InvertedSnobbery

There is an inverted mental and sexist snobbery at work in the UK. We have a television quiz show called University Challenge. There are four representatives from each college and they answer, if they can, the tough questions asked. It’s first to the buzzer stuff and remember these are ultra tough questions.

Recently there has been a female contestant called Gail Trimble who led her team from Corpus Christie College to overall series victory. Gail has the misfortune to have scored more points than any other contestant in the shows very long history. The reasons for her being singled out for special criticism have varied to people pointing out they don’t like her teeth, eyes, clothes, hair and smile etc.

I don’t remember similar critiques being handed out to male contestants however poorly they looked or spoke or smiled whether they were clever or not. This is sexist behavior of the most obvious and odious kind. The woman in question is seriously clever and although I don’t know her I find a quick brain in a woman particularly attractive.

The only other excuse for criticism such as this is jealousy about her sheer mental capacity. Indirectly, and to a much lesser extent I can empathize with this. As a boy I was happily bungling along at school, drifting somewhere in the middle of the middle stream. Along came the United Nations and their international school IQ tests. I have since found out that their idea was to discover evidence of whether IQ scores around the globe were affected by nationality, race, and gender, social and economic background.

Not understanding this at age 11 I sat down in the school’s big assembly hall along with the rest of the boys of my age to sit the IQ test. On the front cover of this we were asked what our parents occupation was. Being a cheeky bugger I wrote (and may the Lord forgive me!) that my mother was a prostitute and my father a refuse collector. Needless to say this was not the case, as my mother was a respectable housewife and my father was, by then, in the film industry. I have no idea if this had any effect on my eventual score, which was to cause me never ending grief.

Some time later I was called in to chat with the school Principal a man I had been doing my best to avoid at all costs. He was all smiles as he indicated that as my score was in the top 2% of the country he expected me to do considerably better in all my future examinations.

That year I came 22nd in the B stream and questions were asked. Following this I did a little better but now everyone was pointing out that with my intellect I should clearly be top of the class. “Could do better” became the standard observation for whatever I did.

When I was 13 I was fed up with being told I could do better and I actually did a lot better. I came joint top of the year with a boy called Ruffhead who had total recall. I was very pleased with myself until I was told that I could still do better. This was despite my coming top!

From that point on I followed my own drumbeat as I came to realize that such crude measures, as IQ can be as much a burden as a plus. Although my brain and memory have stood me in good stead in certain circumstances such as winning at Trivial Pursuit, they don’t measure up to common sense, intuition or emotional intelligence as vital attributes with which I am not so blessed.

If a woman has all of these attributes they are blessed and if you’re the man who is fortunate enough to share them you are doubly blessed. Cute and sexy may be a plus but to really be sexy you need more than a nice smile.