Boy Geniuses

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today we're going to talk
about the gender of genius because it's a masculine, gendered

(00:23):
noun in a lot of ways. Let's just go ahead
and put that out there. Yeah, that's gonna be the
whole point of the show and the thing that we're
going to work to dismantle. Yeah, And there have actually
been a lot of scientific studies in the past few
years and even in the past few weeks when we're
recording this that have been really digging into our implicit

(00:45):
associations with genius and innovation, and research is finding that
there are really strong correlations between our gendering of genius
and participation of women in STEM fields and science, technology, engineering,
and math. Right, because if something is an implicit bias,

(01:08):
if you yourself, no matter if you're a man or
a woman, have internalized that bias and those assumptions, it
will likely shape your behavior. And in this case, what
it's shaping is the assumptions that some people are making
about who can be a genius, who can attain that
level well, because if you look back in pretty much

(01:32):
all of recorded history, going back to Aristotle, the concept
of genius and brilliance was something attributed to men, that
was their natural trait, whereas it's natural and quotes for
women to be more nurturing. And we see this theme
come up over and over again. Uh. And one quote

(01:54):
from the Old school philosopher John Stuart Mill came up
in a number of sources we were reading that kind
of gets to the heart of this whole. It's it's
simply unnatural for a woman to be a genius. So
at one point Mill wrote, everything which is usual appears natural,
the subjection of women to men being a universal custom.

(02:17):
Any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. So there's
just this initial resistance to even the idea of women
being genius because if they're if women can be geniuses,
then that means that they might not be so subordinate
to men, right, or that men might have something in

(02:39):
common with women. Women might come into the room and
talk to you. But let's start things off on a
bright note. I love that. Yeah, and unusual for us. Well,
you know what, let's change things up, shall we. And
this is courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation, which is non

(03:00):
for it's so called genius grants that it gives out
every year. And I gotta say all snaps and claps
to the MacArthur Foundation because they have a track record
of selecting comparatively diverse groups of so called geniuses. Yeah,
September of this year marked the Foundation's thirty five anniversary

(03:25):
of giving this five year, no strings attached genius grant
to people who were chosen for their creativity and their
ongoing potential to you know, continue to create amazing stuff
and make amazing changes in this world. And podcast fans
might know that jad Adam Rod, who created and co
hosts Radio Lab, was given a MacArthur grant at one

(03:49):
point um, which is part of why Radio Lab is
such a sonic delight for our years because of his creativity,
but also these resources that he was given to help
develop up that. But a lot of these other people
are not white fellas like Jad Adam Rod, even though
of course jedam Rod is fantastic. Nothing against Jed Adam Rod.

(04:12):
Just saying that there's some sminty all stars among these geniuses,
that's absolutely right. Uh. I gin poo In was awarded
a Genius Grant. She's the director of course for the
National Domestic Workers Alliance. We talked to her during the
Maker's Conference of this year. Also in graphic novelist Alison Bechdel,

(04:32):
and in two thousand five conductor Marin Also. I mean,
these are all incredible women that we've discussed on the
podcast before. Yeah. Bechdel us coined the so called Bechdel
Test in her former comic strip called Dikes to Watch
out For. And the whole Bechdel test is essentially a
test of like, whether there's any shred of decent female

(04:55):
representation on screen, which must include two women talking to
each other who both have names, and they were not
talking about a dude. And you'd be surprised how few
movies pass effectal test. And then Marin All's up came
up a lot in our episode a while back on
women and conducting and orchestras, because orchestra conductors are a

(05:21):
very male dominated group. Well, and that whole episode, which
I encourage you to go back and listen to, UH,
would be a great companion piece to today's episode because
there's a lot of conversation in that previous episode about
what makes a genius, a creative genius, what makes a prodigy?

(05:41):
What makes someone in the field of music and in
conducting in in particular successful, And when it comes to
pH ds in music composition, you see a very wide
gender gap, with most of those um being earned by dudes.
But we'll get to that later in the show. UM.

(06:03):
This year in ten, we also wanted to shout out
a trio of amazing women of color who have been
recognized as McArthur geniuses as well, starting with Kelly Jones,
who's an art historian and curator of contemporary art from
the African diaspora, and her whole mission is to really

(06:26):
expand and diversify our definition of what contemporary art is.
And in her video on the MacArthur Foundation's website, she says,
there are art histories that are global, and art history
isn't just written in Europe. Yeah, she wanted her colleagues
in our history to acknowledge that fact. And we also

(06:48):
have to acknowledge poet Claudia Rankin because a lot of
her work has explored very sminty relevant important themes. Um
in plot she explored pregnant in motherhood, uh, and don't
let me be lonely. She looked at the fear culture
in the wake of nine eleven, and Citizen was a

(07:09):
response to Katrina, police shootings of unarmed black men and
other events of injustice. And Joyce Scott was the MacArthur
genius that captivated me the most. I had never heard
of her before and am really excited to investigate more
of her work because she's a sculptor, jewelry maker, and

(07:33):
she also refers to herself as a visual and performing artist,
but her primary medium is bead work, and she crafts
these massive installations that are like primarily composed of this
really intricate bead work, all of which tells a story,

(07:56):
and in particular, her work tends to comment on racism, sexism,
and social injustice. And she told the MacArthur Foundation that
my best voice is as an artist. And I highly
recommend you look up Joyce see Scott's work, because you
just have to see the level of detail and the

(08:19):
powerful images and sculpture she creates with what had previously
been maligned as just it was just a little handicraft. Yes, well,
is that not a theme of the discussion of genius
for centuries? And I mean, you know, It's important to

(08:40):
note too, though, that we've been calling these things MacArthur
genius grants, but even the MacArthur Foundation is like, we
don't really call them that, guys. They say that we
avoid using the term genius to describe MacArthur fellows because
it connotes a singular characteristic of intellectual prowess. The people

(09:03):
we seek to support express many other important qualities. Ability
to transcend traditional boundaries, willingness to take risks, persistence in
the face of personal and conceptual obstacles, and capacity to
synthesize disparate ideas and approaches. And I mean, are those
are traits that help people achieve so called genius status

(09:23):
no matter who you are, right, But I think a
lot of times we think of genius as that instant
light bulb moment, as someone who is a good will
hunting who can walk up to the chalkboard and be like, oh, yes,
I just I knew all of these I'm waiting for that. Yeah,
I'm waiting for that to happen for me. Yeah. Not

(09:43):
to say there aren't people who have that potential um,
but there it's worth considering whether we do need to
maybe reframe how we think about genius and also um
and as more emphasis on the time and failure that

(10:04):
it often takes to UH to accomplish these things that
geniuses are often known for. And here's the thing, those
MacArthur fellows are the brightest spot in this conversation because
historically women just could not be creative geniuses. And we

(10:25):
got to give a hat tip to Christine Battersby's Gender
and Genius toward a feminist aesthetics. She really wrote this
groundbreaking text that is still often referenced when we talk
about gender and genius, and she talks about how genius,

(10:45):
along with rationality and intellect have been masculine gender traits
since antiquity because guys have all of those those tools,
whereas women are sensitive and oh no, those are our
natural traits. Yeah. Basically the idea that women are focused

(11:06):
inward literally inward within themselves because they're you know, they've
got women's intuition and they're emotional and their quiet and
they're tending to the hump, but also looking inward like
as in in the home, because they are in a
separate sphere away from men and the fancy rooms where
genius activity apparently happens and It's funny when you look
at quotes about women's supposed lack of genius because it

(11:29):
just sounds like the Internet in oh it so does
it really sounds like Twitter? Those dudes on Twitter. Um,
just to emphasize how uh disbelieving genius men have been,
that it could possibly be something that could happen to

(11:52):
a lady brain, that our lady brains could have light
bulb moments as well. Uh. We wanted to share some
quotes that were discussed in the book The Invention of Art,
a Cultural History by Larry Shiner. So let's start with
an anonymous dude who was writing in a magazine called
The Spectator back in seventeen twelve. He writes, and this

(12:16):
made me think of Joyce Scott and her beadwork. He writes,
needlework is the most proper way wherein a lady can
show fine genius. And he goes on to say how
he wishes that quote several writers of the sex had
chosen to apply themselves rather to tapestry than rhyme. Well, yeah,
which goes again back to the idea that like needlework

(12:39):
and these types of domestic arts are any craft handicraft,
they're more well suited to a woman, which then has
the cyclical effect of women, you're quiet and emotional and
part of the domestic sphere, so you need to do handicrafts. Oh,
and therefore handicrafts are crap because are done by women.

(13:01):
On and on and on and on, and this relates
back to our episode on knitting, where knitting used to
be Uh, this really revered trade that men totally participated
in until it became like this, what ladies do do?
Needlework and tiny prune brains. So much fear, so much fear,

(13:22):
and also just so much what for instance, you have
all enlightenment philosopher and rationalist, ironically Jean Jacques Rousso, who wrote,
women in general possess no genius because the celestial fire
that emblazons and ignites the soul, the inspiration that comes

(13:46):
and devours are always lacking. Dude, Dude, Risso riffs Jean
Jacques J J. J. J. Listen. Uh, Like this is
a theme in life throughout history of like we're going
to prevent women from doing a lot of stuff, and
then when women don't do a lot of stuff, we're

(14:07):
going to blame them and call them stupid. And underestimate
you how you you cannot possibly have the fire that
emblazons also JJ that also might be in an STD
you might want to check that out. Uh. And finally
we have German philosopher Emmanuel Kant who said a woman's
scholar might as well even have a beard, like gross, guys,

(14:33):
can you imagine? So it's like, even if we did
have that celestial fire that j J is going on about,
Emmanuel Kant would be like, but don't touch that troll. Yeah,
you can't win, You really can't win. There's no winning.
And all right, so if we move up to eighteen hundred,

(14:54):
about eighteen fifty genius male artists were allowed the room
to be both the genius with inflamed brain parts or
whatever Rousso was talking about, but also to have the
sensitivity necessary to create something of great importance. And and

(15:18):
a lot of times it was framed in these well,
it was framed in terms of birth, you know, like
men they are impregnated with this inflamed idea or whatever,
and then they have to toil and labor and sweat
and then push it out as a painting or a

(15:40):
sculpture or a work of fiction. And the intellectual episotomy,
so uncomfortable. But this was happening, we should note during
the era of romanticism. So you do have more male
artists who are creating these pieces that would normally be

(16:04):
more associated with a feminine aesthetic, but that did not
devalue them at all native friends, that only increased their
values because that birth process is unnatural for men, right,
So it was like, these guys have it all, fellas,
you can have it all. Romanticism artists, you can't have

(16:26):
it all. And uh, Christine Battersby in that Gender Ingenious
book talks about how um men's capacity for tapping into
the emotional was considered downright extraordinary. So for them it
was a gift. But you got to remember that on

(16:48):
the flip side of this, especially for talking about art
visual art, women artists were often barred from academies. Uh,
they were not allowed to draw do life drawings from
nude models. Thank god they had cows, right, Yeah, we'll
get we'll get to that joke. Dang it a spoiler.

(17:12):
And they were also if they were wanting to paint
a proper lady would stick to portraiture and flowers kind
of like. Around the same time, if a woman had
a mind for science, she would be steered towards botany. Yes,
which matched withdrawing flowers. It's perfect flowers. I mean, it's
all a woman's interests, you know, wrapped up into one

(17:35):
painting of a phone to one flower. But okay, no,
but I I sticking point was something you said, like, okay,
if this whole leg birth metaphor that it's so extraordinary
for a man to labor and create that idea, and
and because it's un natural and extraordinary, therefore he is
a genius. But they considered it unnatural for women to

(17:55):
be geniuses. So if a woman was a genius, wouldn't
she be considered extra mary? But instead she was considered
like an ugly masculine troll. I'm like men, pick a
pick a line of logic and stick with it, right
that j J what you get? How about them apples?
Russo monsieur, Count, I know you're not a monsieur, e'repe
because you're German? Would that be her? Hey? I Count,

(18:19):
I'm gonna stop saying his name in accents because that
might come across as the word we're not intending to say.
But his mind boggling as it is the masculinizing of
genius has been so deeply ingrained in our history and
our art history and even our science labs up to today.

(18:41):
There are some feminists who have argued for really tempering
our interests and recognition of loan geniuses in favor of
recognizing more collective efforts because there's some, um feminists who
find that women's collaborative work, you know, should gain more recognition.

(19:04):
But there are also, of course plenty of other feminists
who disagree. And also we have to keep in mind
too that essentializing a female artistic style as being more contemplative, delicate,
and detail oriented, um, and you know, praising women's works
solely for those kinds of traits that may or may

(19:27):
not be exhibited on canvas also misses the mark. Yeah,
which calls back to our women's street Artists episode about
you know, it's great to recognize that there are female
street artists out there creating badass works of art and
public but on the other hand, like, there are plenty
of women who are like, can you not call me
a female street artists? Yeah, totally. I there's nothing different

(19:49):
in my art whether I paint flowers or like some
sort of you know, industrial scene or something. There's nothing
that makes it feminine or masculine. It's just art. And
this was a really huge issue among academics in particular
during the Women's liberation movement, because this was when a

(20:10):
lot of women's studies programs were getting off the ground,
and this was really when you first started to see
the opposition to this distinctly masculine gendering of genius. And
in researching for this episode, we ran across a V
one essay in Art News by Lynda Knockland titled why

(20:34):
have there been No Great women Artists? And it's worth
talking about because, first of all, like positioning it within
the time, um, it still feels relevant today. Oh yeah.
I was really surprised after I read it to be like,
oh this is oh this is from because it's it's
such an interesting piece because she makes the incredible point of, uh, hey,

(20:59):
we're asking the wrong question. There are valid answers to
the question, as it's put in the title of her piece,
but she's asking readers to take several steps back and
look at what they're asking and why and why they're
positioning it that way. And she starts out by explaining
First of all, what the barriers were two women even

(21:23):
being able to attempt to become a great artist? So
she she um. She points to these institutional issues Allah,
the lack of nude models for female artists. I mean
life drawing is like the core of a lot of art,
that's where a lot of times you start out. They

(21:45):
were also barred from a lot of artistic professions, especially
in the French Academy, which was renowned. It was extremely
hard to get in there. And Malcolm Gladwell actually has
a terrific episode podcast episode on this in his show
Revisionist History. The first episode is actually all about this,

(22:07):
about this amazing female artist who almost makes it into
the academy. So I recommend listening to that, and hopefully
I will remember and put a link to that in
the source post for this episode so you can check
it out. And there's also nepotism that was going on
at this time, like artistic trades were often passed down

(22:29):
from father to son. Yeah, exactly. And and apprenticeships, it's
not like you had a ton of women floating around
in apprenticeships. All of those lengthy programs usually seven years,
those were for dudes to learn the trade and getting
back here col joke. Well, there was this amazing photo

(22:52):
in Knockland's essay from eighteen fifty five of a life
drawing class for women in the Pence Sylvania Academy. But
instead of having a naked person modeling, which would be unseemly,
they had a cow. There's there's like and it's just this.

(23:14):
It almost looks photoshopped because there's this giant cow with
all of these very properly dressed women sketching it. Have
you ever hung out with a cow? You know? I
actually one of my sisters owns a number of cows,
and I don't know if it constitutes hanging out with

(23:36):
but I've hung around the cows. They're pretty cool. I
like a cow. I there was one outside of Earthfare
here in Atlanta not too long ago. Just like a
promotional thing for a dairy something something. Don't put a
counter parking lot. Also, don't put a cow in an
art academy. It's like, why didn't they take the women
outside to a field? What if that was the question?

(23:57):
But if that was their mascot, the Pennsylvania Cows Cow Academy.
No um if though uh an artistic lady had the
rare chance of drawing a male model. He he would
likely be very heavily draped and a lot of and

(24:20):
a lot of things, so as to not even suggestine
was Penis Joey and that episode of Friends where he's
wearing all of Chandler's clothes. You know, I don't I
don't get that one, but I'm sure it exists. Someone
knows what I'm talking about. Uh. But what really stopped

(24:40):
me to Caroline, and I'm really curious to hear what
you thought about. It was some real talk that knock
Land dropped, where she was basically saying, listen, it's terrific
for us to highlight these women artists who have remained
unrecognized but who were making incredible work. Um, but that

(25:03):
is not the answer to this question. We are going
about this the wrong way, she said. Quote. The fact
of the matter is that there have been no supremely
great women artists as far as we know, although there
have been many interesting and very good ones who remain
insufficiently investigated or appreciated. She she basically says, as much

(25:27):
as we want them to be there, that's not the case.
And she goes on to write quote that this should
be the case is regrettable, but no amount of manipulating
the historical or critical evidence will alter the situation. Normal
accusations of male chauvinist distortion of history. Well, I mean,

(25:48):
what's her argument in terms of supremely great women artists?
Is she just saying like, we don't have female Michaelangelo's Yeah, yeah,
I mean, well yeah, and I think she's saying this too.
Focus us on the institutional barriers. Well, I even finding

(26:08):
exceptions to the rule. Yeah, Like, if you're imagining people
who want to be in the arts starting out on platforms,
Michaelangelo is starting out on the ground level. I mean,
obviously he was brilliant, but starting out on the ground
level and working up and achieving greatness and creating brilliant art.
Whereas women who might have had the same artistic proclivities,

(26:32):
same desires, are starting out on a platform in the
basement and they never quite make it up. If there
was anyone even teaching them how to do the stuff, yeah,
I mean, and there were, and there were definite exceptions
here and there, um, but by no means to the
same degree as the opportunities that men were afforded. And

(26:54):
even if you were a super talented and super ambitious
woman who had a lot of great ideas and a
lot to say with your work, or even if you
were really ambitious in academia, then you were considered unladylike.
You know. Then we get back to Heya Kant's woman
with a beard, A woman a scholar might as well

(27:15):
have a beard, um. And it wasn't just this idea
that she's ugly, but the belief that exerting your brain
power too much would ruin your uterus. Yeah, and if
we look at the example of Rosa Vonnor, who she
died in she's one of art history's most accomplished female painters,

(27:38):
and it's worth noting what her life was like to
look at kind of what it took for a woman
to rise through the ranks basically, and she not only
had an encouraging artistic father, but she also was in
a Boston marriage with fellow artist Natalie MICUs, which I

(27:58):
mean she didn't have children, she didn't have a husband
that she had to do everything for, you know, she
didn't have to fit into that tight box of being
the typical housewife of the era, which just goes to
show how important it is to have the time and
mental space to be able to create. I mean this

(28:21):
reminds me reading about her encouraging father. It just reminds
me of people like astronomer Caroline Herschel, who also had
an encouraging father. He taught all of his children, male
or female, how to play musical instruments, and she was
encouraged by his pushing her and her brothers to be

(28:43):
educated well in Rose Bandur's biography also reminds me first
of our episode on Boston Marriages, with the resounding theme
of it taking not getting married, not becoming a housewife,
and not having kids for the earliest generation of white women.
We should note um going off to college and really

(29:06):
making a life for themselves on their own independently, and
also um devoting their lives to activism and suffrage a
lot of times like a Jane Adams um. But then
if we look at more of the artistic side, it
reminds me of our episode on the White Mormorian Flock
about women's sculptors of the time and how first of
all they had to leave the United States because they

(29:30):
would just get you know, brushed aside a state side,
and so they would go over to Europe and it
required patronage. So for someone like Edmonia Lewis, who was
a woman of color at the time and also a
sculptor over in Europe, UM, it took a lot of support,

(29:50):
even more support for her to achieve the greatness that
she did. And even so we don't know really in
or where she died or how she lived the rest
of her life. Even stories about her early life are
sort of legend. You know, we know that she went
to school, she went to college, she left there was

(30:12):
you know, she she received a lot of discrimination and
abuse because of her race, and that she went over
and was part of this white Marmorian flock in Rome
with Harriet Hosmer at all. Um. But even so, even
getting all of the attention for her amazing abilities, like,
we still don't know much about her life. Well, and
that goes to the glaring over a sight and everything

(30:35):
that we read honestly of how all of this applies
to both historically and in contemporary times, to women of
color and people of color in general, because I think that,
especially when we're talking about the art conversation, um, it
would apply to men and women of color alike. And uh,

(30:59):
with the exception though, of something like jazz. And this
was written about by Nicole t Rustin in a paper
called Mary Lou Williams plays like a Man, gender genius
indifference in Black music discourse, and she describes how UH

(31:19):
jazz musicians genius musical genius was interpreted as an expression
of masculinity, and Rustin writes quote myths about black musicians
genius include likening them to superheroes, preachers, revolutionaries, and powerful
voices speaking to the need for truth and equality. They're

(31:40):
black men embodying ideas of manhood that is, their self
determining and masculinity such as their capacity for expressing emotional
or metaphysical states like being cool or spiritual or defiant.
So you have a similar kind of gender dynamic going on,
uh within as and of course the double discrimination then

(32:03):
that women of color experience in that community, even though
you did have standouts like Mary Lou Williams. And we
are going to discuss more factors in holding women back
from that genius label when we come right back from
a quick break. So our conversation about gender and genius

(32:29):
is especially timely, Caroline, because the day before we came
into the podcast studio to record this episode, a new
study dropped looking at exactly this thing we've been talking
about UM, and it echoes a lot of other research
that we are going to get into in the second
half of the podcast. And this most recent study came

(32:50):
from Kristin Elmore at Cornell and myro Luna Lucero at
Columbia University. And essentially what they found how our metaphors
of how we talk about genius, those light bulb moments,
those sparks of inspiration, that instantaneous quality, the inflamed parts

(33:11):
that Russo talked, Yes, Russo's brain on fire, UM. Those
are also masculine gendered implicitly, whereas when we think about
women innovators, we often associate them more with nurturing a seedling. Yes,

(33:32):
their study was really interesting. So they gave people some
paragraphs to read talking about a male inventor, and they
described in the different paragraphs they used the spark of
inspiration type of lightbulb metaphor for his invention uh, and
the second they said that it was more of a

(33:54):
seed that had been planted and nurtured with hard work
and time. And in the third paragraph, if there was
no metaphor atal and they found that his the inventor's
status as a genius was doubted or downplayed or not
thought of quite as highly when it was described as
a seedling that had grown over time. That it really

(34:17):
took the more masculine view of the lightbulb genius moment
for people to feel like, yes, yes, this is a
true genius, unless the subject in question was a woman,
in which case we were totally fine with it being
more of a nurturing seedling approach to it. So these

(34:42):
study our authors suggested that perhaps there is even more
pressure that men might subconsciously feel to um recount their
discoveries as those light bulb moments, well, pressure to recount
their experiences that but also taking into account the idea
that if you male or female, feel like you lack

(35:06):
that you know, internal fire, that light bulb, that spark,
will maybe I'm not a genius, Maybe this isn't for me,
maybe it's not my true passion, or I'm not good
enough at it. If I don't have this spark or
this light bulb that everybody talks about, this is what
genius is supposed to be, right, and to me, that
just makes it seem like the idea of genius is

(35:29):
tenuous at best if our concept is so easily rocked
by whether your accomplishments or a seedling that you grew
over time or a lightbulb that came on one morning. Well,
and this is where the FAB hypothesis comes in, because
basically what you're describing is this thing called field specific

(35:50):
ability beliefs, and it reminds me a lot of stereotype
threat because it has a similar outcome and it's a
relatively new area of research, but so far the studies
totally support it. So what the FAB hypothesis maintains is

(36:11):
that the more academic fields emphasize goodwill hunting style genius
for success the quote unquote raw intellectual talent, the less
diverse they are, and institutionally this can also lead to
pipeline problems because potential candidates might be overlooked due to

(36:33):
cultural assumptions of their own genius ness. Even though statistically
f y I American women surpassed men and earning doctorate
degrees in two thousand two, but men are still considered
the academic geniuses. And you know, I think that I

(36:54):
hate that the idea of the raw intellectual talent thing
could be holding people back because so much of it
goes to do you have the space and time? Like
we said earlier, do you have parents who will foster
your creativity, your talents, your abilities, your inventiveness. Do you

(37:16):
have you know, a great education, Did you pursue a
great education? Were you curious? And I mean one great
modern example of that would be the brilliant Brittany x Line.
In two thousand and seven, she became the youngest African
American woman accepted to an Ivy League school at University
of Pennsylvania at just fifteen years old, and she graduated

(37:39):
at nineteen to become America's youngest African American engineer. The
woman speaks seven languages, okay, uh, And she did have
a mom who not only encouraged her innate abilities and
you know, wouldn't let her daughter quit like piano lessons
or whatever if she was like, I don't know, is
it's too hard? But her mom was also deeply involved

(38:01):
at her school. And this was true for both Brittany
and Britney's brother. And so ah, there we have what
we mentioned earlier about like, uh, you know, trades, whether
it's painting or sculpture or woodworking, or whatever getting passed
down from father to son. Here we have an encouraging
parent clearing room for her daughter to achieve and become

(38:23):
that genius, which obviously your ability to do that is
going to depend on a lot of circumstances as well.
It's it's easier for some parents to be able to
do that, to have the resources to do that, versus others.
But here's the thing. When we talk about pipeline issues,

(38:43):
especially from the classroom and the science classroom all the
way up to professorships, being really really really smart and
making really really really good grades and writing amazing papers
as a woman sometimes is not good enough. There was
a study publish in October in the journal Nature Geoscience

(39:05):
which found that women are half as likely to receive
excellent letters of recommendation versus men, regardless of who's writing
the letter. So it's not just you know, men being
Jean Jacques Rousseau's to women, um, But it seems to
be this implicit bias at work, and the study authors

(39:27):
think that this might help explain why the proportion of
women in geoscience drops from in PhD classrooms to ten
in professorships, and that also controls for the quote unquote
work life balance issues UM that we hear about in

(39:48):
terms of women having a really hard time um gaining
tenure in sem professions being professed stem field professors. And
this study replicated results of research also examining letters of recommendation.
When it comes to people in biochemistry and chemistry, men

(40:08):
are likelier to be described as trailblazers, brilliant and scientific leaders,
whereas and this ring is so true to me, whereas
women are described as being very productive, very knowledgeable, and
possessing very good skill sets. We have more grindstone words
associated with us. But you know what, we gotta be

(40:31):
really good with time management and productivity because we probably
have a lot of stuff to do it at home,
like childcare and housework. But to me, this really highlights
how easy it is for so many people to say
there's no problem, there's no sexism at work. Um, what's
wrong with saying someone has a very good skill set?

(40:52):
Is that not good enough for you? You're just finding
and I mean I'm specifically referring to whether it's men
or women writing the letters of recommending stion that women
tend to get described as excellent less because if you
can't see it. If you can't see that you or
your colleague has that bias, and you don't think you do,
you're just simply using different words to describe the woman

(41:15):
than the man. Like it can be hard if unless
you're thinking very critically and having some real talk with
yourself to identify and root out that sexism, which is
why these conversations about unconscious and implicit biases are so
important for us really pushing for legit gender equality and

(41:35):
representation UM. And it's also helpful for us whether we
are people writing the letters of recommendation or if we're
people just sitting in the classroom looking at our teacher
or our professor, to keep in mind how we interpret
their intelligence and to dig a little bit deeper into

(41:57):
the fab hypothesis for a moment um these field specific
ability beliefs that we might take with us UM they
can affect us internally, like outside of any letters of
recommendation or anything like that. And this goes to a
study published in in the journal Science which surveyed grad students,

(42:18):
post docs, and faculty at nine US research institutions to
rate the importance of both having an innate gift or
talent or a special aptitude that quote just can't be taught,
versus motivation and sustained effort to succeed in their fields.
So basically asking like a geoscientist, for instance, like do

(42:41):
you need to be a genius or can you get
away with like working really hard? Um. And even after
accounting for gender differences in women's academic preferences and family
balancing acts, more men than women obtain pH ds in
those brilliance fields like philosophy, music theory, and composition going

(43:05):
back to Mary and alsop and physics, and women respondents
tended to also emphasize the importance of hard work over
genius compared to men who emphasize more genius over hard work. Um.
Whereas if you look at fields like neuroscience and molecular
biology that have much closer gender parity, you see the

(43:28):
responses more emphasizing hard work versus genius from both from
women respondent emphasizing and they emphasize it more in those
fields versus uh, the men. But that's clear that we're
walking into those fields believing that hard work can earn

(43:51):
you success. Yeah, so there's a lot of internalizing about
innate abilities, about something being within your grasp about imposter syndrome,
what makes a true genius? And you better believe that
those uh study results also held for African Americans. So

(44:14):
this is not just an issue of gender, because rarely
is anything solely an issue of gender. Um. But we
also have to keep in mind too that we have
a responsibility to mind our own unconscious biases, not only
if we are writing letters of recommendations, but also if
we're sitting in the classroom, if we are judging someone

(44:35):
else's intellect in front of us um. And this was
emphasized by a March study published in Plus one which
analyze student reviews on rate my professor dot com. And
the study got so much pressed because it found that
brilliant was used to describe male professors compared to female

(44:57):
professors by a one point eight to one ratio and
genius a three point one to one ratio, whereas there
was little difference gender difference in descriptors like amazing or excellent,
funnily enough, but genius, oh my god three to one. Well.

(45:19):
The use of that genius language was also correlated with
lower participation by women in African Americans in PhD programs,
even after controlling for workload g r E scores and
a field's emphasis on abstract thinking. And there's also a
question of whether these results were kind of weighted because

(45:41):
in those brilliance fields, you're going to have more dudes
in the classroom, and fellows tend to emphasize genius over
hard work, so that might skew the results somewhat. You know,
I hated philosophy when I was in college, but I
actually loved my full bosophy professor. I've mentioned him on
the podcast before. His name was Dr Bueno, not kidding,

(46:07):
and yeah, he was a dude, and my t a
was a dude. But like it was such a friendly
I really, I'm not joking. It was like such a
friendly atmosphere. The teacher was so great and it's not
his fault that I hate philosophy. And then I was like, no,
that the chair is there. I'm not going to write
a paper asking whether the chair is truly there. It's there,
it's next to my desk. I can see it and

(46:29):
touch it. Stop with this philosophy stuff. Um so yeah,
if I had had a natural both proclivity and tolerance
for philosophy, um, you know, I think having a friendly
classroom atmosphere would definitely have been beneficial. And like everything
on stuff, Mom never told you, everything eventually circles around

(46:52):
to the mirror that is pop culture and how men
and women and gene Is and like mad scientists are
depicted in media, and what that tells us about how
gendered we consider genius to be. Oh absolutely right now,
I am looking at a list on Live science dot

(47:15):
com mad Geniuses, ten odd tales about famous science scientists,
and I wanted to mention it because the mad genius
trope in particular is almost exclusively men, and this list,
for instance, is all men. You've got Einstein, You've got Tesla,
you have just not not a single not a single woman. Um.

(47:39):
And in pop culture, the characters of like a monk
or house, you know, you usually have these kind of cantankerous,
eccentric genius men Doc Brown from Back to the Future.
Then on X Files you have Molder who's like totally
out there, whereas Scully is more she's the no woman,

(48:01):
yes yes, um, And that's often appearing you see where
you have, you know, the mad genius men and the
rational woman to balance him. Gene Wilder's Dr Frankenstein Rip
you know, gen Wilder, and you know what I think.
I think that's where we start, Frankenstein. I mean, hello,

(48:23):
can we get a lady Frankenstein already? I would frankly
love to see that. I'd frankly love to see that. Yeah,
there was a lovely matrix that we found over at
Dorkley of all of the both animated and live action
mad geniuses in pop culture, and there are but three

(48:48):
women on here, including Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time. Yeah.
I think my favorite on this diagram is Professor Farnsworth
from Futurama. Absolutely, any any character from Futurama is my
favorite character. Well. I hadn't thought about that either until
you know, um, having to sit and think about it

(49:11):
for this episode. But it makes sense because here's the thing.
You have a male mad scientist and he is still
a genius. But if you have a female mad scientist,
she's nuts, she's probably dangerous, she wish, she's probably a
which Frankenstein. Yeah, Frankenstein is uh. And I'm so curious

(49:31):
to know from listeners, because you all are so pop
culture of savvy, what exceptions there are in pop culture
whether you think that there is a better representation happening
of women geniuses on screen, or if we are kind
of still stuck in this trope because pop culture absolutely

(49:53):
matters because of visibility matters, and it all goes into
and feeds this same aim unconscious bias that a genius
is a man. I mean, it's taken us up until
quite recently to figure out that a scientist is not
always a man. So I think that this is um

(50:17):
a just a really interesting thought exercise on the construct
of genius and be a worthwhile discussion of our gendering
of intellect and how so outdated. Jean Jacq Grousseau, get
out of here. No, thanks, bond your no. I think

(50:39):
that's Italian. You know what I mean. We're talking about genius,
right or a war. The listeners save us, throw us
a lifeline with your letters, and I know that there
are a lot of folks in academia and research who
listened to us. Oh, we're so cure as to hear

(51:00):
from you about whether you feel this in the atmosphere
of your institutions that you're working in as well, if
it's something that you have noticed or experienced yourself. Let
us know all of your genius thoughts and ideas. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is where you
can send them. You can also tweet us at mom
Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got a

(51:22):
couple of messages to share with you when we come
right back from a quick break. All right. I have
one here from Susie in response to our pants suit episode,
and she uses her pants suit power dressing type of
stuff for a different reason than some of us. She said,

(51:46):
your pants suit episode was one of my very favorites.
I work in a forest preserve, so suits blazers another
typical business where and not a big factor in my
work wardrobe. I might bust out a blazer a nice
pair of work slax on a semi and ual basis.
I do own these pieces from previous jobs in academia
and nonprofit administration, and I recently discovered a use for

(52:07):
these sad neglected blazers and suits at the back of
my closet. Having suffered from a lifelong, nearly paralyzing fear
of needles, I have avoided getting shots, i VS and
blood tests at almost any cost. When I have to
be anywhere near needles, I start shaking uncontrollably and most
often tears and sue. However, my doctor is requiring me

(52:30):
to have blood tests every other day for the month
of October, and I find that wearing a power outfit
like a pant suit or blazer helps me feel much
braver in the philopotomous chair. I'm not sure this is
a thing that would work for everyone with a phobia
of needles or other similar situations, but for me, dressing
like somebody who is in a position of power gives

(52:50):
me the feeling that I'm far more powerful than the
needles I fear. I'm proud to say that I haven't
cried during a single blood draw so far. Thank you
for your amazing podcast. I learned so much and love
laughing along with both of you. Dude, Susie, I need
to try this. I am I like break out in
a cold sweat over my whole body. I have passed

(53:12):
out getting needle stuff, whether it's shots or blood drawn
or vaccines or whatever. Uh So I might I might
break out the blazer from my next trip to the doctor.
From my physical genius idea genius right there. So I
have a letter here from Kristen with a K, who
is writing about our episode on Women and Yogurt, and
she writes, let me just start by saying, I love

(53:35):
listening to the podcast every week. I never thought I
would find yogurt so interesting. Oh my god, Kristen already
the best compliment. My husband and I started tracking our
food lately, and yogurt has become one of our favorite
low calorie, high protein snacks. The marketing portion of the
podcast is hilarious and yet so true. My husband, during

(53:56):
a recent grocery trip, picked up a large package of
the Hurt. His choice was based purely on the black packaging.
He says that it seemed like the man lead choice,
but that brand caused fifty more than mine and there
was no noticeable taste difference. Keep doing what you do.
The show is fantastic. Oh my god, Brogert Brogert works.

(54:19):
I had no idea. Thanks so much for sharing that,
um and PS. I ate yogurt on my way into work,
and I think of the podcast now every time I
eat yogurt, and it's I kind of love that UM.
I would also like to point out that after our
yogurt episode, I went out and bought two things of
yogurt because I was like the Internet told me that

(54:41):
with my lactose intolerance, I don't have to worry about it.
Not true, friends, But also we got another email from
someone who was like, Caroline, Hey, if I know you
said on the podcast that you're not lactose intolerant, your
lactose sensitive. But if you're like having um this problem
and this problem and this problem, uh, you're liked is intolerant.

(55:01):
And I'm like, yeah, girl, I know, but yet another genius.
I know all these genius women writing in and fellas.
Thank you all so much and keep your letters coming. Mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts
with our sources. So you can learn even more about
the gendering of genius, head on over to stuff Mom

(55:24):
Never Told You dot com. We're more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
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