When I was young I had two older sisters and since I was the youngest in my family my mom took me around with her all the time. I was forever with her when she was having coffee in the middle of the afternoon with her three sisters. And they would talk about men. I absorbed a lot of that.
It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
