Every Man's Fantasy Ch. 25

Danielle and Wildchild started laughing and Eva, who knew Yael least well, smiled.

"What's so funny?" Yael demanded.

"The idea that you lack confidence," Danielle said, "and the bold certainty with which you made the unlikely assertion."

"But it's true!" Yael insisted. "I had a moment of self-doubt a few weeks ago."

"Yael, you have enough self-assurance for three people. How on Earth did you have a moment of self-doubt?"

"It was when Robyn told me to fly the shuttlecraft back from Samothea."

"You did what?"

"I flew Petticoat II here," Yael said simply.

"When did you learn to pilot a shuttlecraft?" Eva asked.

"Ezra gave me a lesson."

"A lesson? One lesson?"

"It was a long lesson," Yael insisted. "And I read the manual. And Hazel taught me what she knew. We practiced on Kelly's games machine."

"One lesson," Eva repeated.

"All right, Yael," Danielle said with an indulgent smile. "I'm pretending I didn't just learn that Robyn invalidated our insurance policy on her last flight. Tell me about your terrible crisis of confidence. Was it having to fly the shuttlecraft?"

"Oh, no. I knew I could do that!" the wilting violet proclaimed.

"It was when Robyn told me to use full manual control. That's risky because the computer only takes over if there's an emergency. I hesitated for a moment but Ryan gave me a wink. It reassured me to know that Ryan trusted me. So I flew the ship all the way here on full manual control. ... That shows that boys naturally have more confidence than girls. Ryan had confidence in me even when I doubted myself."

"I think your story supports Robyn's case," Danielle said.

"I don't understand. I was the one that doubted my skill."

"It's natural to doubt for a moment when it's something you've never done before," Eva said. "But you didn't doubt that you could fly the shuttlecraft."

"Yael, you're a force of nature all by yourself," Danielle said, "and I think your natural self-assurance was able to flourish in a society without competition from men. Look at Kelly Mayfield. Before she went to Samothea, I can barely recall her expressing an opinion in public. Now she's glowing with confidence. It may be that some women can achieve great things if they don't have to compete with men."

"But I don't want to do without men. Men are lovely. They're all kind and thoughtful. It's not men's fault that women prefer to follow if there are men around to take the lead."

"Also, the best that women can do might not equal the best that men can do," Wildchild said. "A female-only society might not have the same levels of technology and hard sciences as a mixed society. We women did all right for ourselves before Ezra arrived but he caused a revolution. He taught us to swim, to breathe underwater, he built a crapper, roofed all our huts and gave us a better way of woodworking; but he never forced his ideas onto anyone nor tried to dominate us."

"I'm pleased to hear it," Danielle said, "but I suspect Ezra is an exception among men. You girls of Samothea are among the most amazing people I know. I wish that every woman in the galaxy had your attitude toward life. I want to see Robyn's paper, to know if it's your female-only society that gives you your confidence."

Later that day, Danielle had a private moment with Eva. She said:

"I'm going to support your bid to buy Samothea."

"Thank you. What changed?"

"If the brilliance of the women of Samothea is even partly the product of growing up in a female-only society, then I want to support it, at least temporarily, just in case it's true."

******

With both Danielle and Ezra now supporting her plan to buy Samothea, Eva asked the Women's Business Initiative to go ahead and build a consortium, to raise the funds and put pressure on Outworld Ventures to sell the planet at a good price. She hoped the consortium would be ready with an offer in two months.

Danielle and Ezra pledged to work toward paying a third of the cost each. Danielle's solution to the Beltway problem was making progress. They had a computer model that sort of worked. If they could get the device to make x-ray signatures, then it would not take long for Oakshott industries and the Nakatani Corporation to have a prototype system ready for testing in the laboratory.

4 Hooray for misogyny

Despite being busy with the Women's Business Initiative, Eva finished her joint paper with Robyn Bradford on the fate of female graduates in astrophysical engineering.

Called Something to push against: the benefits of raising standards for women scientists, she examined how women fared in the overwhelmingly male-dominated subject of astrophysical engineering. It was a follow-up study to explain the counter-intuitive result that she and Robyn had previously found with regard to Hendrik Jakovs, who was famous for discouraging women students with unnecessarily tough entrance exams and a heavily maths-based and large work-load.

The new study confirmed that Hendrik had the best success rate in the Anglosphere for female graduates. More of his students went on to make successful careers as astrophysical engineers and he had the lowest drop-out rate for female students.

Danielle believed that Hendrik's secret was that high standards weeded out weaker candidates, leaving only the best. To demand lower standards for women (as Danielle said feminists did) was counter-productive if one truly cared about women and wanted them to do their best.

Eva and Robyn discovered instead that Hendrik's real secret was that the rumours of his misogyny (while completely true) put off those female students who were already inclined to give up at the first obstacle; whereas the most strongly-motivated students (of either sex) were already accomplished in overcoming unfair obstacles. Accomplished female students knew how to shrug off the opinions of a prejudiced man.

When they got to the institute, therefore, and discovered that Hendrik was always scrupulously fair and scrupulously polite to female students, despite not liking women, they flourished. All anyone needed to do to get on in the astrophysics school was to read copiously around the subject, turn in more work than in any other college in the Anglosphere, pass their exams and remember to take a jumper to lectures because Hendrik liked the air-conditioning blasting, even in winter.

With Danielle and Rosa to do his pastoral duties, Hendrik's attitude toward women was irrelevant to his department's ability to get the best out of them; as he also got the best out of his male students.

Eva and Robyn could find no evidence of unequal treatment, nor any ex-students of Professor Jakovs who gave him a bad report. Rather, the main source of the professor's bad reputation was rumours on the Student Web: rumours the professor encouraged by refusing to respond to questions from reporters.

The argument of the paper, therefore, was that a little personal prejudice was not the same as sexual discrimination. Competent women were able to ignore it. Whereas, pandering to weaker students by giving them extra time in exams or replacing objective tests with subjective tests in the laudable goal of increasing the female intake actually harmed the prospects of all female students, diminishing the value of their degrees.

There was no endorsement of misogyny, and certainly no justification of it, but Eva and Robyn's paper argued for a more subtle reading of how misogyny affects women. Some of the time, some women do better when they have something to push against, even if it's only a rumour of anti-female prejudice.

Danielle called it the 'Hooray for misogyny' paper until Eva asked her not to, in case it got back to her colleagues, who might misunderstand.

"That's fair," Danielle said, smiling at Eva: "my joke might be taken seriously by the most humourless bunch of women in the academic world."

"Danielle, please?" Eva asked, wagging her head.

Robyn flew back to Samothea and Eva returned to Earth to publish the paper and debate it in the academic journals. It was now that Eva, whose movement had for so long condemned a non-existent patriarchy, discovered that there really was a matriarchy, one with sharp claws. The feminist dogma was firm: the political sisterhood forbade compromise or any admission of error.

When Eva tried to publish the paper, its content was spread through the women's movement and mercilessly denounced as an act of betrayal by a turncoat. It was one thing for misogynistic men to criticise inconsistent feminist demands in regard to special privileges and sexual quotas, but for one of the galaxy's top feminist academics to do so was unforgivable. It undermined the whole enterprise.

The women's movement put pressure on academic publications to suppress the paper, which was duly rejected by every Women's Studies journal and by the four sociology journals that Eva sent it to.

Although it was not yet published, the paper was denounced on the Women's Web as revisionist and misogynistic. Some yahoos even demanded that Eva's invitation to speak at the annual conference on 'Women in Science' be revoked. This was a conference that Eva herself had founded, where she hoped to present the paper.

Eva ignored such demands as the mad outpouring of the cropped-hair veggie burger fringe of the women's movement: a fringe she had always dismissed to Danielle as noisy but unrepresentative.

Now she learned differently. Many friends, colleagues and supporters contacted Eva to ask if she had really written a paper defending sexual inequality. Was she going to use her platform at the 'Women in Science' conference to denounce feminism and officially break from the women's movement?

Eva laughed at the absurdity of the gossip and sent her friends copies of the paper so they could read it for themselves. Meanwhile, she told Robyn to remove her name from the published version, saying:

"I don't want your career mixed up with a controversy when there's no need for it."

"Bugger that!" said Robyn, a woman of robust sentiments.

"Please, Robyn? It's my movement and my fight. You can be lead author on the follow-up paper."

Eva had the paper published under her sole name in a philosophy of science journal, which welcomed the controversy as good publicity.

With the paper in the public domain, Eva thought that the academic debate would be cool and rational, assessing the data she and Robyn had collected and analysing their interpretations. At the height of the controversy, to set the record straight, she agreed to an interview on a prime-time popular discussion program.

Eva had high hopes for her videocast interview with a reporter who had made a name for herself by interviewing many famous feminists, but it did not work out as expected.

Kathlin Nieuwoman was a pretty blonde doll who spent more time getting her hair curled and her lips glossed than in reading Eva's paper. Her interviewing style was a mixture of militant ignorance and deliberate misunderstanding.

After outlining the controversy without mentioning the content of the paper, nor discussing whether the controversy was genuine or manufactured, Kathlin began aggressively by saying:

"So, Doctor Welwyn, why do you say that women should not complain about discrimination?"

Eva answered patiently at first, thinking that Kathlin was playing devil's advocate.

"I don't say that. In fact, I believe women don't complain enough about discrimination. My paper discusses a small percentage of women who are high-achievers in a male-dominated science, who seem to thrive in that environment. I want more women in such high-achieving groups. A counter-intuitive result is that one of the barriers to such an ambition is policies to increase female participation, whereas the best success comes from increasing admission standards and making tougher exams."

"You're saying that exams for women should be harder than exams for men?"

"No I'm not," Eva said, somewhat less patiently. "My paper shows that, in the case we examined, having higher standards than average for both men and women helps exceptional women. By contrast, lower standards for everyone will disadvantage exceptional women but not do much harm to exceptional men."

"So you're saying that only a few female geniuses can compete even with average men?"

Eva realised that Kathlin had not read the paper but had picked out the first lines of all the misinformed denunciations published on the Woman's Web. Kathlin repackaged them as outraged accusations to throw at Eva without listening to her answers. Even so, Eva remained good-humoured and made the same points even more carefully.

"That's a complete reversal of what my paper says, Ms Nieuwoman. My results support the general principle that to lower standards for average candidates of any group - ethnic, religious or sexual - makes it harder for the top candidates of that group to be taken seriously. Raise standards for any group that prizes education, however, and that group will thrive. Lower educational standards for everyone, and those groups that already underperform the average will underperform the average even more."

Kathlin was not listening. As she went on with her aggressive questions, Eva wondered how her argument could be so distorted and misunderstood. She began to think about it, making her answers on autopilot: "No, I didn't say that," "No, I'm saying the exact opposite," "Have you actually read my paper?" "You didn't read my paper, did you?"

As she thought about how Kathlin was treating her, Eva could not help being reminded of an argument she had with Danielle, who replied to Eva's feminist complaint that men do not listen to women because they do not take them seriously by saying that men were very lucky to have a brain filter that could exclude most of the everyday drivel they encountered. "When was the last time you heard a woman say anything worth listening to?" Danielle had asked.

It was typical of Danielle to make a sensible point in the most outrageous way possible. Eva smiled to herself, imagining how Danielle would have answered Kathlin's accusations, as the interviewer, in her militantly aggrieved voice, continued to misquote, misunderstand and misrepresent the paper.

It was a bad idea to think of Danielle at that moment because it made Eva recall how much fun Danielle got out of being a woman, with her teases, her jokes and her girlish mayhem; whereas Eva's career seemed to suck all the joy out of life. Although Eva denied Danielle's belief that it was feminism that turned a woman's life into an angry struggle, it certainly felt like that at the moment, with her ideas distorted by someone who believed her moral judgment was the same thing as a logical argument.

"Good God!" Eva thought to herself in a devastating moment of self-honesty that sent shockwaves through her soul. "Is this what it's like for a man who tries to reason with a radical feminist?"

"But you're saying that, because 95% of astrophysical engineers are men, women shouldn't expect to be treated equally."

Kathlin had repeated the question because Eva had not answered her. It brought Eva back to reality.

"Where do I say that? My paper doesn't endorse inequality."

"But you think that all women in top positions are mere tokens to appease the feminist lobby."

"No, I don't. My paper says the opposite. I show that women engineers who get to the top of their profession do so on merit and do not need special treatment. In fact, quotas have a negative effect, allowing prejudiced people to say that some women have been promoted beyond their abilities."

"You're saying that a woman who makes it to the top of her profession didn't get there on merit?"

Kathlin's voice was pure outrage: "Can you name any such woman?"

"Yes, you for starters, you curly haired bimbo!"

The interview ended there, along with Eva's career as a leader of the feminist movement. On Celetaris, Danielle played the clip over and over, creasing up with laughter, especially at the look on Kathlin's face, as if she had been slapped with a wet haddock.

"I disgraced myself when you said that," Danielle said to Eva on a videocall a few days later. "I fell on the floor and laughed so hard that Roger had to come in and lift me back up."

"It's not funny, Danielle. I shouldn't have insulted the stupid woman."

"I admit that being rude to her can't do you any good but it was completely worth it."

"Not it wasn't. I've lost all my standing in the feminist movement ..."

"Good job, too ..."

"But it affects the Samothea Project. What about the Women's Business Initiative?"

In her enjoyment at watching the clip, Danielle had not thought of that. She went silent.

"I'm sorry, Danielle," Eva said. "I've mucked everything up. Without the Women's Business Initiative, our purchase of Samothea is in jeopardy. I don't know what to say."

Danielle was thinking deeply. Not only was there less money for the project, without pressure from the Women's Business Initiative, Outworld Ventures might ask a silly price for the planet or even reject the approach to buy the planet. It was a major difficulty and it put all their plans for the future of the planet in jeopardy.

"I'm a liability to the Samothea Project," Eva said.

Danielle made up her mind.

"No you're not," she said. "Do you still believe in doing the best you can for the Women of Samothea?"

"Of course I do."

"And you think a woman-only planet is the proper way to achieve that?"

"Yes."

"Then come to Celetaris and fight for what you believe in. ... Feminism is junk but you, Ezra and I have the same goal. We want every woman to be able to achieve the most she can with her life and talent: we want women to give their souls every possible expression. That's worth fighting for, isn't it?"

"It is."

Eva resigned from Caltech and packed up her office. She ignored the hate-mail elicited by the only few seconds of her interview that were ever reported on. She gave up begging her feminist colleagues to just read her damn paper and make up their own minds. She had no regret that her invitation to the Women in Science conference was cancelled, though it was the signal that she had been expelled from the sisterhood.

Instead Eva said goodbye to her family and her true friends and went to join the Samothea Project on Celetaris, where she was kindly welcomed by everyone. The men of the Project were especially understanding, which she appreciated and, for the first time since she became an feminist, did not resent.

Eva thought Ezra would be angry with her because he had given up his scheme to buy the planet Samothea to support her plan, only to see it collapse spectacularly because she could not keep her temper. Now all three of their plans might be at risk and the position of the women of Samothea was as precarious as ever.

Yet Ezra was the most considerate of them all, never blaming Eva, never doubting that her scheme was still the one to pursue. It was a lesson in male chivalry that Eva took to heart. It did more to influence her thinking than the whole disastrous story of her academic paper.