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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   23726 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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"Men need to feel intellectually superior to women and I got sick of playing dumb a long time ago."

A bit off topic, but I've heard this sentiment from a number of women, yet I've never seen it in real life. I strongly prefer smart women, and no male friend or relative has ever told me (or acted like) they prefer dumb women. Where do women get this idea? It must be rooted in real experiences to some extent, but it's completely alien to me.

My candidate hypotheses:

  1. Most men like to discuss niche topics of particular interest to them, and women interpret this as a need to feel intellectually superior.

  2. Most men dislike argumentative or combative women, and such women interpret this as men disliking their intellect rather than their attitude.

  3. Most men would choose a hot, dumb woman over a smart, ugly woman, and women interpret this as men needing to feel intellectually superior.

4. Women screen for dominant men. This can be both be out of attraction or be mechanical, as women generally don’t approach and are passive followers in the early stages of courtship. Dominant men are more likely to talk over others and give off the pretense that they’re intellectually superior, including over women they’re dating or in a relationship with. Especially in the early stages of courtship, a man often has to lead and dictate the conversation because the woman puts in so little effort and initiative, and old habits can die hard.

5. Good ol’ hypergamy: For a date to go well and for subsequent dates to occur, or the first date to have occurred in the first place, perhaps a man does need to be intellectually superior to the woman or she won’t be sufficiently impressed. He needs enough material to lead and carry the conversation(s), and this can mean reaching for niche topics.

6. Some apex fallacy: Many women subconsciously don’t perceive non-dominant men as men. Non-dominant men are something more amorphous like “guys,” or not thought about at all like the Don Draper meme. See also the infamous OKCupid graphs: How men rate women vs. vice versa.

7. Speaking of Draper, Rule 1 and Rule 2, as always. A man’s supposed mansplaining and pretense of intellectual superiority is only a problem if a woman is not—or is no longer—sufficiently attracted to him.

8. Perhaps the average man is indeed intellectually superior to the average woman. It could be due to a modest gap in average cognitive ability. The average man may also have a wider and deeper knowledge base across a variety of topics than the average woman (e.g. in the physical sciences), which would only be exacerbated at the tails. If a random man or a random woman is to be selected to try to win a game of trivia with my life on the line, I’m definitely going man, especially if the pool is restricted to the college educated. If being funnier (intentionally, that is) is a form of intellectual superiority, that could be another point toward men.

I was accused of “mansplaining” by a young woman multiple times for talking to her the same way I talk to my male friend in his late 40s. Women just do not like being “explained” things the way men do. They HATE the implication that they don’t know something. They view it as condescending, while men are less cynical, and often seem to enjoy hearing how things work from others, or sharing knowledge in explanatory ways.

With women, it’s always about feelings. Making sure everyone in the conversation is “heard.” Lots of prefacing about how “maybe” it’s this way, or “I feel like” it’s that way. The corrosive, brain-melting end result of female socialization is that you can never just have a good argument without someone crying.

Things to consider:

Is the thing you're "mansplaining" something the woman in question might conceivably be interested in?

Have you shown a similar interest in hearing about things she's interested in and knows about?

Suppose you learn a lot about Roman military stuff, and she learns a lot about astrology, so you each have a lot of knowledge about an antiquated system. Are you as interested in what she has to say about birth signs as you hope she will be about your thing? If not, why not?

The issue here is that astrology is worthless nonsense. So that would be kind of a bad jumping off point. Roman history actually happened and may have some relevance.

People believing in astrology also actually happened.

You can say that about anything. Now we should coddle any fantasy?

People can conceivably be interested in anything. I don’t bore women with discussions about anime and sports, if that’s what you’re getting at.

No, it's not. I meant the specific person you were talking to. Are they, specifically interested?

I do not pay attention to women unless I’m required to for work. My girlfriend also prefers that I not have female friends, which works fine given my preferences.

It's unsurprising that your young female colleague might be more sensitive to being talked down to than your middle aged male friend. Because you're not friends, for one thing.

I don’t know what the point of this question is, but no, I don’t pretend to be interested in things if I’m not actually interested in them.

Then it's hardly surprising that it would be more enjoyable for someone to learn about a topic from the internet than from you. I'm currently getting the impression that if I really needed the information you were giving, I would choose another source if possible, despite not generally being a "mansplaining" critic.

Didn’t ask; don’t care.

  • -18

Then don't engage.

In the short time since you spun up this alt, you've posted nothing but crappy comments and antagonism. That plus deleting a lot of your comments makes it pretty clear you aren't here to contribute anything but turds in the punch bowl.

Banned for three days. Decide whether you actually have anything to say.

Speaking of myself, I don't think I mind a girl being smart and/or having an interesting hobby, but I don't need her to be interesting to like her, so I won't probe her interests out as much aside from maintaining small talk. Conversely, I do want her to like me if the talk is to go anywhere, and it appears that most of the time I have to be interesting for that.

That's how attraction and courtship works from my oerspective, if I isolate it from the sexless part of companionship. I value what she looks like, I value how much she values me, and I value how easy it is to talk to her, inasmuch as talking to her is a necessary part of courtship. I think that ease (orthogonal to intelligence) is the difference between "gee, she's so silly" and "jesus she's dumb", as they say.

Women just do not like being “explained” things the way men do.

Sure they do, women love knowing they're with a competent guy that they can rely on in a moment of crisis. Now, it's also true that we're under approximately 1001 reptillian psyops designed to hack our pair-bonding mechanisms, and make sure we see each other as enemies and never come together, which is how you get ideas like "mansplaining", but it's something that can be overcome.

Not exactly the same, but I personally know one guy who said he was worried about the fact that his then girlfriend would soon be making more money than him.

Where do women get this idea?

Woman here, and I started out not believing that "men need to feel intellectually superior to women" but absolutely agree with it now. The experiences that tilted me that way:

  • As a woman, I have had many conversations with men where I curiously asked them many questions about their intellectual areas of expertise. I'm a pretty knowledgeable person and in many of those cases also had credentialed expertise to bring to the table, comparable to what the man was bringing. Following their own monologues about intellectual topics, not one of those men, literally nobody, ever asked me a curious question that indicated their parallel interest in eliciting information from me. Indeed, no non-related man has ever asked me a curious information-eliciting question about anything in my whole life.

  • In those intellectual conversations where I did chime in with information or ideas of my own unasked, male conversation partners would consistently nod dismissively, then redirect the conversation back to some topic where they could educate me.

  • As somebody who loves to learn about stuff in conversations, I try really hard to make sure I'm facilitating a real exchange of high-quality information where I know my stuff and the other party is genuinely interested. I have encountered so many men bloviating on and on, with obvious pleasure, about topics where they actually knew very little, to visibly indifferent conversation partners, that it's hard not to conclude that this is actually a dominance behavior intended to make them feel high-status by capturing someone's polite attention, rather than a genuine enjoyment of intellectual contact. Men seem to do this substantially more with female conversation partners.

  • I have had several disturbing conversations where the principle "most men dislike argumentative women" played out as the man getting visibly angry and breaking off the conversation as soon as I indicated my interest in offering (polite, calm, well-evidenced) counterarguments to whatever they were contending. I have known maybe 3 men who could handle a sustained good-natured debate with me, a very polite lady, without getting angry and insecure and needing to stop, and I loved those dudes so much and desperately miss the ones no longer in my life. Overall, if in an intellectual debate space like this one somebody can unapologetically assert that he dislikes women when they argue with him, I'd say that's pretty suggestive that many men are uncomfortable facing the possibility of being intellectually bested by a girl.

Overall, if in an intellectual debate space like this one somebody can unapologetically assert that he dislikes women when they argue with him, I'd say that's pretty suggestive that many men are uncomfortable facing the possibility of being intellectually bested by a girl.

Or rather that the experience of arguing with women is, among men, a universally recognized miserable time and bad idea.

It infuriates me that many men are too fucking stupid to ask others questions. It's a pattern I see too often myself and hear about secondhand all the time.

When it comes to "debating" women, I have a tough time. The smartest and most well informed women I know will still retreat into parroting propaganda and then - when challenged too hard on it - devolve into naked emotional appeals or literally crying.

Men do this too, to be sure, but I have a tougher time keeping a discussion detached and level headed. Over the years this means I'm just not inclined to engage at all, I'd rather nod and smile.

The smartest and most well informed women I know will still retreat into parroting propaganda and then - when challenged too hard on it - devolve into naked emotional appeals or literally crying.

A second relevant Hanania has hit the thread: “Women's Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas.”

If a woman literally cries, her male opponent loses the debate. If a man literally cries, he loses the debate. That's a pretty major driver of things.

Physical performance of aggression works exactly the same for men as tears do for women, though. A man of 30+ years raises his voice in that sudden deep "dad intensity" mode, makes a sudden threatening physical move in an argument, then walks off, and people will conclude he's really passionate about this topic and he, on the whole, wins the day. A woman raises her voice and clenches her fists, people will titter to themselves about that shrill bitch who is literally crazy, and she's presumed to have lost.

I guess it's possible the male mode doesn't work as well on the internet, given its reliance on nonverbal intimidation rather than words, but it's absolutely a thing and I've seen it work for men on many occasions.

A man of 30+ years raises his voice in that sudden deep "dad intensity" mode, makes a sudden threatening physical move in an argument, then walks off

I would immediately dismiss both the opinion and the character of a man, especially one over 30, who acted like this. I would avoid conversation with them in the future, and if possible, even being in their presence at all.

Physical performance of aggression works exactly the same for men as tears do for women, though.

No, it really doesn't. A guy can try something aggressive against another man, but if his opponent isn't intimidated he loses. If he walks off, the impression those remaining get is "what an asshole!". If he tries it against a woman he loses regardless.

I guess aggressively calling people cuck faggots works on 4chan? You can even literally draw your opponent as the cowed virgin and yourself as a physically imposing chad.

A man of 30+ years raises his voice in that sudden deep "dad intensity" mode, makes a sudden threatening physical move in an argument, then walks off, and people will conclude he's really passionate about this topic and he, on the whole, wins the day.

This seems to me more fantastical than Lord of the Rings. In my experience, a man who did that would be deemed a pathetic insecure loser who continued his losing ways by losing this particular argument. The only times when physical performance of aggression could be said to "win the day" would be when that physical aggression literally results in some literal victory, such as punching out the bad guy or something. And greater age would be exacerbating, because a man who's 30+ is expected to be more mature than one that's <29 and thus more capable of maintaining composure or arguing his case using reason instead of force.

This is a pretty good allegory for life in general.

Overall, if in an intellectual debate space like this one somebody can unapologetically assert that he dislikes women when they argue with him, I'd say that's pretty suggestive that many men are uncomfortable facing the possibility of being intellectually bested by a girl.

One of the best allegorical moments of my life:

I was managing a Rock Climbing gym at the time, most of the part time workers were local teenagers. We had just gotten a MoonBoard for the gym and set it up, two of the kids Romeo and Juliet stayed after closing up with me to play with our new toy, both seniors in high school while I was a college grad at the time. Romeo was a pretty good hobby climber who had gotten into it with some buddies a year or so ago, Juliet had parents who climbed back in college before becoming bankers and had been climbing since she was 8, competing in youth level since she was 14.

Now the thing about rock climbing is, and why I recommend it to parents so much, is that it is possibly one of the more gender equal real sporting events. All the very best Pros are men, there are grades that no woman has ever climbed, but anywhere below the pro level it is mixed. You are more likely to run into men who are really good climbers in your gym than you are to run into women, but there will be women in the top grades too, and until you are climbing the top grades you will run into women who stomp you. Romeo was a good climber, but Juliet was much better. And worse, while Romeo and I hacked our way up routes with lots of swinging and cutting feet and grunting, Juliet would glide gracefully up the same climb. What she lacked in reach and upper body strength, she more than made up for in balance, flexibility, and coordination. Her technique was perfect. She danced up the wall, while I yanked myself up.

Romeo was a sweet kid generally, well behaved, responsible, a nerdy Fillipino with great SATs who later went to USC, we called each other "Grandpa" and "Grandson." Liberal politics, very respectful of the girls on staff generally (this was a regular problem we dealt with regarding other male staff). He liked climbing a lot, took to it in that classic nerdy-kid late bloomer way that I took to CrossFit and later climbing, it gave him a venue to be athletic despite not being on the football or basketball teams at his high school, it helped his self esteem as he got better.

As Juliet beat him, you could see his self esteem imploding, and he started acting out in ways I normally didn't see. He started making increasingly offensive jokes in a way that was out of character for him, he was almost bouncing around with nervous energy after each time he failed a climb and Juliet flashed it, cracking dick jokes or sex jokes at every half-opportunity. It got progressively worse as the problems went on. When he started in on Jew jokes ("Bet climbing a fence would have helped you get out of Auscwitz" or something like that) I had to ask him to help me with something in the storage room and tell him to knock it off, then told them I had to turn off the lights and I was headed home.

There's a saying I've seen in the Manosphere that women are human beings and men are human doings. Women are valuable in their own right, or at least as objects of sexual and romantic desire. Men are valuable only in the things they do. Disregarding debating its truth value, this is a deep insight into the insecurity of the male psyche, how we perceive the world. Every man hangs his self esteem on something he does. Romeo hung it in part on rock climbing. He didn't have some big crush on Juliet, as I recall, but she was a girl his age who would have been appropriate for him to hook up with, and being a healthy teenage boy he had probably thought about it. She had value inherently as a cute girl, his own value came from the things he did. Then, it turns out she is also better at the things he did, his sense of his own value imploded.

So:

I have had several disturbing conversations where the principle "most men dislike argumentative women" played out as the man getting visibly angry and breaking off the conversation as soon as I indicated my interest in offering (polite, calm, well-evidenced) counterarguments to whatever they were contending...Overall, if in an intellectual debate space like this one somebody can unapologetically assert that he dislikes women when they argue with him, I'd say that's pretty suggestive that many men are uncomfortable facing the possibility of being intellectually bested by a girl.

Makes a lot of sense to me. You've taken away their Doing while keeping your Being, it throws off the order of the universe for them, they have no place anymore.

I'll note the irony that I wrote multiple paragraphs to explain a woman's own experiences to her.

I like this comment because of the avalanche of "multiple things can be true at once" it evidences;

  1. Romeo was an otherwise good kid who didn't know how to handle his emotions in one specific context and - were this an office instead of a rock climbing gym - was certainly risking being fired with, perhaps, a lot of downstream career damage.

  2. @FiveHourMarathon demonstrated excellent leadership and tact in the storeroom-lights-out rouse ... but may have technically run a foul of HR policy in my imagined office-centric parallel universe

  3. Men being "human doings" is absolutely how many males self-conceive yet revealing that to women frequently elicits some sort of variation on "oh, get over it! Learn to love yourself." (Side note: this is where a lot of modern psychology utterly fails to help men. Build That Shed)

  4. Male performance related failure absolutely should be met with a constructive "hey, I lost, but I can get better / I can take pride in my level of effort etc." yet will also have a some amount of "HOLY SHIT I AM A FUCKING WASTE OF SPACE" as part of that process.

  1. I don't think you can really separate those two things. Romeo was 17 or 18 at the time, at least four years and a lot of maturing out from any white collar corporate work. It would be a very different act for a 22 or 23 year old college grad than it was for a teenager; and different again to see from 35 year old. Maturing is a real thing that happens!

  2. That's a reason I chose to avoid building a career in the white collar corporate world. Though I wouldn't say it was leadership, just being a few years older and recognizing my feelings from a few years ago in my grandson, and knowing he needed to cool off.

  3. Absolutely. The problem is that showing vulnerability as a man never helps bring you up, only brings you down. This is helpful when people perceive you as too high up for them, when they already like you and especially when they're a little intimidated by you, vulnerability brings you back into level with them and they like you better than ever. But when you're already below them, it just drags you down further.

  4. My view of healthy male self esteem mostly resembles what Rao calls "Losers" in the Gervais Theory of Management or whatever it was. That we label the same philosophy of life as "healthy" or "losers" probably says a lot about at least one of us. Healthy male self esteem comes from having a variety of Doings in one's life, a variety of accomplishments in one's history, which one can fall back on. I have been mogged by a hot tattooed 100lb female at the crag flashing my project; it doesn't lead me to implode or lash out because I have confidence that other things I've done, professionally or personally. I know I have a beautiful wife, got into elite schools, deadlifted a good weight, so when any one of those things goes wrong I think of the others. When you have nothing to fall back on, every injury kills you.

deadlifted a good weight

10,000% The only thing that actually matters in life.

The one thing you can really know. The iron never lies to you.

Your story makes me vividly imagine cutting her safety equipment and hearing the snapping sound as she breaks her neck.

I'm not a good man.

  • -19

I'm not a good man.

Well, this certainly isn't a good comment. Banned for a day.

Can you tell me which rule I broke, and whether the decision to ban me came before or after identifying that rule?

Unkind, unnecessarily antagonistic, not writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion, egregiously obnoxious, and multiple user reports.

I banned you for breaking the rules, so yeah, the decision to ban you came after identifying the rules you were breaking. But the case was, as you can see, wildly overdetermined. Coming back to open a rules lawyering session (as your aim appears to be here) is not going to benefit this account's longevity, though.

You misunderstand me if you think I'm interested in rules lawyering. What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order. So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.

What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order.

The commitment is to the foundation:

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.

The rules are crafted in service of that, moderation is conducted with it mind, and where the rules and the foundation might seem to conflict, the foundation trumps.

So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.

I mean, one of the very first rules is "be kind," so banishing assholes is definitely also rules-based. Of course the rules are not self-enforcing and the mod team is not a calculator, we aren't always perfectly predictable and we aren't always right. But the vast majority of our users seem to get on just fine. In general if it looks like you're even trying to follow the rules, you'll be fine. It's the people that go looking for just how far they can go without getting banned, who tend to be the biggest problem.

In principle, it's fine to ask questions about the rules, and discuss them when it seems warranted to do so. But in practice, the vast majority of the time I get questions about the rules, it is from people who are looking for ways around the foundation itself, rather than ways to understand and follow the rules better. (Weirdly, it's also almost always from people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, including one particularly persistent troll who has rolled literally dozens of alts at this point--like, think of the good such a person could do if they directed their efforts toward literally anything else! But this just seems to be an all-too-predictable symptom of the age.)

How old are you?

Physically, middle-aged. But in my mentality towards the opposite sex I fully identify with the male character.

Does it bring you comfort to be the opposite and equal of the black women who murderously hate those who have committed the crime of being better than them?

I have never felt comfort in four years and four months.

A shame. But then it would cost you nothing to at least keep such thoughts private. Candidness is appreciated, but this is particularly unconventional candidness because it demonstrates a lack of any virtue to your position (at least the guys who itch to run over protesters in the street are operating from some understanding of law, justice and the right to drive on the road their taxes paid for). Because of your comment, my (and others' perhaps) opinion of those who share your viewpoint on women will be diminished, and the preference for the dominance of the woke will be marginally raised as opposed to the preference for the dominance of, yes, those known as incels. Better my sister, girlfriend or daughter be canceled than murdered.

I'm well aware you're not the type who cares about moralizing or even pragmatic advice.

I would swear that you're female because I try to remember those few who mention that incredibly important in my eyes fact in this forum, but your latest comments in this thread suggest otherwise. I don't know what to think, but either way, the catharsis of me expressing how much I'm hostile towards the female half overshadows any infinitesimal effects it might have on the course of the future.

Well, it might be just my female-centric cucked socialization speaking, but in my observation, settling into the groove of thinking thoughts that are negative, unproductive and revolting is not worth the catharsis overall. Maybe if it was only two of the three...

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Why is it a shame? We can't exist in harmony and never could, don't you like that my existence is miserable? I have no power to exact revenge on the sex which I consider a major part of my misery, while you hold all the cards.

You have a very warped understanding of the way typical people think of those like you if you think sadistic fantasies are common. For the most part, I do not think of incels, the homeless or the destitute third worlders at all. I do not "like it" that your existence is miserable and likely wouldn't unless you actively wronged me.

If you think I'm some sort of a winner Chad or a woman because I found your comment distasteful, your inferenced are wrong and miscalibrated as well.

More comments

Must be similar to the height thing. I've heard women complain about how guys can't handle that they are taller than them. I've heard many women complain about men being too short. I've never heard a man complain about women being too tall.

I've also never met a man who was upset about a woman not cleaning the house enough, with the exception of a couple Niles Crane-type obsessives who married the same. Literally the vast majority of straight men I know would rather their wives spent less time cleaning. If pressure from husbands could affect women's cleaning, it'd make them clean less.

It goes with the narrative of all the uncompensated work women do. I get the impression much of this work is not at the behest of men. I like that the house is clean but I don't need it to be as clean as it is. Clutter doesn't bother me, it can completely dysregulate my wife. I like a tasty complicated dinner, but I could go without it. I don't need plants that need to be watered, I don't need decorations that need to be dusted, I don't need a rug with tassels that prevents us from having a robot vacuum, I don't need flower beds that require more work than just grass.

I don't need plants that need to be watered, I don't need decorations that need to be dusted, I don't need a rug with tassels that prevents us from having a robot vacuum, I don't need flower beds that require more work than just grass.

Indeed. A lot of supposed uncompensated labor, emotional or other, women perform is just filling in ditches that they themselves or other women dug up.

Like office birthdays: Left to their own devices, a group of men will cheerfully go without their birthdays being celebrated and a Special Day carved out where it’s all about them. They may even find such unearned and unsolicited attention awkward and annoying. Men are less accustomed to being celebrated for merely existing, rather than for having achieved something.

Plus, female-coded tasks like dishwashing or vacuuming are herculean but demeaning self-sacrificial Acts of Valor when a woman performs them; male-coded tasks like mowing the lawn or fixing the car are glorified hobbies or doing the bare minimum when a man performs them. If anything, men should be grateful for the opportunity to be useful for a change.

Last night had a relationship conversation with my wife. The gist is she is "more motivated than me". The tasks she has hanging over hear head contributing to her anxiety:

Finish the front yard (the flower beds I mentioned)

Paint the cabinets

Organize filing cabinet

Organize the pantry

Organize the Desk

Paint internal walls

Get her tickets and lodging for my work trip that she insists she go on

Always have home made bread, pies, and pizza doughs on hand.

Yeah, she's finding stuff to do to make herself anxious/justify anxiety. Always baking pies and repainting things is anxiety-refocusing behavior, not the cause of the anxiety.

It is fascinating to me that this is enough of a commonly believed trope that an entire Netflix movie (and a sequel) was made whose entire premise is based on how tough it is to be a tall girl (who also happens to be conventionally attractive, though perhaps not Hollywood standards) in high school. I tried checking it out out of morbid curiosity once, and I can definitely not recommend it at all.

Its just shitty women transposing their responsibility for being a bad date to their partner. 'Men can't handle a strong woman, its their fault their toxic masculinity is intimidated by me.'. No ma'am, its the fact that you use the phrase 'toxic masculinity' unironically and then jut your jaw out in anticipation of a fight. Tall girls and short girls both have problems with shitty dates, its just that the tall girl has more socially accepted ammunition to externalize blame.

Yes, I think you're 100% right. My complaint in dating for a long time was that I wasn't meeting women who were smart or passionate, and so many of them felt like blank slates without anything interesting to say.

I also think men just love talking with a lot of rhetorical force; I'm not the most confident guy in the world and even I can sound like a blowhard when I'm discussing something I feel passionate about.

But the important thing to note is I'm never actually cocky about it, I just feel passionately.

I've probably 'mansplained' a lot to my girlfriend, but she's never complained about it. In fact, she seems to enjoy it. We went out to dinner a few weeks ago and I was rambling on about the upcoming British elections, and she kept asking me questions ("Wait, who are the Tories?" "How is the Prime Minister elected?"), and when I apologized for rambling, instead of complaining, she just said, "No, I'm learning something here, I enjoy listening to you talk." And when I wondered aloud how the partisan split is so different -- with Labour soaking up both white working-class voters and more American-style social liberals -- she had some of her own thoughts and we had a good conversation about partisan splits in the US. When it's a topic she knows something about, like Biology, I'm always interested in hearing her thoughts and we go at it from the other direction sometimes too.

I don't know how this would go with a woman who wasn't so interested in discussing ideas, or was more insecure about her own intellect. This whole point of view is so alien to me as well.

I wonder if there's much difference in preferences between younger and older couples, related to wanting to have children together vs it being too late for that. With kids, it would probably be good if one of us were a bit more present and patient, rather than always going on about culture war stuff all the time. My parents are both very thoughty, they met over Dostoyevsky philosophy classes, and get along great -- but there isn't anyone to keep things in order, and their house is absurdly terrible.

I've probably 'mansplained' a lot to my girlfriend, but she's never complained about it. In fact, she seems to enjoy it. We went out to dinner a few weeks ago and I was rambling on about the upcoming British elections, and she kept asking me questions ("Wait, who are the Tories?" "How is the Prime Minister elected?"), and when I apologized for rambling, instead of complaining, she just said, "No, I'm learning something here, I enjoy listening to you talk."

The argument seems to be that many women have been trained to act interested even when actually bored or if they already know more about it, in order to make their men feel better. I don't know how often that's true, I would guess occasionally but not all that often.

Hm, I could definitely see how that could be the case. If that’s really going on, though, it sounds like the women in question would be the ones who need to change their behavior — unless the men are truly terrible people (which I doubt in most cases) I bet they’d appreciate either the more active interest of their partners with their own knowledge or a polite but clear indication that they’d like to change the subject. Like most things in relationships, communication is the solution.

My gf has definitely gotten bored of a discussion before, but I can usually tell. It’s also happened that she’s talked about something she’s passionate about and I got bored — I know a lot less about biology than she knows about politics and history, so there’s a greater disconnect. But honestly, I’m just excited that she’s excited and I love knowing she cares about what she’s doing.

So many of the relationship complaints I hear from people of both sexes just seem so petty to me. I respect that a lot of people have serious problems in relationships and I want everyone to be respected and appreciated by their partners. But so much just feels like a dark force just wants men and women to hate each other.

Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that some women getting terrible relationship advice is the fault of the men in their lives. Like that article a few weeks back about college girls egging each other on to have sex right away with every guy they were a bit interested in, and then feeling upset about the results. It sounded like the girls in question had gotten a lot of really dumb advice from the women and female media in their lives.

Personally, I like it when my husband uses an interest to suggest an experience we can share, like he'll research some ruins and plan a day trip to go look at them and play tour guide. I don't like it when he tries to info dump about weapon usage in Ukraine or something, but that's at least half negative emotional valance of it being about ways to kill people.

Yeah, it probably was better to have a norm not to complain about one's romantic partner just because you got in a spat and are feeling angry about it. Healthy couples mostly seem not to do that. We seem to have lost some outlets, living so far from our families, -- I've called my in-laws to complain once or twice when feeling really outraged, and it was way more effective than complaining in the comments section of the NYT or something.

The comment in question:

I'm a woman. Recently joined the chess club at my senior center chess club as the only female. (one guy smugly announced that all the women who join quit because they "can't hang onto their queens"). At first everyone I played was all smiley, sort of flirting and trying to give me "tips" about developing the pieces and so on. But then they found out that I play like a boss and could crush almost all of them quite handily (I'm on a ridiculous win streak). Now none of these men want to play against me, and all their smiles have disappeared. Story of my 145 IQ life. Men need to feel intellectually superior to women and I got sick of playing dumb a long time ago.

Indeed, I would probably not want to play chess with her, it sounds fairly unpleasant, along the lines of #2.

I don’t think it’s really coping about being ‘ugly’, looks aren’t negatively correlated with intelligence (and are likely somewhat positively correlated with it given obesity and class etc). 2 is more true. I’ve heard beautiful women complain about men not liking them because they’re “smart”, and some even were very smart! It’s more of a cope around personality, especially because many type A people have great difficulty realizing they have a repulsive or standoffish personality. A relatively attractive young(ish) woman has no issues getting male attention, so if she gets dumped it can either be because of ill treatment (of her) or her own personality, and the latter is much harder to stomach.

Men have their own equivalents. “Women just don’t like [immutable feature about me]” is an easier cope than admitting you’re boring or have a bad personality.

I don’t think it’s really coping about being ‘ugly’, looks aren’t negatively correlated with intelligence (and are likely somewhat positively correlated with it given obesity and class etc).

The one doesn't imply the other. Even if most smart women are hotter, on average, there will still be some who aren't. There are ugly smart women, they will be likely to use this as cope. In the same way an ugly dumb woman would claim men don't care about "good hearts" or whatever.

Why is your criteria that men must explicitly state this preference? There's been infinite debates on "mansplaining" but I believe there is a kernel of truth to it and it's revealed through behavior. I think the gendered aspect is overrated though and what you're really dealing with are blowhards that are socialized around other blowhard men, and I find them unpleasant as a man to a similar degree and would hate being married to one. Importantly though, these types have no self-awareness and are unable to articulate their true preferences.

There's been infinite debates on "mansplaining" but I believe there is a kernel of truth to it and it's revealed through behavior.

My own experience is very strongly that this has nothing to do with gender at all. In fact, nobody, nobody, is more prone to condescendingly explaining things to people who already understand them (and frequently just finished making that unmistakably clear) than the kind of feminists who talk about "mansplaining"!

I think it has to do with gender in the sense that gender is one of the primary ingredients of social groups, even in the hyperliberal paradise of today. For instance you probably wouldn't expect that behavior of male feminists. (edit: unless they're mansplaining to TERFs I suppose). But in the context of this article, with older generations, I think the male version of this is far more common since it was given a lot of room to fester years ago compared to today with men.

I said "no male friend or relative has ever told me (or acted like) they prefer dumb women," i.e. neither their stated nor revealed preferences seem to indicate an aversion to smart women. In my experience there's no trend of men seeking out dumber women.

what you're really dealing with are blowhards that are socialized around other blowhard men

I don't see what this has to do with intelligence. I know smart men who I'd call "blowhards" and I know dumb men who I'd call "blowhards." And I've never observed a trend of such men preferring dumber women.

Apologies, I missed your parenthetical completely. So how I see it is that with blowhards, it's less on the surface about intelligence but it's related. Regardless of their IQ, blowhards say dumb stuff because by their nature they are bullshitting all the time. If you know something they don't, then voicing that will intimidate them, and they will only accept that behaviour from people they see belonging to a certain kind of social category of mostly belligerent men that they feel comfortable sparring with, and that excludes many women and plenty of other men as well. Exchanging ideas for them is a deeply vulnerable status game, and they try to play to win, even while undermining themselves with all the bullshitting.

But with this strategy it's not just about preferring dumb women. It's actually just as effective to put down and shut down intelligent men or women who try to challenge them. Women who experience think "he just wants a dumb woman." But what he really wants is typical narcissistic desires of adoration and winning and so he cruelly shuts down challengers as a kind of crude tool to get what he wants.

I think this "prefer dumb women" idea could be refined to be a bit clearer to describe what it's pointing to but I think it's how it feels on the surface when you are dealing with these kinds of people. You know something they don't, you tell them, they confidently explain to you why your wrong even though you know they are BSing. Among certain groups of men, I think this behavior is depressingly common.

A certain kind of woman does teach her daughters to come off as a bit ditzy as a form of flirting, and there are probably men who expect that. There’s also some intelligent women who can never turn off schoolteacher mode, and this is very annoying to… well everyone who isn’t five, but relevantly to men.

Some mentally lacking men are very insecure about intelligence. This is not a women centric issue but might be perceived as such by women.

Have you ever dated, seriously, a woman who you felt was objectively smarter than you were? Like, one who would have scored a noticeable margin better than you on the SATs/IQ test or who had an objectively more cognitively demanding and higher prestige job?

This is normally cope, most of the women who say that are 100iq types working no-skill service industry jobs not HYS trained lawyers or C suite executives.

But to pretend the whole idea doesn't have a basis in real relationship dynamics is coming in a little hot.

Have you ever dated, seriously, a woman who you felt was objectively smarter than you were?

I once dated a woman meeting that description. I thought she was smarter than me even in spite of the fact that she was into astrology. Like really into it.

Now that I think of it, I also went on two dates with a doctor who I thought was more intelligent than me.

I dated my linear algebra tutor in college. She was a Czech math major who very clearly thought my courses were cute play-acting from sociologists pretending to do math.

Didn't cause any problems, maybe because I didn't take my major very seriously either. And unlike a lot of women she had the breadth of interests for us to find things we had in common at the same level (cello and violin, swimming)

I never learned much linear algebra though.

Have you ever dated, seriously, a woman who you felt was objectively smarter than you were? Like, one who would have scored a noticeable margin better than you on the SATs/IQ test or who had an objectively more cognitively demanding and higher prestige job?

Yes, my first girlfriend, who I met in my final year of highschool, was a lawyer who scored in the 99.75th percentile on standardised testing. I wasn't bothered by her being smarter than me at all. The main problem was her addiction to having arguments and IRL trolling more than anything else.

Wait, am I reading this wrong or were you a senior in high school while she was a fully barred lawyer implying that she was at least 23 or 24?

My fuckin' man out here.

She became fully barred when we were dating, but she had already graduated with her degree and was working in the field when we met (on 4chan).

You met a woman on 4chan? I’m curious as to how y’all navigated the tits or gtfo phase of the relationship.

On the one hand, to paraphrase Larry David talking about Asia Argento, they should name the high school after you.

On the other, this is so profoundly unusual that it didn't tell us much about much.

This place should be renamed to The FirmWeird.

interestingly, there appears to be no age limit for the bar exam. So there could be a doogie howser situation where a teenager becomes a lawyer.

...but I assume he just meant that she became a lawyer later.

I assume the meeting happened first and the lawyering happened later?

I scored in the top fraction of 1% on the SATs, so I don't think I've ever met a woman who "scored a noticeable margin better" than me, but I have dated several women I consider my intellectual equals, and I am currently married to one of them (a successful lawyer who went to one of the best law schools in the US). I have broken up with women who I felt weren't able to keep up with me intellectually because I found them boring.

But you raise an interesting alternative hypothesis, which is that maybe women are the ones selecting "intellectually superior" men to date, and that's why they perceive all the men they date as "needing to feel intellectually superior," because they actually are.

I scored in the top fraction of 1% on the SATs, so I don't think I've ever met a woman who "scored a noticeable margin better" than me, but I have dated several women I consider my intellectual equals...

@ArjinFerman

What I was getting at is more this, that for the average Mottizen there barely exists a dating pool of women smarter than him. Seriously, I feel like I'm about average in horsepower around here, and I've only met maybe a dozen women who obviously verbally intellectually outclassed me. So we're not ever likely to experience that kind of dynamic.

But there exist plenty of women who are substantially smarter than most men, and I've rarely seen that kind of relationship work well. My law school was located very close to another, less prestigious school. The boys who dated "down the hill" were mostly pretty happy with the results. The girls who dated townie guys mostly had these awful dysfunctions around it, where he didn't like to be made to feel inferior, and so would make fun of her for being an egghead and belittle her, and it would go downhill from there. The standard heterosexual dynamic is for the man to be in charge, that falls apart immediately if she is obviously much smarter. Women rarely find being smarter than their man sexy, men perceive this and lash out belittling her achievements, so on and so forth.

That said, I'll repeat that for the people saying this, it is generally cope. I'd expect the average woman to claim to be on the shelf because of her intelligence to lack above average intelligence, in the same way that I expect the average teenager who whines that his classmates don't understand him because he's smarter than they are to actually not be all that extraordinary. Non-measurable things used as self-justification are generally cope. I'm not that interested unless you have receipts for it.

But you raise an interesting alternative hypothesis, which is that maybe women are the ones selecting "intellectually superior" men to date, and that's why they perceive all the men they date as "needing to feel intellectually superior," because they actually are.

This seems to be another version of a fairly common trope about the dating market, which is that most women tend to date men that most other women tend to date, and those men tend to have qualities that most women find attractive, which are qualities that also either tend to be or correlate with qualities that they say out loud that men shouldn't take on. The "men don't want to get married" cliche largely seems to stem from this, from my view; where I look, there's no shortage of single men who are eager to settle down and get married, but there's a dearth of women who would even give them a chance on a date. On the other hand, the men that are getting dates from women tend to be men who, whether intrinsically or due to the female attention they've gotten, are pushed towards deciding that playing the field would be more beneficial to their lives than settling down.

It's even simpler than that (and applies to both men and women). Dating preferences are heavily correlated. If you find a single person who matches all the desirable dating preferences, they likely have other factors that make them unsuitable for a long-term relationship; otherwise, they'd have landed and stayed in one. The old saw "all the good ones are taken" is true.

This is why widows/widowers tend to be really good potential partners, despite the baggage of their partner's death. They became single through no choice of their own, but still have all the traits that make them a good partner.

But to pretend the whole idea doesn't have a basis in real relationship dynamics is coming in a little hot.

I mean, it takes two to tango. I'm guilty of never dating one, but the few I met gave off the impression they'd call in an airstrike if I even thought of approaching them this way. Maybe it's just me though.

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