The Steiner interview continued

Steiner’s claim that women can’t create on account of their being able to give birth is a great pink flabby baton with which to epater les femmes: it is so obviously false – and yet it is totally unfalsifiable because it is so sweeping and because anyone wishing to contest it has to first face the difficult job of proving that such a thing as creativity exists, what it means, and that it is worth having. What a way to kill several hundred afternoons in pleasant female company in sweet assurance of never having to concede a thing. It’s a lot like infuriating a turkey by opening and closing a red umbrella at it through a fine chickenwire mesh; very like it, yes, but a lot more fun.

But Steiner’s claim that women have too much “bon sense” to seek to excel in science or math is not, as the interviewer has it, macho. It’s so obviously bon sense. Of course it is bon sense not to waste one’s time on abstract scientific experiments or mathematical formulas when one can spend the same time in good company with people one loves. Especially when the good company is of opposite sex and the companionship of the intimate variety. I find this so obvious; why does not Laure Adler (the interviewer)? And if not, why not? What is the point of her insisting that women of course are as interested in math and science as men and that – NO, they do not have the better sense not to waste their precious time in competing in meaningless competitions for mostly empty scientific honors? Does she really want to equal men in math more than she wants to be happy?

As for me, I spent this afternoon in pleasant female company by the pool; it did not for a moment occur to me to quit the company, closet myself in my studio and work at a mathematical paradox of some sort or another instead. What would that prove? That I am unable to assure myself of pleasant female company? Or that I take no interest in the opposite sex?