Men Don't Recognize 'Benevolent' Sexism: Study

[iverglas]

6. I was a totally girly girl

Except for the brainiac part ... dolls and sewing and knitting and teaching and helping and all that jazz.

But math and spatial perception have never been my weak points. The person I know most like me is my second brother; as a matter of fact we both work in the same field now, one intimately connected with language (as a second profession in both cases, me having been a lawyer and him being an expert in a cultural/literary field).

He's missing the math. I once handed him one of those spatial perception quizzies in a magazine, where you pick which of four flattened 3-D objects matches the one in the picture. I'd breezed through it in a couple of minutes. He spent 10 minutes turning it this way and that and then chucked it back at me. But -- I look at music as closely related to math, and my own learning of music was much like language learning. At bottom, though, I am unmusical because I am completely non-aural. My brother has the music.

I am a map addict when I'm travelling, although I can intuit my way around too, and I quickly become oriented in new places (and really enjoy that process). And I plan and oversee (and do some of) my own renovations and such. No spatial perception problems here whatsoever.

In high school, when we did the aptitude tests in grade 12, I and a boy who had been in my class since grade 6 - we were both kids from the wrong side of the tracks out of our element in an "advanced" class full of rich snobs, but he had the great big advantage of being a boy - both scored in the 99th percentile in both the math and language segments.

I became a human rights-oriented lawyer. He became a high-profile math professor.

Oh, and of the two other leading lights from the wrong side of the tracks, one boy and one girl: one was in charge of the Jupiter probe for NASA a few years back, and one did a doctorate in history and now works with abused women. Guess which one is which.

We all first came together in the early 60s. I'd love to find a similar cohort today and see what happens to them!