The
Gender
War II
Tessa Ransford

The only surprise in the public treatment of and media interest in Gail Trimble is that there is surprise. Mind and body are integrated in persons. They cannot be separated. But our ingrained dualism over the centuries has made us continually want to think of them separately, never more so than in a woman who displays mental powers without the cover of comedy, denial, acting, performing, or the pretext of teaching or serving others in their causes, research or work. If there are exceptions – perhaps J K Rowling is one, although there have been sneering remarks about the literary quality of her books and she is always praised most for having tempted so many children to read rather than for her sheer mental brilliance – they only help to prove the rule.
     We had a well-educated, intellectual, beautiful young Queen in Scotland once. Medusa was a mythical archetype of the wise priestess with a head full of snakes, symbols of healing and wisdom in the ancient world. She turned men to stone – in Greek 'petrified' them. The 'hero' Perseus used a mirror to cut off her head. Dido was a powerful queen and founder of Carthage, who is said to have died for love after being deserted by Aeneas, who did his duty in founding Rome (which later destroyed Carthage utterly); Eve had an inquiring mind. Over the centuries mentally powerful women have often been expected to choose between fulfilling themselves mentally or physically but not both. (If a woman wants a husband and family she had better learn to cook.)
     Adjectives such as argumentative, assertive, elitist, controversial, persistent, tenacious, interfering, difficult, fierce, intimidating, troublesome, witch, virago are regularly applied to a woman who does not seek to conceal her mental ability while also fulfilling her physical life as a woman. Other women are often the most vicious in attack.
     What must Gail Trimble be feeling/thinking? All her life hitherto she has been taught and has assumed that learning, studying, reading, thinking are desirable. They are. A woman usually employs her mental abilities with desire. It is males who have the greater capacity for separating mind from body and have considered women weaker for not being so successful at doing this! If an intelligent woman wants to be fulfilled as a person in society in an integrated way she will be in danger of being beheaded, really or metaphorically or with a thousand cuts. This is what has been attempted in the case of Gail Trimble.