The Partial Observer by Gayane Torosyan

No Exception

It began with a curious declaration, delivered by my then-young partner—a man of Soviet upbringing who had once studied medicine, measured skulls and embraced with unshaken resolve the notion that men’s brains are categorically larger than women’s. “But you,” he confessed, as though unveiling a revelation, “you are an exception.” His assertion was tinged not with condescension, but with the memory of his intrigue at my teenage musings on infinity. These musings, grounded in mathematics and that restless search for eternal truth, had, champagne glass in hand, taken the curious form of a white sphere—a shape at once convex and blending all colors into one.

This was not the last time I would hear the term “exception” appended to me, nor the most disquieting. A friend, herself Russian, once mirrored my outrage at the treatment of ethnic minorities, including Armenians like me, in our former homeland, where darker skin tones attracted epithets as crude as they were degrading. “It’s a relic of something vile,” she’d said, invoking Hitler in her rebuke of such prejudice. But then, with an earnestness that bordered on baffling, she added, “But you, with your blue eyes, are different—a rare exception.” In that instant, the term was transformed from flattery to indictment. To be spared the insult was, itself, a diminishment—a reminder that privilege, even when kindly intended, was often conferred selectively, uneasily.

The refrain arises again when I speak of my children. They’ve turned out well—stable, successful, their lives buoyed by careers and families of their own. Friends say, “Of course, you’ve done so much for them,” as though parental devotion were an anomaly. While I appreciate the sentiment, I reject the underlying premise: that their flourishing is a singular miracle of effort, and not a function of a society where children—at least sometimes—grow into contributors of value.

It was precisely this notion of value that startled me while following a recent BBC interview with a British official. The subject was uterus transplantation, a procedure that, though nascent, had produced undeniable results: Sweden’s Vincent, now 11, and London’s Amy, newborn daughter of Grace Davidson and her husband, Angus. To the question of feasibility—of cost and societal benefit—the official gave an answer both resolute and pragmatic. Experimental though it may be, the £30,000 procedure, supported by charity and the dedication of medical professionals donating their labor, was, to her mind, justified. Amy, she argued, would bring economic value to her nation—a contribution significant enough to warrant future public investment.

This utilitarian calculus gave me pause, for it spoke to a deeper truth about how societies measure worth. If one infant’s economic potential legitimizes innovative procedures, what of immigrants—men and women raised elsewhere, often schooled to an exacting degree, who arrive ready to channel their drive into the freedoms and opportunities afforded by their adopted homes?

While the miracle of childbirth comes with a decade or two of existential preparation before any contribution to the tax base, immigration bypasses this waiting period entirely. New arrivals, fluent in spreadsheets and the language of quarterly earnings, begin filing their returns with an immediacy that borders on the virtuous. Take, for example, a duo of foreign-born professionals, like the aforementioned former medical student, whose fiscal footprint rivals that of academia’s tenured elite—paying taxes akin to a full professor’s salary without the safety net of urban myths that wrongly claim sanctuary in unpaid medical bills. If anything, they shoulder the arithmetic of adulthood with a precision that exposes the clichés for what they are—lazy tropes, unfit for their high-functioning realities.

What they don’t carry in their luggage—or their DNA—is an inheritance. No family estate, no forgotten trust fund, no quaint farmhouse awaiting its heir. The generations before them never had the luxury of planting roots, let alone tending to a financial orchard. Instead, those parents and grandparents weathered the barren landscapes of economic despair—the kind that forces the young to trade hometowns for foreign horizons, chasing something resembling possibility. For these newcomers, wealth is not passed down; it is built from scratch, brick by brick, paycheck by paycheck.

For immigrants, filial responsibility is not a choice but a cultural given. Their parents, often weathered by years of sacrifice, become their dependents, not in theory but in practice. The medical bills are not theoretical either; they are ever-present, as real as the ink on the invoices they pay. This is not an anomaly or a rare exception—it’s the rhythm of their lives, the quiet standard that shapes their days and their budgets.

More importantly, to dismiss the immigrants’ contributions to society would be to deny the very essence of what makes nations like America resilient. It is this “Mother of Exiles” that Emma Lazarus immortalized on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, this openness enshrined by the 14th Amendment. Together, they proclaim a truth both enduring and urgent: that greatness lies not in exclusivity, but in the multiplicity of stories—of hungers and hopes—that converge on a single dream.

As a former mathematician, I will assert one thing: exceptions do not dismantle rules; they illuminate them. Women are brilliant, diversity enriches, children matter, and immigrants are not “other.” They are us.

Dr. Gayane Torosyan is a professor of media studies in the Department of Communication and Media at SUNY Oneonta.