> It is noted that women have this facility called 'intuition' that
> allows them to guess the correct answer in an exam. Since the
> duties of a Mandarin require a great deal of knowelege and
> enlightened thought rather than mere guesswork, it has been sadly
> necessary to adjust the examination rankings of women downwards to
> arrive at a true picture of their actual ability.
That indeed is true, my dear Peter, (she says with a sly smile and saccharine dripping from her lips..,) but there is one thing that the examiners have failed to take into account -
The many women who do sit the examinations are well aware of the downgradings of their marks with respect to those of lesser males. Indeed, they sit the examination in large numbers purely because of this downgrading.
Let me explain further, should the above seem somewhat obscure and strange to your poor hormonally challenged, X-chromosomally denied mind.
The formulae applied to the test results obtained by the women who sit for the Mandarin examinations are fiendishly convoluted, and necessarily so in order to fairly compensate for the irregularities of the abilities of the women, their varying levels of intuitive sense, and the usual problems of "that time of the month" affecting the results of a quarter portion of those who undertake the examinations. In fact it can take as long as one month to apply this corrective formula to a single paper, and the clacking of abaci is heard long into the small hours of the night in the weeks that follow the examinations.
All of the male candidates that do particularly well in their examinations, but not well enough to reach Mandarin status, are employed immediately on leaving their examinations in the position of "Grader", and spend the rest of their lives engaged in the task of downgrading the results of the women candidates.
This successfully reduces the numbers of intelligent males involved in the running of the Mandarin's court, and also in the number available for other jobs in the world outside the court, and indeed the average male you will meet and deal with in the streets has an intelligence far below the true average.
The women, on the other hand, are free to involve themselves in all areas of commerce, intellectual research, and craft, and their fame is slowly spreading farther every year.
Indeed, in the past year's examinations fully 90% of the candidates were women, out of a record field of candidates so numerous that they overflowed out of the traditional examination halls and it was necessary to conduct many of the examinations under hastily erected marquees in the great open spaces within the palace. It is anticipated that every one of the male candidates will be fully employed grading the marks of the women from this single examination for at least three years to come.... And then there is next year's examinations...
Yours in Intellectualism,
Marion
avimort_at_aurora.cc.monash.edu.au
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