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Where have all the strong women gone?

Jill

Parts of this article are bullshit, but this section stood out to me:

My female friends need to disguise or soften their ambition and intellect, in a way my male friends don’t have to. A while ago, after writing a column about feminism, I received an e-mail from a reader who said: “I think it’s great that you, as a man, write about these issues. But imagine a situation where you were exactly the person you are now, but female. Imagine you were comparably overweight, took comparably little care over your appearance, were comparably aggressive in your opinions, admitted to a history of depression, and were a lesbian. You would not be writing for a national newspaper at all.” I think that is undeniably true.

Absolutely.

And this bit is pretty telling as well:

The fear of strong women isn’t confined to anecdotes; there’s reams of evidence for it. A study by Oxford University psychologists in 2006 found that having a high IQ is a boon for men in finding a partner – and for women, it is an obstacle. For each 16-point rise in IQ, a man is 35 percent more likely to find a partner – while for women, the same IQ bump reduces their odds by 40 per cent. This is why so many clever women mask their intellects, in pubs and offices across the country.

This dynamic spreads to politics too. There’s a famous experiment called ‘the Goldberg paradigm’, where a group is given a speech and asked to rate how effective, intelligent and persuasive. Every time this is run, if they are told it is by a man, they invariably rate it ten to twenty points higher than if they are told it is by a woman.

20 thoughts on Where have all the strong women gone?

  1. The fear of strong women isn’t confined to anecdotes; there’s reams of evidence for it. A study by Oxford University psychologists in 2006 found that having a high IQ is a boon for men in finding a partner – and for women, it is an obstacle.

    But why would you want a partner who doesn’t find your intelligence attractive? Is there any real chance of being happy with someone like that? I’d get a dog to hug and depend on one night stands or vibrators for sex before I’d try becoming attached to someone who only likes me if I act stupid.

  2. This makes me feel so lucky to have a husband who chose me over all the women he’d dated mostly based on my intelligence. Coming from a small rural Southern town, I’ve definitely felt firsthand the anti-intelligence vibe from guys I liked. (Even so, I like to feel like the smarty-pants in a relationship, lol.)

    OT: Considering the “Liberal Fascism” bullshit, I am giggly over the fact that that experiment is “the Goldberg paradigm.” ^_^

  3. I hate to say this, but all throughout high school I was trying to downplay my intelligence. Often I wouldn’t speak up in class, even if I knew the answer, sometimes I’d tell people I hadn’t read the book either even if I had… I’d pretent to let people explain things to me when I already understood, and I’d take longer to “think” about a problem even if the answer just popped into my head.

    I don’t know if it was completely motivated by trying to get boys in particular to like me though, since I know in general high school students look down upon smart kids. I think the problem is not just “Men don’t like smart women” but in general, our society frowns upon a woman being smart in general.

    When we look at issues like this, where it’s easy to blame men, we need to also look at how women have played a role in making this happen and learn to stand in solidarity with other women to say: Being intelligent is a positive attribute no matter what gender you are. We need to take responsibility for helping keep these stereotypes going by not speaking up, by not standing up, by not being an example other women can look up to.

  4. When we look at issues like this, where it’s easy to blame men, we need to also look at how women have played a role in making this happen

    This comes a bit too close to victim blaming for me. It’s not as though women who “play dumb” are doing so for their own amusement. They do so because they want to fit in or get boyfriends or because they are, in some way, told that they have to. Role models are great, it’s wonderful when people stand up to the BS, etc, but saying to people that the only problem is that they didn’t speak up for themselves when they are under tremendous pressure not to do so is not helpful. Go ahead and blame men. Or at least the patriarchy. That’s whose fault it is.

  5. I wonder how much of the decline in paired-offness corresponding to female intelligence is attributable to intelligence being percieved as unattractive, and how much is attributable to intelligent women having a lower tolerance for demeaning bullshit from prospective partners. In how many other contexts is “Smart people are less likely to be/do X” interpreted as “Smarts are a liability!” rather than “Therefore, X is probably not a smart idea!”?

  6. I am absolutely boggled by the idea that anyone would want a partner who is dumber than themselves.

    I can understand that it exists, but I’ll never understand that viewpoint.

    I love my girlfriend BECAUSE we can have long, deep, and interesting conversations. She can often make me see a side of something that just hadn’t occurred to me before.

    How could you want to live with an idiot?

    I just… don’t get it.

  7. Cat – there’s a difference between wanting a partner whom you think is stupid and wanting a partner whom you think is less intelligent than you are (though both obviously stem from self-esteem and control issues). Lots of men want a smart woman, but not one smarter than they are.

  8. Smart straight chicks are in a tough spot. We can either refuse to compromise our intelligence, and get turned down and ignored by potential male partners a LOT (which can be hard, even if we suspect the guys who are turning us down and ignoring us are ultimately shallow, insecure pricks); or we can play dumb or at least average, and increase our chances of male companionship (which can be nice, even if we suspect the guys we’re with are ultimately shallow, insecure pricks). Obviously, we should hold out for someone who respects our genuine selves, but that gets a lot more challenging when there seem to be so few guys who fit that bill.

    I suspect that part of it is men being intimidated by smart women, part of it is men being horrified by assertive women, and part of it is men being frustrated by strong-willed partners. The last thing a self-styled “alpha male” wants when he gets home is someone just as clever and uncompromising as he is, because that means work. My boyfriend is usually pretty decent, but if he’s been clashing all day with his macho coworkers (he’s in the military, oy), he wants comfort from the people he’s close to — not more conflict. He’d probably really prefer I smile and nod along with whatever he says when he’s venting over dinner. Of course, damned if I’m going to do that if he says something I disagree with or think is flat-out wrong. I’m rather terrible at turning off my critical-thinking functions, and my rhetoric is … not the most soothing in the world. He could probably accept that from someone he wasn’t in love with. From me, it hurts, and so we fight. I can see how that could lead down a bad road to break-ups-ville.

  9. Well, that explains a lot. Being active in Debate for many years, I can tell you that on the issues where I come out as the strongest, and I think I have the strongest case, I almost always lose if I’m up against an all-male team, unless my judges are female. My feedback from the judges? Stop being so bitchy. Which was odd, because my opponents would resort to character attacks, I’d call them out on them, and then I’d lose — better case and an absence of logical fallacies and all.

    I’m also a member of MENSA and my entire life I’ve been told that I’m intelligent and well-spoken. Regardless, time and time again my intelligence feels more like a curse than a blessing. As far back as I could remember, I wished that I was born a man, not because I wanted to have a penis or because I was transsexual, but because I was tired of being picked on, shut out of leadership positions, and denied raises because of my gender and my tendency to get on people’s nerves. There was a point that I was overly aggressive, but now, as long as my point is sufficiently controversial or can be taken as a character attack, no amount of skirting around the issue (pardon my pun) will save me from the wrath of the “wronged male” who likens me to a harpie.

    It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one languishing in single-ville because I can usually sniff bullshit out a mile away. I just wish that it was because something I was doing wrong, instead of of a part of me that should be right.

  10. Never had this problem – but I like to be the smarter one in a relationship. So from the standpoint of a female who looks for traits in a male that most “traditional” males want from a female.

    My issue is competitiveness, probably born of insecurity. I don’t want a guy who is dumb, but honestly I’ve dumped all of the guys that are smarter than me (but not smart enough to hide it, ha ha ha).

    My insecurity may be from being told I can do anything if I try, and if I can’t do something I’m not trying hard enough (math->true English lit->false but oh did I try).

    So as a woman who is too competitive/insecure about her smarts, I think this is a social problem. Men “have to” be the primary breadwinners. (Likewise, mixed up female that I am 😉 I also feel I have to earn more money). Men “have to” be able to provide. Likewise, I “had to” do well at everything because I was the “smart one”.
    I know it is each individual person’s fault for not overcoming this conditioning, me included, but it is damn hard. We need to fix this, yes, but society needs to stop telling men that they have to be the richer/smarter ones too.

    And my dang mom needs to stop telling me “oh you could still get into a ballet company, be an author and do oil painting along with a masters in computer science”. *rolls eyes*

  11. Why anyone would want to live with an idiot: superiority. You will always be better than her, smarter than her, she probably can’t do better than you. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when she mistakes tuna and chicken. She’ll never threaten you or make more money than you or force you to be the stay at home parent because her career is more important.

    That’s why. Disgusting, but…

  12. I’m rather terrible at turning off my critical-thinking functions, and my rhetoric is … not the most soothing in the world.

    Haha just saw this – I have this terrible logic I use whenever someone complains at me about someone else. Sounds like you do the same. For this reason my female friends never discuss relationships with me 😛

  13. Harlemjd, exactly. I don’t think that many men want a girfriend they percieve as being dumb (probably because somebody really obtuse would get in the way of impressing their friends as a partner), but many, probably the majority seem to want a woman that has a degree of smarts, someone they can show off as being accomplished, but not threatening to them. It reminds me of Victorians and their young accomplished ladies, who were educated in foreign languages, art, music and all the rest. They were expected to be accomplished, but in a pretty, unthreatening way.

    A particularly-stunning-in-conventional-terms friend of mine is particularly prone to attracting these types, much to her chagrin, because she’s smart, but her friendly sweetness and pretty looks lull the undesirables into thinking she’s the kind of take-home-to-mama kind of sweet, smart woman you can impress the guys with, but that won’t talk back. Those guys learn soon, because, niceness personified that she is, she doesn’t take that much crap. >:)

    I think this links to that study I saw a couple of weeks back where UK men decided their ideal partner would earn slightly less than the national average, had a quirky personality, blonde hair and blue eyes (but no mention of brains!). Considering the importance society places on material wealth, I found men deciding that their ideal woman wouldn’t be rich rather telling. I’d like to chalk it up to their being realistic or generous, but it’s unlikely, seeing as slightly rare, recessive traits seem to be ideal, brains don’t get a look in, and the question is about your ‘ideal woman’. It makes me think that money earned by women represents a certain power, and that this in itself would intimidate the shallow types who, even if they don’t consiously think about it, feel that a woman with smarts or money, with more agency, and the tools of power they see as purely masculine, would not stand for the same level of bullshit they expect a woman to stand.

    It sucks that brains, probably the most seductive trait a person can have, is deemed offputting by so many men. Still, when I feel like it sucks that men just don’t like their sex doll to do more than nod along, I remind myself I’d rather be single than with an idiot like that. 🙂

    I felt very ambivalent about that article myself. Some feminists seem to be ready to form a Johann Hari fan club, but I really think he partly missed the point, here, and took the short cut of blaming individual women for not bucking thuosands of years worth of expectations and a lifetime’s worth of programming. It’s nice to see feminism in the media, but I just think of so many people who could do it more justice.

  15. Dianne, I didn’t read Danakitty as trying to blame women who adopt in order to live with the messages such as “smart is masculine”, but women who perpetuate the dynamic in other ways, such as contributing toward the general anti-intellectual climate, or specifically toward the notion that women shouldn’t be smart.

    Are these interactions gendered? Is there a tendency of anti-intellectualism to be expressed differently between women and men? It’s possible to use a women’s intelligence as a character attack, for instance, which both takes advantage of these notions and reinforces them? Is this actually done more by men or women?

    In my experience, the direct attacks on women by men intelligence wise tend to be downgrading or denying intelligence. There are also indirect attacks, of course, often tied to comments like “bitchy”, etc.

    Whether or not the same types f attacks are used in the same proportions, we need to call out both the mean and the women that use them.

  16. This comes a bit too close to victim blaming for me. It’s not as though women who “play dumb” are doing so for their own amusement. They do so because they want to fit in or get boyfriends or because they are, in some way, told that they have to. Role models are great, it’s wonderful when people stand up to the BS, etc, but saying to people that the only problem is that they didn’t speak up for themselves when they are under tremendous pressure not to do so is not helpful. Go ahead and blame men. Or at least the patriarchy. That’s whose fault it is.

    Dianne, I don’t mean to take men out of the equation, but I meant to highlight some of the women who have told other women to “Play dumb, it’ll attract mates.” Particularly in movies, you see a lot of otherwise-intelligent females playing dumb-as-rocks women, and (surprise) they end up with the guy at the end.

    The authors of Feministe have also brought up quite a few female journalists who have taken the “women are/should be dumber than men” idea and ran with it.

    And I also know a few mothers who have enforced the idea that a daughter’s worth is based on her beauty, not her brains.

    Perhaps, these women are all victims of the patriarchy, but they are still responsible for the dangerous messages they’re spreading to impressionable young women.

  17. Though I agree with everyone who said the “patriarchal” messages are “dangerous” for the young people who get them from the media who worships Paris Hilton, we also have positive role models in the same vein, if a little gentler than Bette Davis. Real-life role models like Nancy Pelosi (say what you will about her politics) and Oprah Winfrey (one of the most powerful women in media). While I wouldn’t really want a child of mine to emulate them, I would hold them up as examples that one can have a fulfilling, rewarding career, as well as a partner, and mother.

    Men AND women in Hollywood seem to have gotten smaller (look at the stature of Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, and Brad Pitt!) while their earnings and egos get ever-bigger. And they aren’t exactly known for their brains, though they might be known for positive and negative traits, such as mental instability, prejudice or charity, that are just as important as mental strength and IQ in men AND women.

  18. Oddly enough I had almost the opposite experience with men and my intelligence. There’s a certain class of men who seem to fetishize intelligence and hunt it down in potential mates, not because they find intelligence sexy, or want to have interesting conversations, but because they want those precious genes for their offspring. Mostly the guys in question seem to be of only middling intelligence themselves, but usually monetarily well-off.

    I learned in a hurry in college that if a guy said some varient of “You’re soooo smart!” the first night I met him, I should run, not walk, in the other direction.

  20. While I wouldn’t really want a child of mine to emulate them, I would hold them up as examples that one can have a fulfilling, rewarding career, as well as a partner, and mother.

    Denise, I’d really be interested to know what you thought of the internal logic of that statement if you hadn’t made it yourself.

    Jen, are you me?

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