I've been pondering the recent British study that found women are less likely to marry the higher IQs they have, while the opposite is true for men. When I first read that, I laughed. It struck me as so true!

But then I read reactions like this column by Bonnie Erbe, which starts, "Here we go again! It's 'let's demoralize career women' time," and I scratch my head. Erbe states:

Again, the not-so-subtle message is that if women try to succeed in the work world, romance and family must be cast aside as so much detritus.

But it's the survey itself that is rubbish and should be tossed overboard.

Am I the only one who finds this an overreaction? Should I be more attuned to this "message" she reads into the study? Am I just being blind?

Margaret Thatcher notwithstanding (the Brits elected a female prime minister, while we are most likely still decades away from having a female president), women here enjoy more social, economic and career freedoms than do British women.

Let's hope, however, British women do not buy into the theory that females must be less intelligent, less interesting and less successful in order to marry smart, accomplished husbands. If in fact that is the case, it's not just the women who lose. It's the men, as well. After all, why would an intelligent, charge-ahead type, man or woman, want to spend her/his life with a partner so radically dissimilar and out of touch with the world the other partner inhabits?

Why indeed? Which is why I don't feel upset or threatened by this study. I would hope that we've gotten to the point that we don't have to fear the quantifications and analyses that may come out about male privilege (which is how I regarded this study in the first place). I would expect women are wise enough not to marry according to stats in a study. (Many of us seem to marry for foolish enough reasons already.)

Katha Pollit points out in a comment on a thread discussing this on Feministing:

Still, would you complain so much if the basic insight was expressed as a critique or men rather than of women? If instead of being packaged as a message to women not to develop their minds or go for a career, because that makes them too 'threatening," the message was directed at men: why are you so afraid of an equal partner?

Most of the couples I know are equal in intelligence and education (to the extent I can tell). But are there men who prefer a woman who will devote herself to taking care of her, who will have the less prestigious and challenging career, or maybe no career at all, who is maybe younger, is maybe more pretty than smart, who needs him more than he needs her ? Yes. Perhaps there are women who would like this arrangement also, but it's harder to find.

All these studies are really saying is that lots of men want to be the big cheese in their relationships with women. If someone is to have more power and get more attention, they want that person to be the man. Put that way, it's hard to disagree!

...adding....

The middle-aged professor doesn't leave his wife for the housewife next door -- he leaves her for a brainy grad student. This is good, I guess, for younger women who want men twice their age, but it does mean the pool gets smaller as you get older, because not too many young men want to be with middleaged women. At least that's how it looks in my generation.

I'm with Katha here.

Maybe I'm a pollyanna, but it just seems to me obvious that at times you have to play dumb a bit to appease the men. I draw a distinction between playing dumb and being dumb. I'm skeptical that you have to be dumb to marry a man, or get one to marry you.

But let me back up a minute. Stay with me while I look at a song:

Strong inside but you don't know it
Good little girls they never show it
When you open up your mouth to speak
Could you be a little weak?

Chorus:

Do you know what it feels like for a girl?
Do you know what it feels like in this world
For a girl?

Hair that twirls on finger tips so gently, baby
Hands that rest on jutting hips repenting

Hurt that's not supposed to show
And tears that fall when no one knows
When you're trying hard to be your best
Could you be a little less?....

"What it Feels Like for a Girl" (Madonna)

Sometimes pop culture is the perfect lens for understanding our own preconceptions. Is there something we're missing here in this discussion about women, men and intelligence? When we bristle at the idea of "hiding" our smarts, what are we saying? Are we somehow less for it?

Madonna's song is addressed to men:

Girls can wear jeans
And cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots
'Cause it's OK to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
'Cause you think that being a girl is degrading

The song is a challenge, and (to me) the assumption is that men are not up to it.

Competing with men may not always be the smartest thing in pragmatic terms -- the potential for undesired backlash could point to other approaches -- but I ask: Is competing with men necessarily always the most admirable thing for women to do? To me, it almost seems like competing with men would be dumbing down. To me, men are largely oblivious to how our society and culture works. They are too busy puffing up and beating their chests to impress each other. They are up in orbit, flying around with great energy, accomplishing some great things. But it seems to me they're in orbit around us women. Do we really want to break this nucleus and fly up with them? If so, what is it we're all flying around?

No, I'm not arguing anything like a woman's place is barefoot in the kitchen. Just the opposite.

To me, the real revolution would be for men to finally wake up and realize that it's been the women running things all along -- the mothers, the wives, the lovers, the aids, the maids, the activists, the whores -- no matter how depraved or degraded our position. This is because we tend to do things differently -- without so much ego, without so much competition, without so much need to quantify and size up who's smarter. I see a bit more than a speck of truth in the cliché that women connect, men compete. Without us, our civilization would fall apart into chaos.

I'd cite scholars who note that cultures where women are empowered and their contributions are valued tend to thrive, while more partriarchal societies tend to degenerate and destroy themselves, and often many of those around them -- in fact, I read about just such a study just a few days ago, but I don't recall where (a blog? a journal?) -- but alas my memory fails me. For now, I'll simply assert that we women have our own power, our own wisdom, our own strength, and these are far more important to the future of our society than male privilege or our acquiring it for ourselves.

I fear I've drifted off track, but the day has other demands upon me right now. So on this unsatisfactory and admittedly insufficiently supported (preliminary) conclusion, I end this entry to get on with my day. More on this later. In the meanwhile, comments are most welcome.

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media girl also blogs at other places.