Has Feminism Changed What it Means to be a Smart Woman?

This post has been brewing for a while, so no, it was not really triggered by anything specific.

I have written several iconoclastic posts about feminism; mostly with the thrust that "society" thrived more when there were a certain number of (middle class) women at home.  I never thought that a woman's place was in the home, simply that if no one is at home for most of the day, there is no sense of community. The elderly are neglected, no one knows that a neighbor has recently suffered a loss and would like some company, and if you're home sick you're on your own (literally; you're probably the only human being in your building except the super from 7 am to 7 pm).

Now my point is something else entirely.  That women who used to be considered "smart" (ahem, like Yours Truly) no longer are.

I suppose I was raised like a "Jane Austen girl" (as were most of my peers), except without the exhortation to marry a man with money.  I guess that was just assumed.  We were supposed to get a liberal arts bachelors degree (period) from a good college with the unspoken assumption that we would marry a decently paid professional.  Unlike girls slightly down the social scale, the goal was not to be sexy or adept at baking or sewing, but to be interesting to such a professional.

Of course, ironically, I never married a man at all, the woman I became involved with had an "allergy" to work, and I didn't even go to college until I was in my 30s.

But the training stuck.  By "training" I mean the following.  I took ballet lessons. I took piano lessons.  I sang a little.  I drew a little.  By the time I was 16 I had read all of Shakespeare and most of the classics.  I knew a little French. I had been to countless museums and could tell a Monet from a Manet.  I even knew a little about the latest developments in medicine and what was going on in the news.  I  had a large vocabulary and could engage in witty banter.  But that was it.

As the years went by, people thought I was "smart" because I peppered my conversation with quotes from Shakespeare and went to museums in my spare time instead of to sporting events. I knew it was wrong to say "between you and I".  I could describe almost any experience I  or a friend had had in a way that sounded intelligent, particularly when I waxed analytical about it and made connections from it to the larger world.  I could hold my own in a discussion that skirted the edge of disagreement.

One day (I don't know when this happened; maybe when I stopped working and got active on the Internet) I suddenly realized that to be "smart" now meant that to disagree with someone you had to cite sources and provide data models.  That conversation was less a meeting of two anecdotal yet astutely crafted memoirs and more like duelling textbooks.  That you had to know as much about Senate rules as a senator, as much about climate change as a scientist, as much about the physiology of singing as an anatomist.  I am totally at sea in this world, let me tell you.  I am not "competitive".  And I am certainly no one's idea of "smart", no matter how many "Great Books" I've read.

I'm wondering.  Is this a female thing?  Did feminism make women smart in ways that men were always smart? Or did social norms change?  Or is it all the sources one can link to on the Internet?  (I heard lots of erudite talk at my dinner table and I never remember anyone pulling out a reference book.)

Anyhow, I'm bowing out.  I'm not smart.  Just cultured.

Let me read, sing, and look at art, and leave the data slugfest to other people.