Who Wants to Marry a Genius?
Okay, B-Baltimore, in response to your post, I now offer reasons why Maureen Dowd may be onto something; i.e., I will now explain why many smart girls will most likely remain single.
My beliefs after years of updating:
1) I believe all smart girls want guys as smart or smarter than themselves.
2) I believe many smart boys want girls no smarter than themselves
(caveat: we're dealing with the homosexual population, and only those who want relationships)
I could go on with beliefs, but if you buy the two above, and throw in the fact that there are more girls than guys, then you see why we have frustrated intelligent women.
I have now been told on dates with three separate gentlemen, "You're too smart for me." I would never say this to a man--not even as an excuse to get out of a bad date! Not because I don't believe there are men smarter than me, but because I can't imagine too much of a good thing. In other words, my utility is monotic and increasing in boy's intelligence. Not so with many boys. There seems to be a threshold; Can she speak? Make sounds resembling the English language and not embarrass me around my parents and friends? Then check off the IQ box!
Now, I agree that there are smart boys who are also looking for girls as smart or smarter than themselves--I think I've dated one, and I wasn't smart enough for him. Updating my beliefs about the distribution of males as a result was the one consolation in being dumped. However, this is a very screwed-up matching problem. Even if we could somehow pin a vector sum of every individual's qualities to their chests, the boys with the highest "scores" won't necessarily seek out the girls with the highest scores. The distribution of preferences regarding the weights of different attributes, I believe, is quite different for the female and male populations.
Now, as regards Ms. Dowd's column, B-Baltimore makes very fine points that the statistics presented are deeply flawed. However, I believe the whole research design was flawed--so pointing out the true meaning of these statistics is about as helpful as telling me she flat-out lied. It still provides no insight into the true state of the world. Asking boys to commit to a box on an anonymous survey is entirely different from asking them to commit their weekends to a brainy girl. I just don't think surveys are going to work here--nor, for that matter, will using a blunt proxy for intelligence such as level of education to measure "marital success" of "smart" girls.
Now, taking this argument into account, and throwing things like "chemistry," "sexual compatability," and "not bitter" into the equation, it's no small wonder that the brainy girls ever find their mates.
My beliefs after years of updating:
1) I believe all smart girls want guys as smart or smarter than themselves.
2) I believe many smart boys want girls no smarter than themselves
(caveat: we're dealing with the homosexual population, and only those who want relationships)
I could go on with beliefs, but if you buy the two above, and throw in the fact that there are more girls than guys, then you see why we have frustrated intelligent women.
I have now been told on dates with three separate gentlemen, "You're too smart for me." I would never say this to a man--not even as an excuse to get out of a bad date! Not because I don't believe there are men smarter than me, but because I can't imagine too much of a good thing. In other words, my utility is monotic and increasing in boy's intelligence. Not so with many boys. There seems to be a threshold; Can she speak? Make sounds resembling the English language and not embarrass me around my parents and friends? Then check off the IQ box!
Now, I agree that there are smart boys who are also looking for girls as smart or smarter than themselves--I think I've dated one, and I wasn't smart enough for him. Updating my beliefs about the distribution of males as a result was the one consolation in being dumped. However, this is a very screwed-up matching problem. Even if we could somehow pin a vector sum of every individual's qualities to their chests, the boys with the highest "scores" won't necessarily seek out the girls with the highest scores. The distribution of preferences regarding the weights of different attributes, I believe, is quite different for the female and male populations.
Now, as regards Ms. Dowd's column, B-Baltimore makes very fine points that the statistics presented are deeply flawed. However, I believe the whole research design was flawed--so pointing out the true meaning of these statistics is about as helpful as telling me she flat-out lied. It still provides no insight into the true state of the world. Asking boys to commit to a box on an anonymous survey is entirely different from asking them to commit their weekends to a brainy girl. I just don't think surveys are going to work here--nor, for that matter, will using a blunt proxy for intelligence such as level of education to measure "marital success" of "smart" girls.
Now, taking this argument into account, and throwing things like "chemistry," "sexual compatability," and "not bitter" into the equation, it's no small wonder that the brainy girls ever find their mates.
Labels: Relationships
posted by slickaphonic at 1:37 AM
14 Comments:
If it is indeed true that smarter women are more likely to remain single, it's probably because they're smart enough to realize that getting into a relationship isn't necessarily in their interest.
Hmm, I would agree that many intelligent women opt out, as it were, of the relationship quest--not because they are discouraged at the probability of finding a mate, but rather, because they don't care to find one. However, do you believe the distribution of preferences over relationships (want one/don't/only want to date, etc) is vastly different for smart men versus smart women? I have no information on this, and am entirely open to suggestion. i have but a weak prior belief that perhaps they are not so very different.
Well, "smart" is very vague here. What do we mean by this? Educated? Or something else? If "something else", how would we measure it?
It doesn't seem to me that highly educated men prefer to remain single; highly educated women (I'm thinking of some of the profs I've had) seem to be more likely to be single for long periods of time.
These women I know had almost all been married and thought, "not doing that again." And they were pretty absorbed in their work and seemed to find fulfillment in it.
I have seen articles touting studies that say that men tend to do better in marriage than women do; specifically, it has a beneficial effect on their health and life expectancy, whereas the benefit is negligible for women in these areas. And based on personal observation, I think women cope much better with loneliness than men do.
Anyway, yadda yadda, I know I didn't answer the question, but I've been doing vowelling exercises for the past three hours and my brain is fried.
Ramblin' and musin.'
Ah, I'll pit my embittered female profs against your happily singly profs any day of the week and twice on sunday...
No, one of the reasons my fellow grad gals and I discuss this is that in our heavily male-dominated field, we observe that most of our advisors/the big shots in the field have stay-at-home wives who take care of all of the daily "living" activities/minutia, thus freeing up our advisors to work the 16-hour days that most of them do. (My advisor recently asked me why I haven't been working 16 hours a day--"Um, dude, I don't have a live-in maid/cook/secretary...").
Also, most of our grad guys are actively looking for elementary school teachers to take home...not fellow academics.
Finally, as noted above, I've had many a superstar academic professor (though more so in anthro--I've yet to actually meet one of the 5 or so in my particular field), and the ones who are married are married to fellow academics; the ones who were single lamented that it was "not for lack of tryin'."
I, myself, have meandered from "not going to date for a year" to "why the hell do I ever want to start dating again?" It's quite liberating.
I meant to say, "I've had many a female superstar professor...the rest should now make sense.
It's weird, but I had a very similar discussion recently with someone who insisted that men prefer to hook up with dumb women, for the most part. I strenuously denied this.
I'm willing to believe that my experience is atypical, but the men I know can't stand dumb women and in general don't suffer fools gladly. And being smart never hurt me none in this arena: though I've dated plenty of men who are not as educated/smart as me, I would probably faint dead away from shock if any of them ever said, 'you're too smart for me.'
Another hypothesis: academic success is not so much a question of intelligence as it is of aggression and self-promotion. An aggressive, self-promoting woman will not be attractive to men, even if they prefer intelligence.
After all, lots of academics are dumb bunnies, and lots of people with little education are very smart.
Ouch. But true--especially in the more male fields. I don't think I've become a "ball-buster", but I've surely learned to hold my own with the boys...and the boys in my field, are, by and large, pretentious, aggressive, slightly misogynistic Super-egos (not in the Freudian sense...). I've lately been trying to reclaim my more human side...I lost it somewhere in a conference in Chicago last year.
And of course, my guy pals are attracted to the brainy gals, too. But I have been told "You're too smart" before and I about lost my eyeballs in disbelief.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Tried to go to sleep, but darn it...
So, to pick up the thread of aggression vs. intelligence as the culprit for our lonely female academics, I'm not sure that the former makes the situation any better. The male academics who are successful possess these same traits, and yet, appear much more successful at partnering up. These traits in women, however, are seen as unattractive (and I believe you're right). So you're still left with an either/or situation; you either keep your smarty candy out of academia's jaws and greatly improve your relationship prospects, or you enter into academia and hone your intensity in order to compete with the guys, thus rendering you unattractive to the male population.
Men have different problems in finding partners. An unsuccessful man, or a man with a relatively non-prestigious job isn't going to get much play, for example.
Men and women are both shallow when choosing mates, but in different ways.
Academic men might have an easier time finding partners than academic women, but one reason for this is women's preferences. I can't tell you how many times a geeky colleague who previously got no action whatsoever was suddenly swamped with female attention upon becoming an adjunct. Women go nuts over men in positions of authority even if they're hella unattractive (check out how many ugly dudes get red peppers on RateMyProf). And in the courtships, the female was the aggressor.
These embittered single female profs you speak of: are they willing to date someone with less social status than they have? I suspect they're as averse to dating a less intelligent/less successful man, as men are to dating a smarter/more successful woman.
"Not for lack of tryin'"...to score an academic guy? Or "not for lack of tryin'" to score a guy regardless of his status?
This whole thing is sort of unfamiliar to me. The women in my program complain about lack of dates, but that's because it's 80% female. When I was in philosophy none of the women seemed unhappy about lack of dating prospects. But then, most of them seemed kind of unconcerned with dating in general. Drunken hook-ups here and there, and everyone was happy.
Then there's the Martha Nussbaum counter-example: I know plenty of guys who are in love with her. But then, she's teh hottness.
Of course the academic women want men of equal or greater status--that was my whole point... Academic men are willing to date and marry the elementary school teachers, but the academic women are simply not attracted to the teachers/office managers/etc.
And I don't want to embarrass my professor (the one who actually said, "Not for lack of tyrin'") but she is also teh hawtness. But she's also quite dominant and, well, 'intense.'
I've not yet witnessed this adjunct=play phenomenon; I don't doubt it, just haven't seen it myself. But this is the frustrating thing: whereas academic women go nutso over successful men, I don't think a woman getting adjunct/tenure/chair would generate the same frenzy. In fact, I believe it would decrease the amount of play...
I misunderstood your point. I took you to be saying that academic men actively seek out women of lower intelligence and turn up their noses at academic women.
If the point is merely that they're less picky about social status and are willing to date women outside of academia, then I agree.
The solution, then, for academic women who want to find partners is simply to cast a wider net and look outside of academia.
My point got fuzzy as my brain got fuzzy after peering at data...
I don't think academic men are necessarily actively seeking dumber girls; I just think that they're much more willing to date women of lesser "intelligence"/status. There's still stigma for academic women to date men of lesser intelligence/status, and I'm not sure too many of them want to, even if there wasn't. Further, I'm not sure too many guys are raising their hands to be picked as the stay-at-home husband of an academic woman.
But it's clearer and clearer to me that I'm discussing academia in particular, and I'm completely unsure how or if my "argument" (I hesistate to call it that after dancing in this circle) extends outside of this realm.
Um, someone dies.
Oh, and Dagger (and B-Baltimore), perhaps men are not activley avoiding intelligent women (and by intelligent, I mean hyper-intelligent); however, if they merely don't weight this dimension heavily, then they'll statistically be more apt to choose non-hyper intelligent women. In other words, the strategies of {actively avoiding} and {just don't care} would appear observationally equivalent.
Now, though my guy pals are all quite dedicated to coupling with uber-smart women, many guys in my department just_don't_care. And so they go after the cute, giggly, and vapid undergrads.
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