Genius & the All-Grey Penguin
essay

He was genuinely surprised, as was I. Me, the one who always complains that it's degeneration when a conversation begins to be about men this and women that.

But I said it, and he paused, and I realized I had discovered something previously unexposed about a long-time friend. He answered me that, in fact, he'd never thought about it. That he understood why at least — because women after all could hardly be lauded for genius in domestic arts, and, after all, only recently have women stepped outside into non-traditional roles.

I laughed — for a long time — after for a time being unable to make a sound. I had no words, at least. A good number of things, all small and narrow and well, in essence, un-sayable, occurred to me.

Genius is that thing which in any walk of life lifts people — no, lifts a single person — out of the general mass of humanity. To take genius away from women shows more than a bias against housewifery.

What was I to say? Thank him, perhaps, ironically, for attributing to all women the color beige and the characteristics of a pool: homogenous, liquid, good to swim in, but quick to wipe away with a towel and changes you never. I would have said, and it was in my mind to say, that genius is a label, as much something conferred by the world as deserved by an individual's actions. I almost said, as well, that genius seems to be as present in men as in women, or at least as generally lacking in both sexes, and maybe it's only the way society forces its expression that is different.

I might have said a lot of things, but I had this burst of laughter instead and then I felt like adding nothing, because by then I'd had some time to talk sense to myself.

I believe in the sanctity of doubt. I believe in, as Einstein said, that anything truly ‘great and inspiring is created by the individual who can work in freedom'. I believe in Oscar Wilde's idea of the inherent, and wondrous, ‘uselessness' of art. And I believe in rooms of one's own, as Virginia Woolfe demanded as necessary. I have absorbed my ideas of the world from great men and women, and these form my system of behavior and belief. Anyone is capable of, and does, something similar and particular to them.

I can never argue the relative benefits of male and female, will never admit to black and white polar differences between them, without hoping I remember such ideas only make penguins of us all. Who wants to be a penguin? Penguins, according to the Vatican at least, have only very small souls.

It was in my uncharitable state of mind to say that the science of doubt is dear to many women who might otherwise be geniuses. They lack only the outlandish ego confidence which makes a man forswear responsibility in the name of art, or in the name of genius. It was in my mind to say this, that women are not nearly egotistical enough to capture the imagination of the masses, and from there the crown of genius with noses thumbed — no, middle fingers raised. I wanted to say that it's the fault of men who try to make us over instead of letting us women make ourselves that holds us from acclaim. But fortunately for both of us, I couldn't, because of my otherwise revoltingly timed laughing fit. And it's just as well. Talk like that makes us into penguins.

I didn't have an answer to give him, this friend who probably took my laughter to mean I was tarring him unfairly or not as despicably sexist. I laughed, and when I had had enough revenge that way at his expense, I thought back to his grant proposal and said with hopefully enough good humor to hide the cruelty of it, and to fully even our score, ‘I think you'll get that grant.'

I wonder what was in his head as I left him on the corner. I wonder what he thought was in mine. He went home to sleep off the effort of grant writing, and I walked slowly, to turn over in my mind questions of men and women, and of penguins, which are neither. I want to live in the realm of the glorious grey, not amid the stark prejudices of black and white.

I'm glad I didn't say all the stupid, sexist things that popped into my head, and I'm glad I had a chance to reexamine my own prejudices. What I discovered was what I had hoped was there all along. Perceptions are ephemeral things, only as real as the moment they exist in a mind. To change anything, all you really have to do is begin with the assumption things already are the way you want them to be. Then, if you discover anything which supports your belief, you accept it immediately, embrace it. You don't resist, because it is an idea which already appeals to you, which to you is at some level already true.

So in the world I live in, at least, there are women who are geniuses, just like there are men who are geniuses. In my world, a lot of the penguins are grey, and others are partially black and part white, and a person can do what they're driven to or they want to do, without fear of being mistaken or unnoticed because they don't fit someone's traditional idea. I change my suppositions, and the world rushes to fit. In the grand scheme of things, the greatest developments have to take place first in one place — in the mind.

And you don't need to be some kind of genius to like the sound of that.

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