course women are not particularly interested in chemistry and engineering. For one thing, as children, women got a stomach full of seeing their rubber-gloved mothers standing at a sink washing and drying and putting away dishes and glasses.
Then as time went on, they, too, found themselves out in the kitchen loading and unloading the dishwasher. To hell with beakers and petri dishes, and that sulfur smell that gets in your clothes, said a little voice in their heads. Oh, it just goes on and on…a girl could take chemistry and escape math. But, then again, chemistry conjured up fumes and explosions and boys playing mean, even combustible, tricks. Better to flunk algebra three times.
Women also are not obssessed by numbers. Men always want to know the square of something, and when tested they can tell you that a train leaving Boston at thirty-five miles an hour, with 10 stops to unload passengers will arrive in Los Angeles 1 hour sooner than a passenger jet, while I know women who have to take to their beds, with a bed tray, to balance their checkbooks. School girls viewed math homework as something to be gotten through before they could write their essay on the Bronte sisters.
Engineering conjurs up steel girders and hard hats and a need for sheer physical strength. You see, the engineer who has designed the thing has to be on the site, for God's sake! Women are not drawn to sweaty men and steel. They like the designing part, but not the execution. This draws them to architecture which is one of the closed doors to women.
Oh yes, there are differences between men and women. Men need and want sex more than women do. The bodies of naked women-- beaten, tortured, raped, and left for dead--litter the highways. The work of men. Don't start with me on the old saw about how women kill men too. Nothing like this happens to men. Except perhaps for the killing of gays, also the work of men. As a man, how would you like walking this planet feeling vaguely menaced? How would you like not to be able to walk down the street of your own quiet neighborhood at night?
