Emil Kirkegaard presents his speculative model of sex differences among people with extreme beliefs, which explains why female intellectuals are crazy:
Women are more centrist in their personality and thus their beliefs than men. They hold views that are more common, or statistically speaking, their standard deviation is smaller for beliefs and their strength of belief. This is just a special case of the nearly universal greater male variance finding.
To move a person to adopt views that are very unlike those held by the rest of society, some kind of psychological push-factor is needed. The main push-factors are intelligence, open-mindedness, or craziness (psychopathology, P factor).
Thus, statistically speaking, women with extreme views need a stronger push factor than men do to attain those views.
Thus, statistically speaking, women with extreme views will average higher open-mindedness, intelligence, and craziness.
Easier answer – female intellectuals are crazy because most women are crazy, and because most “intellectuals” are crazy, unintelligent leftists.
Two of the sanest, most down-to-earth women I know are not at all intellectual. And yet their views on politics, sexuality, and gender roles would be considered extremely right wing and retrograde by most of their female American contemporaries.
That’s because they grew up in developing countries (one in Europe, one in Asia) where those views are mainstream.
In the before time it was accepted that mental work caused mental strain.
But before and before, and ever so long before any such contrivances were used, Lao Tzu wrote: «Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know».
So when in “Intellectuals and Socialism” by Friedrich A. Hayek we read:
(raising a hand and jumping on the seat) Ooh! Teacher! I know this one! There is a better name for «secondhand dealer in ideas», a very old one. 6 letters, starts with P and ends with T.