‘“Frank, I have a mind and a brain!”
spoke Major Houlihan . . . and not
knowing what to do with it, Major
Burns, her object of affection, offers,
“Here, let me kiss it for you.”’
— M*A*S*H
An intelligent woman is a direct affront to the male ego. If beauty was assumed to be a woman’s domain, intelligence came to be a man’s forte. Beauty in men was valued only as much as intelligence in women was acknowledged. Today, well into the twenty-first century, women continue to be judged by their appearance first and intelligence later. A woman’s intelligence is overlooked if she is not presentable enough. She is mocked on the grounds of her appearance, age, and the inability to produce children or the choice to not. And if all else fails, character assassination is the easiest way to distract the world from her point of view.
If a beautiful woman has an opinion, men find it amusing and often entertain it as if they were doing her a favour by indulging or humouring her. Women in positions of authority are subjected to the male gaze and sexual innuendos and proposals all the time despite the sexual harassment cells and laws in place. Men have never been comfortable with a woman’s sense of reasoning and intelligence!
In the epic Ramayana, when Rama decides to abandon his wife Sita because of her tainted reputation, he asks his brother Lakshmana to take Sita to the forest and leave her there. Lakshmana is shocked at Rama’s decision to abandon Sita because he knows that the murmurs surrounding her reputation are unfounded. When he reminds Rama that Sita deserves better than to be abandoned so unceremoniously, Rama says, ‘She will ask complex questions that I will not be able to answer.’12
Likewise, in the Mahabharata, it is Draupadi who stumps the entire royal assembly when she questions dharma which grants her husband, Yudhishthira, the right to stake her.13
King Janaka initiated several Upanishad sessions where he invited rishis (seers) from all over the land to speculate on the nature of truth. He was inspired to invite women for the Upanishad sessions, too, after he had met Sulabha, a woman who had told him that the very land that they lived in was called Videha, which means beyond the body. She also told him that, ‘We both see the world differently, not because we have different bodies, but because we have different minds.’14 And as the name and wisdom of Videha suggested, women, too, were a part of this congregation.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad tells the story of a woman named Gargi who walked into Janaka’s court and started asking Sage Yajnavalkya various questions. ‘Yagnavalkya asked Gargi not to ask too many questions on that which is unfathomable lest her head fall off.’15 In the present-day scenario, too, a man’s fragile ego makes it difficult for him to take orders from his female boss since women are seen to be subordinate to men. They are intimidated by intelligent women, and the easiest way for them to feel comfortable and superior is by attacking a woman’s physical appearance or character. The Western society makes no bones about the fact that men prefer blondes, aka bimbos.
Actress Zsa Zsa Garbo, who was married nine times, concluded her vast experience with men, ‘The only place men want depth in a woman is in her décolletage.’