``The ultimate model of an activity that is at once unquestionably
intelligent and intellectual and that also seems to divide the sexes
is mathematics.  The maleness of a mathematics department is
explained either in terms of an allegedly greater male ability
in mathematics, or in terms of sex-role steereotyping. You know
the sort of things: ``As boys learn their sex roles, they identify
with the notion that they should excel in mathematics.  Girls ...
learn that mathematical ability is unfeminine,'' in the words
of Diane F. Halpern's _Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities_.
(But the logician Ruth Marcus reports that there are feminists
who argue that logic and physics are ``phallic,'' and that therefore
women who go into those fields sell out, or buy out, or something.
They used to be unfeminine, now they are unfeminist.)

``MIT mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota said to me one time that he
thought both positions were ridiculous.  ``There are plenty of
women with all the talent for math anyone could want,'' he said.
``But women leave math when they discover that you can't do it
without sustaining world-class illusions, such as the belief
that grips one while one is working on a very difficult paper
on a very obscure corner of a difficult subject, that here,
at last, everything will be settled once and for all.''  Interestingly,
he doesn't talk about the desire to excel, at math or anything
else, as the point - he doesn't mention competitiveness.

``..Rota identifies the illusions necessary to mathematics with the
faith that sustains a friend of his who is a priest.  Women refuse
such illusions or, say, don't care about them, are able to remain
relatively calm in the face of the fact that there are issues
that won't be settled once and for all, such as the exact nature
of the universe or exactly what Daffodil means when she cocks
her head and sticks her tongue out at you.  I do not mean that
women working with animals are satisfied with oversimplified
or partial theories of animals, only that their minds are complex
enough to sustain their contact with what they do know while
noting also where their knowledge of Daffodil leaves off''

``...I keep thinking: Men are afraid of horses.  They are afraid of
horses because neither their professional integrity nor logic will
take them to a horse, and because they do not know how to turn,
deflect, a horse's fear or rage.  If Dobbin says, ``You'd better
get off right now, because I am going to kill you, wrangler!''
you don't of course ignore this, but it is possible to say,
``Oh, I don't think you really want to do that.  Why don't we
try something else?''  (Just as Moses' wife said to Yahweh
when Yahweh was intent on killing Moses.)  As it happens, a talented
young male rider can be as formidably equipped with equestrian
tact as anyone, but in the general run of things in the middle and
upper classes in this country, it is the young women who are
more likely than the young men to come up with a tactful rather
than frightened response, and when they become foolish about
this later - silliness is a feminine failing - they will say
that they knew the horse had good intentions all along.

``For centuries, unable to prove Dobbin's good intentions,
men have instead proven their courage on horseback...''

Vicki Hearne, _Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog_ Harper-Collins,
NY, 1991, p. 221, 219