Horror stories for feminists
If you weren't around for the 1986 claim that an unmarried forty-year-old woman had a greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married (which turned out not to be true), here's a new horror story. According to a recent column (soon to be a book) by feminist Maureen Dowd:
"A 2005 report by researchers at four British universities indicated that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to marry, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise."
This factoid (which I predict will also be shown untrue) would have been terrifying to me before I went to college, where I found that smart women are very much in demand. (Actually, I'd already found that out at high school math club.) Among heterosexuals I've known in CS, many brilliant men have been unsuccessful at finding partners, while almost all of the women who want to be appear happiliy partnered.
[Note: An earlier version of this post listed some of my current and past employers (MIT, Microsoft, and Google) as places where heterosexual women were likelier than men to be partnered. I realized, though, that I can't back up that claim. It could just be that my female co-workers are more likely than male ones to share information with me about their romantic status, and I falsely assume that men who don't say anything are unpartnered and women who don't say anything are satisfied with their relationship status. I should stick to quantitative science.]
Nevertheless, after reading the above article, I felt grateful to be married, which my high IQ should supposedly preclude (although I consider IQ tests bogus). If it's on the Internet, it must be true.
Men, Women & Intelligence
As a pretty intelligent woman, I do find that men find me threatening, indeed I have had requests from one boyfriend to 'turn my brain off' and 'stop thinking'. He also accused me of using my intellect as a weopon. What crushed me most about these comments was that he was an intelligent man! My feeling on the matter was that just because he was threatened by my intelligence, did not mean I was using my intelligence combatitively! It was down to his perception and problems, not mine.
I think the comments made by Anonymous and by Ellen - that men who believe in themselves are not threatened by it are probably true and indeed we could remove the gender bias from it an just say 'people'. Women can also be threatened by women they perceive to be better in some way.
How do we get over it? By getting over ourselves:
No-one is perfect and no-one expects them to be, so why do we constantly compare and compete? Why not just wonder at those 'better' than us, wonder if there is anything we can do to be like that (and if we want to be anyway?) Then wander off live our own lives to the full.
here's a theory
I'm pulling it out of thin air, but it could account for everybody's varying perceptions.
Here's a theory
I'm pulling it out of thin air, but it could account for everybody's varying perceptions.
Clever
I think you're probably right. Clever hypothesis!
smart
what? you expect to be able to have a threatening intellect and get men? that would require more men to be confident and secure with themselves. perhaps you should have a chat with the mother's and father's of young male children. just a thought.
My experience has been the
My experience has been the men worth having don't find my intelligence threatening; they find it attractive. I'm only interested in men who, as you put it, are "confident and secure with themselves". Perhaps you're suggesting, directly or indirectly, that such men are rare. If so, that's a pity.
smart women know better
I didn't read the article because I was required to register so I hope I didn't miss the causal evidence - which seemed lacking. Seems to me this article states that a study shows more men with higher IQ are married and more women with higher IQ are not. Perhaps IQ is just a better measure of intelligence in women than in men :)
Yay for anecdotal evidence!
I read that column with increasing bile. Dowd has cited that factoid before in other columns; presented here as it was with other, similar studies, it (a) made my blood boil; and (b) made a reluctanct part of me wonder if it were true. Thanks for sharing your anecdotal evidence that it's not!
- Nori
I see an opportunity here
Maybe you need to work with Ms. Dowd to pair up all the educated and successful unattached women she knows with the nice male geeks in your world.
Andrea (happily married to a geek)
I think it has a lot to do with age, too
Despite your math club experiences, Ellen... in high school and earlier, I observed that being smart (or, more specifically, being perceived as smart) was generally a social disadvantage for both boys and girls. There were certainly factors that offset this "curse" (athletic abilities, very good looks, etc.), but on the whole, young brainiacs tended to (and I'd guess, still do) find their dating pools much more limited than the pools of less-brainy folks.
I think all of this generally begins to change in college. From my experience, at least, by the time I got to grad school, the "You're smart!" was certainly more of a compliment than a snide remark.
Back in high school, I sensed that quite a lot of guys were intimidated by smart girls, whereas from grad school and onwards, most guys I've known considered the "brainy women," the PhDs, to be quite attractive catches (taking into account other factors as well, of course).
And then there are the geographic differences. Obviously it'd be unwise to equate experiences and observations in the Bay Area with reality in the rest of the world ;).
I agree with you that being
I agree with you that being smart didn't make high school girls popular overall. In nerdy subcultures in which girls were in the minority, like math club, it was easier for girls to find boyfriends than vice versa.
It's true that only a minority of men want smart women, but that minority has been more than enough to keep me and my smart female friends busy.
There's a saying that most women would rather be beautiful than smart because most men can see better than they can think.
No
> Does it mean that whenever there is an unpartnered women at Google,
> she always has a lot of attention from male co-employees? ;)
I haven't seen that happen. Our (then) almost entirely male group had two female summer interns. I made clear to my male co-workers that these women were not to be hit on, but they said they already knew such behavior was not appropriate.
Does it mean that whenever
Does it mean that whenever there is an unpartnered women at Google, she always has a lot of attention from male co-employees? ;)