The Damning Discrepancy between IQ and Academic Attainment: Men Are Getting Shafted.

By

David Gottfried

Variability is greater among men than among women.    The proportion of men who are idiots or geniuses is greater than the proportion of women who are idiots or geniuses.    The proportion of men who have IQs over 130 is much greater than the proportion of women who have IQs over 130. (I should perhaps hasten to add that only about two percent of the population has IQs over 130)    (Footnote 1)   Therefore, we should expect that the highest intellectual echelons will be overwhelmingly male.   

For years, elite congregations of intellectual excellence were overwhelmingly male.  This was probably  a result of sexist prejudices in favor of men as well as genetic differences which made for a flatter bell-shaped curve among men (A flatter bell shaped curve is one in which more people are situated at the extremes of intelligence, i.e., there are more geniuses and more idiots)

However, the tide has been turning, and the changes in academia have been quite dramatic.  In many universities close to 60 percent of the student body is female. Male attainment is disparaged as something which the rapacious male sex stole, and females are depicted as the repository of all things virtuous and as relatively saintly.   Misandry is the reigning religion of the sterile, Amazonian academy.       

However, if the placement of people in the most advanced degree programs truly corresponded to the IQs of people, people in advanced degree programs, people with doctorates, and people at the helm of the arts and sciences would be predominantly male because more men than women have IQs over 130.

Although brilliant men overwhelmingly outnumber brilliant women, one wouldn’t know this if one examined data regarding grades and degrees conferred.  American boys are falling further and further behind girls even as the lords and ladies of bourgeois non-industrial liberalism (You know what I mean:  the sort of wine and cheese Martha’s Vineyard liberalism that never heard of the labor movement or the New Deal)   become more insistent and irate about the imagined agony inflicted on girls by the “patriarchy.”     Boys’ grades are slipping, they are less confident and assertive in class, and they are less apt to pursue vital educational opportunities.  Schools are hostile to males and masculinity, boys sense this, and guys withdraw from schools and scholarship.        

Why Male Historical Predominance Among Intellectual Elites cannot be dismissed as a consequence of Historical Discrimination Against Women

I am sure that many people will argue that if women are poorly represented among the brilliant it is a consequence of discrimination against women, of centuries of ego-bashing and belittling that made women consider themselves mere chattel of men, without agency, authority or acumen.   

Of course, I don’t see how the degradation of women in the 15^th Century can have any negative effects on the intellectual development of a Diva, born in 1980 in Great Neck, New York, and told, since the day she was born, that she can have anything in the world she wanted, can cure cancer and is always entitled to the most expensive goods in Bloomingdales.   

More importantly, as I said at the outset of this essay, just as there are more geniuses among men, the proportion of men with abysmal IQs is also higher.   Do you suggest that there are more males with impoverished intellects because of societal prejudice in favor of men.

Perhaps dogma-deluded feminists will concoct a rationale that goes like this:  Perhaps they will say that the inordinate proportion of men in the ranks of the mentally retarded is caused by inferior male genes  while the inordinate proportion of men in the ranks of the brilliant has nothing to do with genes and is a consequence of pro male prejudice.  Of course, if you opt to argue like that, and opt to ascribe causes on the basis of political convenience, you are not a scientist; you are a shabby propogandist, a cultural commissar,  and you should be shorn of tenure and denuded of your tyrannical power to terrorize students, all too often the helpless of prey of jaded  academicians.     

Concrete physical phenomena may be one of the reasons why men are over-represented among the brilliant.

A wealth of data suggests that men’s brains are heavier than women’s brains and are more voluminous than women’s brains.    Men have on average 4 billion more brain cells, or 16 percent more brain cells than women (Footnote 2)  Also the average size of a man’s brain is 650.10 cubic cm.; the average volume of a woman’s brain is 573.54 cubic cm.   (Footnote 3)

I have heard some people say that what really matters, in determining cognitive power, is not the size of the brain but rather the number of interneuronal connections.   With more interneuronal connections, a person is more capable of making more associations among disparate and seemingly unrelated phenomena.    However, the male lead in size extends to a lead in neuronal interconnectedness.  (Footnote 4) 

Of course, I am sure some people will rebut my contention, that a male brain might be brighter than a female brain because it is larger, by making a familiar, sexist argument that goes like this:

“What a typical man.  Gottfried always thinks big is better.  So he thinks that  a big brain is more potent than a little brain.   How antediluvian.  So Neanderthal.  So indicative of a diet starved for quiche and celery sandwiches.”

However, we know that a bigger lung can breathe in more air.  We know that a bigger and wider artery will transmit more blood.   We know that a bigger liver can get rid of more ammonia (ammonia is a by-product of protein metabolism; after the liver turns ammonia to urea, the kidneys send the urea to the bladder)  How then can you be so utterly certain that the size of a brain can have no effect on the breadth and depth of that brain’s achievements.  

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Footnote 1:  

See:   https://qz.com/441905/men-are-both-dumber-and-smarter-than-women/  AND  Lubinski, D., & Benbow, C. P. (2006). Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth after 35 years: Uncovering antecedents for the development of math-science expertise. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 316-345.

Footnote 2:

J Comp Neurol. 1997 Jul 28;384(2):312-20.

Neocortical neuron number in humans: effect of sex and age.

Pakkenberg B1, Gundersen HJ.

Footnote 3:

Carne, R P, et al. "Cerebral cortex: An MRI-based study of volume and variance with age and sex." Journal of Clinical Neuroscience 13.1 (2006): 60-72.

Footnote 4:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2567215/