As the tides of history and gender change, it would be easy to assume that men — recently unseated as the dominant intellects and degree-havers in the U.S. — would adapt to a world where women are not only their equals, but often their intellectual superiors. After all, there's nothing like dating someone who makes you a little sharper. But more and more research reveals that though the thought of a smart woman is appealing to men, a real, live smart woman standing in front of them is actually a turnoff.It never ceases to amaze me that women find it so impossible to understand that men do not share their preferences with regards to the opposite sex. Women prefer to marry up in terms of intelligence, as they do with pretty much everything else from height and weight to income. So, it should be obvious that either a) men prefer to marry down, or b) every man who permits a woman to achieve her goal of marrying up is actually too stupid to realize he is marrying down, in which case perhaps she isn't marrying up after all.
It's not bad that men prefer to marry down in terms of intelligence. If they didn't, then women who achieved their preference of marrying up would be reliably marrying into a structurally unhappy marriage.
The French, at least, understand this. Let women be beautiful. Let men be brilliant. Vive la différence.
66 comments:
It's not their job to be smart. On the other hand, I appreciate, and tend to get along with, (usually older) women who are beautiful, witty, and clever, a predilection probably derived from years of attending cocktail parties and assorted soirées where suck talents are appreciated.
"suck talents" = such talents
@LBF -
Welll... either way works.
That said, I don't like "stupid" - but I suspect what we're seeing is a lot of self-declared "smart" women as opposed to actually smart women, who are combative about their intelligence, and because they can't do male dominance interaction for shit come across as highly combative and having a chip on their shoulder.
And also, aren't as smart as they think they are.
Guys don't want their home to be another competitive battlefield
I'm not sure how the equation works in my marriage -- I think that my wife is smarter than she believes she is, but she thinks that I am much smarter than her. I think that she is probably a few points behind me, but I might be underestimating myself per Dunning-Kruger.
" men — recently unseated as the dominant intellects and degree-havers in the U.S. "
Having a degree does not equal having a superior intellect, so fuck off.
So the article about smart women has a photo of a black chick reading a book. LMAO, that's exactly what I imagine when I think "smart woman". Next time use a photo of an Asian girl studying for her p-chem exam. But of course they couldn't resist the urge to include some laughable diversity propaganda.
"Men don't like me because I'm too smart for them."
Yeah, just keep telling yourself that babe.
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Whenever I meet a guy who says he prefers highly intelligent women he's either sucking up to his low-SMV girlfriend or wife, or rationalizing his lack of a partner.
"Oh I could be fucking hot sluts like you, but I prefer intelligent girls..." *goes home to wank off.*
Hey, sexual selection effects could explain the ~3 point average IQ difference between men and women, as well as the shorter tails on the female distribution.
My wife is maybe 10-15 points below me (I'm somewhere in the low- to mid-130s, and would estimate her to be around 120, give or take), and that feels like a pretty good gap. It means she's able to keep up with me when I'm speculating about one abstraction or another, and can often contribute useful insights, but isn't tempted to assert herself against me. I'm not sure how I'd cope with a woman of much lower intellect, with limited capacity for abstract thought. Based on my interactions with lower-IQ people elsewhere, I expect I'd find it very frustrating.
men — recently unseated as the dominant intellects and degree-havers in the U.S. "
Having a degree does not equal having a superior intellect, so fuck off.
Yup. This ditz confuses academic and professional AA for women with actual intelkectual performance and achievement. Then again, if we're honest with ourselves, can we really blame her? She, like women everywhere, has been shielded from both real competition and the consequences of her own ignorance and incompetence. What other viewpoint could she hold after living in a protected feminist bubble all her life in which the narrative has never been challenged by reality?
The misuse of the word "equals" is the real problem here. Women will be "equal" when they've built and designed the world as men did. Anything aside from that is make-believe equal. Women could earn 100 percent of the college degrees and there would still be no "equality" in the sense they're hoping for.
I think it's this fact, not "smart women," that bothers most men. It's ridiculous to have to pretend reality is something other than it really is. Claiming women are equal is denying what we see in front of our faces day-to-day. And I'll bet the writer of this piece doesn't even get that she's disseminated in completely on man-made technology in a building constructed by men.
Theodore Dalrymple: " “In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself...
Women prefer to marry up in terms of intelligence, as they do with pretty much everything else from height and weight to income. So, it should be obvious that either a) men prefer to marry down, or b) every man who permits a woman to achieve her goal of marrying up is actually too stupid to realize he is marrying down, in which case perhaps she isn't marrying up after all.
Pure hilarity that women are structurally incapable as a sex of processing logic, the very foundation of the functional intelligence that they claim to possess in quantities superior to that of men.
I'll never forget the day I saw a middle-aged woman with a PhD in psychology have a meltdown because she couldn't take the dream teaching job she wanted in another state because it would have meant her husband having to quit his high-six-figure STEM job and her having to take a pay cut as well, something that would have wrought economic havoc on their household. Apparently the simple economic concepts of "tradeoff" and "opportunity cost" were too complex --or just too "mean"-- for this snowflake's cerebrum to process. But she was intellectually equal to her husband or any other man who could grasp and APPLY these concepts. Riiiiiiight.
I'd bet money that the same thing happens with athleticism or social status, because men understand, even they won't admit, the basic tenets of solipsism.
I also note the fallacy of the excluded middle.
It's not so much that intelligence is a turn-off, it's that women with intelligence are often insufferable pains in the neck and just about impossible to live with. Not to mention that intelligence to those types is just another status symbol to flaunt, as if it were a BMW or some bauble they wear around their neck.
"The misuse of the word "equals" is the real problem here. Women will be "equal" when they've built and designed the world as men did. Anything aside from that is make-believe equal. Women could earn 100 percent of the college degrees and there would still be no "equality" in the sense they're hoping for."
This is very true. Everything women strive to do, men have already done. Where's the accomplishment? There's only one thing women can do that men can't, and it's absolutely integral to the survival of the human race. You'd think that would be enough, bringing forth the next generation.
I have an interesting example of an 'but everybody said.' I was cooking at Denny's in the late eighties when the heart healthy thing was all the rage. In it's surveys and such people insisted they wanted heart healthy choices so Denny's set about creating bland flavorless dishes and added them to the menu. So with a minimum of grumbling we would prep them and put them in the fridge. Where they would sit until they went bad. Not sure we ever sold one but folks sure did say they wanted them.
Intelligence is always an advantage in every situation. If a truly intelligent woman wants to be attractive to men, her intelligence will be an asset.
This is self evident if you consider that any intelligent person should be able to see when the perception that they are intelligent would be a disadvantage and then simply not act in a way that would be perceived as too intelligent, which should be easy for a truly intelligent person.
Of course, credentials are often mistaken for intelligence. A 40 year old spinster with 5 PhDs is probably less intelligent that the happily married highschool graduate who stays at home with her kids. If your intelligence doesn't help you get what you need to be happy, you're not as smart as you think.
Intelligent != argumentative
Space Bunny would seem to be proof that intelligent woman can be good wives and mothers. But wives and mothers are often overlooked in this conversation because it has been decided that "smart" women chase degrees and careers. I think having the same values is far more important in a marriage than comparing IQs. I tested at 140 in fourth grade but saw more value in seeing my kids raised well. A lot of career girls look down on me as if I'm intellectually inferior but I know I'm far better off than they are in all areas that matter.
"This is self evident if you consider that any intelligent person should be able to see when the perception that they are intelligent would be a disadvantage and then simply not act in a way that would be perceived as too intelligent, which should be easy for a truly intelligent person."
This is not the case. A lot of intelligent people don't realize how dumb everyone else is in comparison to themselves because smart people often overestimate the intelligence of those around them.
"though the thought of a smart woman is appealing to men"
Ummm...not its not. A pleasant and attractive woman is appealing to most men.
Only one thing worse than a "smart" woman and that is a dumb woman who is convinced by social engineering that she is smarter than everyone else.
This reminds me of the theory of intelligence converging to the mean. If intelligence is entirely genetic, then how is it that any child is ever more intelligent than both of his parents? Were all geniuses children of two equal or higher geniuses? I think not. Something more is at work.
Intelligent women unable to process reality so we have another study.
I know from experience that raising children can be challenging and isolating for a very intelligent woman. My wife and I are almost the same IQ (3SD), and it is tough for her to only have little people to talk to all day long. She loves them and loves raising them, but when I get home at night (tired of talking to other folks because I've been doing it all day long) she is ready to have her first real conversation of the day.
Everything is always more complicated than we like to make it on the internet.
"This reminds me of the theory of intelligence converging to the mean. If intelligence is entirely genetic, then how is it that any child is ever more intelligent than both of his parents? Were all geniuses children of two equal or higher geniuses? I think not. Something more is at work."
Next time just say "I don't understand genetics".
>>A lot of career girls look down on me as if I'm intellectually inferior...
Social status is a social construct. That is all. It is an invention. And apparently there is something in human nature that gives a lower status to females. That is why feminism has to be constantly brow beating men. That is also why the determined to be equal women is so often (if you will pardon the sexist word) bitchy. They have to keep hammering their equality away at men because they do not feel it emotionally. And finally, not that male-female equality amounts to women mimicking male behaviour. Instead of simply assigning equality to female roles, or at least trying to, women end up achieving status by being pseudo men.
I've found that intelligence is less relevant in women than in men. Other personality traits are more important, and they don't necessarily correlate with intelligence. If I had to pick an ur-virtue in a mate, I'd choose humility.
And if anything, humility actually correlates positively, not negatively, with looks. Fat, unattractive women, especially the younger ones, are some of the most prideful, insufferable wastes of carbon you can imagine. If anybody has ever seen the movie "Shallow Hal", well... sorry fat apologists, but physical and inner beauty do correlate. At the very least, they don't inversely correlate.
Also note Ceasar's point above: "Only one thing worse than a 'smart' woman and that is a dumb woman who is convinced by social engineering that she is smarter than everyone else." The main advantage of a smarter woman is that you don't want dumb kids, especially sons who will have to work for a living. With an arrogant stupid broad, you don't even get that.
>>This reminds me of the theory of intelligence converging to the mean.... Intelligence converges to the mean in both directions. If you have a population with an IQ average of whatever, the above or below average parents will have children who will converge to the mean of the population, on average. New smart and stupid people turn up because they are outliers to the mean. That comes mainly from the distribution of the average, (the bell curve) not the average.
"Fat, unattractive women, especially the younger ones, are some of the most prideful, insufferable wastes of carbon you can imagine."
Yes. Many of them even walk arrogantly, carrying themselves as if they're royalty with their pug nose in the air (no doubt sniffing the wind for the scent of cheese or donuts or whatever).
@Tom- I totally understand what your wife is going through. My kids are older and, thankfully, can hold up their end of a conversation now. It's very isolating when you're raising small children especially if you don't know other moms that you can socialize with. I never fit in well with the mommy groups, and lord knows I tried. But it does get easier.
@Johnny- I learned a long time ago that to many women "equally" was really about taking on all the worst behaviors of men (aggression, infidelity etc.,) because they were jealous of men's perceieved freedom. The problem is that they were only good at the bad behaviors and forgot that men are also builders, innovators, defenders and generally a whole lot better at creating stable societies. I know a lot of miserable women who thought chasing a career and forgoing a family was the ticket to fulfillment. I don't worry about social status. I'm old enough to begin seeing the lightbulb go off over these women's heads as they realize how much they screwed up.
Men should marry up in looks and down in everything else, and vice-versa for women.
Still, your kids will need a lot of smarts to get a job designing and programming robots to do the work people used to do, and a lot of those "smarts" are on the X chromosome, which is fully expressed only in men but passed on only by women.
The old solution to this problem was for smart girls to focus on music and cooking, where they could demonstrate to potential husbands their intelligence, diligence, and manual dexterity without compromising their femininity. No man feels "threatened" by a woman who cooks well or plays the piano.
This article is correct when you substitute intelligence for status.
Men don't give a damn about a girl's IQ points-- but they'll keep her around longer if she isn't devoid of common sense. The solipsism isn't as strong with women that think. Don't get me wrong, it's still there tho...
Men want women who are "enough". Smart enough, pretty enough, mature enough. Enough so that they're an asset and not a liability.
If you equate credentialism with "intellect", you're no more intelligent than a squashed apricot. Who finds someone with a raging, chronic case of Dunning-Kruger attractive?
148k shares from that article, yeesh. I don't think I'd want to be with a woman with a higher IQ than me, but higher EQ I would have no problem. My assumption of why men avoid women who are more intelligent then they are is so they can avoid a lifetime of incessant nagging. Just because a woman is more intelligent doesn't make them more feminine, or nicer, or a better mother, it means the potential for a headache is vastly expanded, AND she's smart enough to know the system is rigged against her partner, so she uses it against him, then loses her attraction for him, and he remains helplessly entrapped in a horrible situation.
All of the most intelligent women I've known were the bitchiest, snarkiest, and most feminist women I've ever known.
I'm not sure how much any of this has to do with intelligence in either sex. Universities teach women to be resentful and unpleasant, and some of them buy into it. I've never been "intimidated" by a woman's intelligence, and even less by pseudoscience degrees, but I don't want to be saddled with a shrew.
I have to say, no, I don't prefer 'smart' women, as in some woman who is only too eager to impress upon me her education or how smart she is. All the God damned time. Or how much smarter she thinks she is but isn't. But I can honestly say I'd have no interest in a dumb broad either, there has to be a happy midpoint somewhere.
"degree-havers"
lolz As she so put-intellectual it.
I don't know how I'd do with a woman who was more intelligent than me. If I've met any, they adroitly avoided my romantic interest.
The worst kind of lonely comes without any solitude. I need high intelligence in my mate. I've married four highly intelligent women. Further, stacking the meiotic deck is an ongoing duty owed to my assortively-mated ancestors.
That's not to say it's easy. See "four" above.
I've bailed from a relationship with a perfectly nice +1SD woman who adored me, because I didn't want a pet.
Only one thing worse than a "smart" woman and that is a dumb woman who is convinced by social engineering that she is smarter than everyone else.
THREAD WINNER.
I will even go so far as to say that this describes the majority of female college graduates today.
Just remember this: getting into high school one hundred years ago was harder than graduating from college is today. It might do you guys well to remind some ignorant, loudmouth ball-buster of that fact next time she wants to flaunt her McDegree.
"Smart women" is and always has been a fundamental tenet for the mainstream gender relativist movement. And as usual, the beta men among us have fallen right in line for this. Right where the genderists them. And this is not even a 3rd feminist thing. This is from the mainstream.
If intelligence is one of the things that comes to a guys mind when asked about relationship preference, he's a beta.
@Dave
"Still, your kids will need a lot of smarts to get a job designing and programming robots to do the work people used to do"
You are pushing the "education" myth with assumptions like that. You have no idea what kinds of intellectual strength and weakness your kid will have. They might be terrible at the cookie cutter white collar professionalism bullshit that everyone insists that their kid should be.
[Your kids] might be terrible at the cookie cutter white collar professionalism bullshit that everyone insists that their kid should be.
I would be delighted if this were the case with my own children. The world cries out for creative thinkers and entrepreneurs, which is of course why TPTB, whose hold on power depends on the predominance of obedient white-collar zombies, hates them.
"If intelligence is one of the things that comes to a guys mind when asked about relationship preference, he's a beta."
You clearly have not spent enough time around stupid people. Or smart people. Probably the latter.
@ liberranter "obedient white-collar zombies"
Well put. White collar zombies almost piss me off more than anyone else. The nobility that is held up for white collar professions and the political and societal obedience therein makes me sick. There are some renegade white collars out there but they are never women. White collar women are the most politically obedient sub group on the planet.
"Only one thing worse than a "smart" woman and that is a dumb woman who is convinced by social engineering that she is smarter than everyone else."
So you've had the misfortune of listening to Meghan McCain on "America Now" too?
So you've had the misfortune of listening to Meghan McCain on "America Now" too?
What the hell is it with women named "Megan" (and all spelling variations thereof)? Are they ALL loudmouthed libtards?
Additionally, the researchers are stupid or creating material for a feminist journalist. They can't distinguish between better grades and higher iq.
As long as she's in the range of intelligence that I can actually talk to and be understood, I'm okay. (So, so many people aren't nowadays.)
But yeah, having a wife a LOT smarter would definitely feel bad, even if that's nigh lottery-level chances from where I'm standing.
So, from the standpoint of the average male, I'd suspect that a woman of noticeably superior intellect would make you feel insulted or belittled, while one that is noticeably of inferior intellect (as long as not so stupid it's a survival problem...) isn't an issue for most.
I wouldn't have a woman build a house for me, and i doubt many women would either.
good luck to them.
Seen in Twitter earlier today:
"Can a woman make a man a millionaire? Yes, if she marries a billionaire."
I wouldn't have a woman build a house for me, and i doubt many women would either.
It sure would be entertaining to watch some of them try.
In my years of higher education I met a fair number of intelligent women, and the two biggest issues I noticed were 1) Midwit women are relentlessly exasperating. They insist on ruining every conversation by getting equal time even when they have no clue what they're talking about. One exception is that very high EQ does sometimes help with this. (They realize that they're detracting from everyone's enjoyment of the conversation and change course) 2) Genuinely intelligent women (not midwits) just can't seem to figure out how to be happy. Their intelligence leads to a kind of discontent, but rather than this leading them to push for higher goals, it seems to leave them feeling perpetually dissatisfied and eventually bitter. It seems to be more of a problem the further Left a woman leans, though, as women on the Right often manage being both intelligent and satisfied with their lives on a regular basis, whereas it seems nigh impossible on the Left. (Those few on the Left who are both intelligent and happy with life tend to be the "whimsical" types who don't really do relationships)
As others have noted, there's a big difference between a genuinely smart woman and one who feels the need to "prove" that she's smarter than she actually is.
In the best relationship I ever had, each of us thought the other was the smarter of the two.
Even assuming the idea were true, they're working of the presumption that the kinds of "education" they're acquiring is in any kind of field where men would find useful or see them as intellectual equals. Their degrees are overwhelmingly useless fields in the humanities that have been stripped of any kind of objective value.
It is common for men to exalt their wives' intelligence the same way it is common for men to also defer to their toughness or hard work. Once it was the grace of the clearly dominant, a coal miner talking about how his wife does the hard work! But as the social facts on the ground have changed, this relic of chivalry has remained among a thousand others. As women try to actually compete, men continue to undercut themselves by trying to seem gracious. What is charming in a victor is pathetic in a competitor.
I know from experience that raising children can be challenging and isolating for a very intelligent woman. My wife and I are almost the same IQ (3SD), and it is tough for her to only have little people to talk to all day long. She loves them and loves raising them, but when I get home at night (tired of talking to other folks because I've been doing it all day long) she is ready to have her first real conversation of the day.
Everything is always more complicated than we like to make it on the internet.
My wife ran into the same thing, desperate for "adult" conversation when I got home from dragon-slaying and bread-winning. It all seems like an epoch ago; now my sons are well-employed in STEM fields, working way above their pay-grades, with good wives and growing families, living the life Millennials are supposed to be incapable of obtaining.
You and your wife are, as you know, doing the right thing...and it does pay huge dividends.
My wife's intelligence shows up when she brainstorms how to better teach the 3 R's to 9-10 year olds. It shows up when I ask her to sanity-check my latest synthesis of the World-at-Large. It sure as hell doesn't show up in the form of competing with me for intellectual or social dominance.
Women who insist that their intellects are a leading attribute are utter fools, embedded in the Feminist Matrix that insures lifelong dissatisfaction and unhappiness. They don't realize that their thirst to have their names "above the title" of the movies of their lives is a guarantee of isolation and loneliness.
d.c., you hit on the thought I have about the different intelligences of men and women. Women may be more or less in quantifiable intelligence, but the nature of it is different in I'd say all but a slim margin of cases.
As with all things, you need complimentary rather than competitive relationships. Educated (versus intelligent) women, if they e come up through secular schools and the college system, equate intelligence with education and then wonder why they feel so unfulfilled as engineers, researchers, or what not. They may have raw intelligence by numbers to do the work, but are not suited for it by nature.
I too suffer from lack of adult conversation, but it's getting better as my kids get older. I'm far from being out of the woods, but it's my job to shape them into the kind of people I'd like to be around. The lessons are taking hold, and it's supremely satisfying.
My kids love to see me make pies and breads and special dinners, and dress up, and be with them in leaf piles and on walks. They would know how to care for any lab experiment I might do, but they know how to care about me because I care about them. It's so fulfilling.
*would NOT know
This is such a fantastic comments section.
I'm higher IQ than my husband, but I didn't believe it until I saw it on paper. Part of why it works for us I think is because he is much better than I am at certain types of thinking, so I still regularly get that experience of looking up to him intellectually. We also have opposite areas of focus (math/stats for me, law/history for him, with a nice overlap in econ). The idea that one of us would ever lord over the other or treat the other like their stupid is just, well, stupid.
I suspect that the fundamental thing isn't actually intelligence but rather the ingredients necessary for each sex to feel pride and thus happiness. Men mostly have the provider orientation. There are lots of ways to fill that role; being the smarter one is just one way among many. Even though income-wise it looks like I fill the provider role, that's not how we frame our actual relationship.
Or maybe we're just outliers. The best women I know are desperate to be with men smarter than they are, and I quite often get questions about how the masculine/feminine dynamic of our relationship can work when I out-earn my husband. All I can say is we're going on 13 years without it ever being an issue.
I am not sure whether men are into smart women, but I am definetely sure that lack of intelligence in women can destroy an attraction. I had a friend who was a true womanizer and could be described as PUA (but that was 20 years ago or so). And even he once said that once he met a women who was quite prety and he wanted to f* her, but then she started to talk and was so dumb that he immedietely started to think only how to lost her...
These "intelligent" women inevitably seal their own fate in a simple two-step process.
1.) They do what modern society conditions them to do - they pursue a degree (or worse, an advanced degree) in a pseudoscience or liberal arts.
2.) Experience dissatisfaction from not having utilized their degree to any worthwhile extent. Oftentimes this urge to make use of their newly minted degree displaces opportunities to be happy and otherwise satisfied in ways that would suffice for degree-holders and non degree-holders alike.
This sentimental attachment to the degree ruins potential relationships with others and even career opportunities turned down for fields that might not have been their dream job, but paid them a livable wage and were truly the best option despite holding a useless degree.
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