The Oxford Dictionary defines intelligence as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.” While that’s the technical definition, people make an association on what they consider intelligence based on culture. The assumption is unconscious, but biased toward male intelligence and what men praise as having merit.
The downplaying of feminine media
There’s an ongoing trend of downplaying media that is traditionally enjoyed by women. This includes the whole romance genre in books, movies, and tv shows. Movies such as The Princess Diaries were never considered to be of the same merit as movies geared toward more of a male audience. The same can be said for TV shows such as Grey’s Anatomy being considered a guilty pleasure whereas a show such as Breaking Bad is praised as being great-written television.
This is a phenomenon that has been happening forever. For example, looking back at the early 2000s, the Twilight movies were made fun of. While there are valid criticisms, a lot of what was being said about the movies was tied to the fact that the movies were well-loved by teenage girls. This can also be said of many other franchises both past and present.
As an English major, I see the contrasting reactions of what is considered good literature as an example. The books that we read are written by mostly white men from over 200 years ago. There is a major lack of women authors or nonwhite authors. Since the books I read for a class are considered to be held as the gold standard of good literature, the authors all being white men perpetuates the idea that intelligence can only look masculine.
Male dominated fields
While there has been a push to combat this, there is still a gap in the number of women going into STEM fields versus the Humanities and Social Sciences. This has led to the belief that STEM majors in college and those who go on to work in STEM are more intelligent than those in other areas of study that are more female dominated. I have found that when asked about my major people’s reactions are usually that it must be nice to have extra time for my social life. Even within the STEM field itself, there are hierarchies in who gets to be considered smart. One of my friends who dresses more feminine is an Engineer major at a university in Connecticut and told me how the guys in her class always try to explain the concepts they’re learning when she already knew the answer.
How Can We make a change
How can we make a change that creates a world that values feminine intelligence? We can start by pointing out the ways that intelligence doesn’t have one singular meaning. There are many types of intelligence, which is why feminine women should be taken more seriously in every aspect of society. Those “guilty pleasures” should start to be seen in the same respect that all of men’s interests are.
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