A person can be described as a set of attributes. A person's mental abilities, physical strengths, artistic talents, and social skills are all different attributes of a person. People being somewhat complex, have many characteristics. The number may be nearly infinite.
People do not "belong" to groups. Certain collections of people may share one or more attributes but an individual is always an individual. One thing you must remember about attributes is they are largely independent of each another. Just because a person possesses one attribute (for example, eye color) it does not imply that any other attribute is necessarily affected by it.
It is also important to realize that attributes exist along a continuum of possible values. Most attributes range from very weak to very strong or from one extreme value to the opposite extreme value with a neutral value in between.
We tend to forget this fact most often when considering issues of gender and race. Gender is an attribute and as such it exists along a continuum. Contrary to our social convention, gender is not a binary condition. It is an attribute of the individual that exists along a continuum ranging from strongly masculine to strongly feminine with a big neutral area in the middle.
In some of my earlier talks (most notably "War is Natural") I make a variety of sweeping generalizations regarding the roles of the sexes. These generalizations are needed to explain the average behavior of large collections of individuals. They do not apply to any single individual. We often overlook this and apply generalizations to individuals. This will almost always be inaccurate.
Let's consider the case of woman in the military. In recent years there has been much discussion of women in combat roles. Much of this discussion has centered around whether or not an individual possessing feminine attributes can be expected to perform as well as individuals with strong masculine attributes. The flaw in this approach to the problem is that it incorrectly assumes that possession of a particular gender attribute affects other, more relevant attributes such as physical strength and endurance. While it is probably true that most young men are stronger than most young women, some women are stronger than some men and some women meet the physical qualifications for combat. If an individual is qualified then what is the problem?
Race too, is an area where we overlook the facts of attributes and continuums. Once again we assume that an individual "belongs" to a particular race. Racial characteristics are a set of independent attributes that lie along their own continuums. There are tall orientals, light skinned Africans, and kinky haired Europeans.
I find it particularly outrageous that the government classifies everyone according to their "race". What race are you? Well, I was born in the middle portion of the North American continent near the Atlantic Ocean. That would make me a Native American, but a few generations ago some of my ancestors crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Europe. So I guess I'm a European-American. But we now know all human populations can trace their roots to the middle of Africa so that makes us all Africans. Which is it? And why would it matter?
Lastly there is intelligence. Again this is really a set of independent attributes relating to mental performance. Intelligence is not one mental attribute but many. I have known brilliant programmers that could not hold a social conversation. I have known people who could play beautiful music but could not balance their checkbooks and so on. Are these people intelligent? Yes they are. It is just that there are many separate mental performance attributes each independent and variable. The real test of intelligence is how well do you deal with the challenges of life. That is what your intelligence is for after all.