Whenever Maureen Dowd goes after the flaws in the male character, I get a little uncomfortable, which is odd, because I really have no problem with male bashing. But when Maureen does it, I start shifting around in my seat and tapping my feet. I feel like she’s showing too much of her cards. Maureen has a full set of Samsonite baggage.
Anyhow, she’s talking today about how men like their women dumb. She points to the recently panned, Spanglish and a recent study.
The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman’s chance to get married, 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.
(That study doesn’t necessarily show that smart guys go for cheerleaders. Maybe smarter women don’t need or want to get married. Maybe dumb women are more likely to get divorced.)
Maureen’s baggage aside, does she make a good point? Do men really want to jump a non-English speaking maid in a uniform over an award winning columnist?
UPDATE: Ogged objects. Loved Tim Burke’s comment. Yes, collective reluctance to date Carrie Fisher, self-confessed substance abuser and psychological basket case, surely indicates the pathological state of the American male. In a weak Dowd piece, the turn to Fisher went way beyond weak: it was almost charmingly stupid.
Speaking of Tim Burke, loved his essay on how universities have to concentrate on the real business at hand. Not squeezing the faculty for 20 page vitas, but in changing the lives of the students. Here. Here.
Apt. 11d 
Well, I think there’s a difference in what guys look for in a sexual partner vs. marriage partner. Just conjecture here, but I think guys go for the less intelligent ones as sexual partners because the impression is that it’d be less complicated (and I’m sure there’s a lot of socialization at work here as well on both genders). I think most guys would prefer an equal as a marriage partner, but some might not, in order to be more able to maintain dominance and control in the relationship.
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You might want to look at the commentary over at Unfogged — some good objections to the Dowd piece by both male and female readers/bloggers. One possibly salient objection is that she doesn’t address class issues. For instance, someone argues that smart, accomplished women are more highly prized in the upper-income brackets.
My complaint with the piece is that the study she cites doesn’t seem to address the question of whether smart women necessarily want to be married. A surprisingly large quotient of them do not.
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE FISH WANTS A BICYCLE?
Maureen Dowd of the alleged newspaper of record discovers she’s been had.
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This one got a lot of comment in the lunch room and I knew you would blog on it. The attempt to connect it to discredited sociobiology to me was the low point.
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Leaving gender out of it for a moment, I think discussants are confusing two possible definitions of Being Accomplished:
Smart / Capable / Takes No Shit
as opposed to
Fame / Power / Ego / maybe Class Status
On one hand, my wife is smart as a whip. Every woman I ever dated was smart and successful (or on her way to success). In at least one case I have had unkind thoughts about a male friend who married a woman I saw as submissive and “wifey.”
On the other hand, were I somehow in a position to consider the prospect of dating Maureen Dowd, I can imagine being intimidated. Not by her intellect, but by her fame and position and stuff. The presumed likelihood that she would be interested in the daily travails of an anonymous schmo like me. You’d hope that True Love or Intense Lust would conquer that obstacle, but for women who could be called famous, I bet it makes a difference.
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Ah, this explain why I’m not married!
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Whither feminism (part deux): The thin pink line
One of my favorite all-time characters on television is CJ Craig on “The West Wing” (a sho
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Feminism is a lie from start to finish.
When I’m on a date, and a woman starts talking that crap, I get up and leave. It’s what they deserve.
I strongly suggest to the men on this site that they look for a Southeast Asian woman or a Pacific Islander. They won’t give you the obnoxious, self-serving lies you get from an white feminist woman. And those Asian women are high achievers. It’s a f****** lie that women need to be feminists in order to achieve.
Ladies, if you want to be a pain in the ass, you should be dumped on your ass.
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I can’t speak for all men, but I married a math teacher. If some men are turned off by high-IQ women, all I can say is that I can’t relate to that point of view at all. But Dowd betrays her own sub-intellect with this extrapolation from “some men” or “most men” to just “men” in a sweeping generalization that makes me wonder exactly how smart one really has to be to win a Pulitzer. There is nothing deeply analytical in what she writes. She seems to go for the easy stereotypes and caricatures. She writes with an underlying sense of contempt that is plain for us to see but without any clue to the deeper causes. There are dark shadows in Dowd’s self-image and her use of distain-ridden humor should not be confused with intellectual analysis. Personally, I think the average model on the cover of Vogue is about as intellectual as Dowd. (Oops, forgive my hint of distain)
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