"Ability is sexless"
About this Quote
Ability is sexless asserts a simple but radical truth: talent and intelligence do not belong to men or to women, but to persons. It severs the link society tends to forge between capacity and gender, replacing it with an ethic of merit. By stripping ability of sex, the aphorism challenges the reflex that assigns roles, work, and authority on the basis of biology rather than demonstrated competence.
John Henry Newman voiced this conviction within a Victorian world that fenced off education, professions, and public influence along gendered lines. A leading figure of the Oxford Movement, later a Catholic cardinal and an architect of liberal education in The Idea of a University, he prized the cultivation of the mind as a universal human good. While he did not campaign for modern forms of gender equality and accepted many of his age’s conventions, he pressed a principle that undercut the intellectual hierarchy on which those conventions rested. If reason, judgment, and creativity arise from the soul rather than the body, then no sex can claim a monopoly on excellence.
The line also registers a moral imperative. If ability is sexless, then institutions must be, too, in their criteria for admission, advancement, and recognition. The value of a teacher, scientist, or leader should be weighed by achievement, not by the expectations attached to a category. Newman’s own educational projects often operated within separate spheres, yet his stress on the dignity of the mind provides a warrant for widening the gates.
The phrase remains sharp because it is both descriptive and prescriptive. It names a reality about human capacity, and it presses society to conform its practices to that reality. The test of believing it lies in dismantling the subtle ways gender still mediates opportunity, so that when we speak of skill, judgment, and genius, we speak of them as Newman did: belonging to no sex, and therefore open to all.
John Henry Newman voiced this conviction within a Victorian world that fenced off education, professions, and public influence along gendered lines. A leading figure of the Oxford Movement, later a Catholic cardinal and an architect of liberal education in The Idea of a University, he prized the cultivation of the mind as a universal human good. While he did not campaign for modern forms of gender equality and accepted many of his age’s conventions, he pressed a principle that undercut the intellectual hierarchy on which those conventions rested. If reason, judgment, and creativity arise from the soul rather than the body, then no sex can claim a monopoly on excellence.
The line also registers a moral imperative. If ability is sexless, then institutions must be, too, in their criteria for admission, advancement, and recognition. The value of a teacher, scientist, or leader should be weighed by achievement, not by the expectations attached to a category. Newman’s own educational projects often operated within separate spheres, yet his stress on the dignity of the mind provides a warrant for widening the gates.
The phrase remains sharp because it is both descriptive and prescriptive. It names a reality about human capacity, and it presses society to conform its practices to that reality. The test of believing it lies in dismantling the subtle ways gender still mediates opportunity, so that when we speak of skill, judgment, and genius, we speak of them as Newman did: belonging to no sex, and therefore open to all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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