Facebook offers such interesting conversations. Here's one that I had yesterday that is of interest to my old Single gal readership:
Complete stranger in USA: I gotta say, X, I'm not impressed by "classical liberal" girls. They're still going through their "equity feminist" phase, which just means that they're not nut job "gender feminists", but still take umbrage when you tell them that, if women didn't vote at ALL, the Democratic party, and whatever your version of that is in [Canada], would die.
X, a pal of mine back home: Well, that would be the Liberal Party up here. And as an old man long out of the dating cycle, I have the luxury of not having to deal with many "young women" any more, so your take is probably more valid than mine.
Now this caught my eye because I occasionally hear "women shouldn't vote because" arguments, which annoy me because they're lazy. If it is true that women almost always vote for the better looking candidate, then it may also be true that men almost always vote for the taller candidate, for which there is evidence. So what are we going to do, remove men's franchise? One solution is to train children up in rational thought from the age of 4, when they can first grasp the concepts of "Handsome is as handsome does" and "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting: but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised (Proverbs 30:31)." I hate to admit it, but English Canadian society was a lot more rational when it was Presbyterian.
But back to the Complete Stranger in the USA.
CSiUSA: The irony with me is that, where before I'd be excited at all these semi-red pilled girls into David Rubin and Jordan Peterson, who are "questioning" their PC indoctrination, nowadays I'd rather just date an apolitical gum chewing airhead, that works at a hair salon.
Then I sat up because it was a guy frankly talking about what kind of girl he thinks he prefers. Men aren't always right about this. What they think, what they feel, and what they actually do are often disconnected; they're not as holistic as women. They compartmentalise like crazy. It is useful to know this if you are a woman who has, or ultimately wants to have, a man in your life. So I asked some questions.
Me, Journalist-Novelist-Blogger: I write a lot for never-married conservative women, so if you are serious, please explain why. The social science is that women want to date "up" and men don't care what women do for a living, as long as they are agreeable and attractive. Possibly the word "airhead" indicates that you are not serious, however (and every woman I've ever met working at a hair salon was very smart about life and money) .
To my surprise, CSiUSA became defensive and, instead of typing "What do you mean?" or real insults, like Polish Pretend Son would have, he whimpered:
CSiUSA: 100% serious. When you say my use of the word "airhead" indicates I'm not "serious", and then you're saying, "every woman I've ever met working at a hair salon was very smart about life and money..." indicates to me that, in spite who you pull the lever for, you are trying to change my mind via shaming tactics, and I do not like it.
Oh dear. It took me a while to understand what he meant by pulling a lever, but then I remembered Americans vote by pulling a lever, not by marking boxes with an X with a pencil. However, I didn't give up hope of getting his opinion. When trying to get men to produce research results, you must be super-gentle, like you would be with guinea pigs or white mice.
Me, JNB: No, no. I am not shaming you. Nor am I interested in changing your mind on anything. I am just contemplating the women I have known in hairdressing salons and wondering why you characterise them as airheads when you find them attractive. Questions for clarification, as it were. My readers are often very interested in what men think about dating (and related activities) although they are not always happy when they find out. Nevertheless truth is what is, in the words of a forerunner to the great Jordan Peterson.
Okay, that was St. Thomas Aquinas, so I was sort of joking. But sort of not. You should hear me at meetings trying to convince people that JP is like TA in that Thomas used Aristotelianism, the fashionable science of his day, to elucidate Truth to the best educated, JP is using psychology, the fashionable science of the day, to elucidate Truth to the best educated. Also, I suspect JP would be even more interested in Catholicism if he read Trad stuff, especially Thomas Aquinas's masterful and amazing Prayer After Communion, because Trads are alllll about facing up to wickedness, our own and other people's.
Anyway, good news. CSiUSA decided I was legit. Which I was. The stakes on what men really want in women are very high. I'm happy to be married to B.A., but I'm not happy I got married too late to have kids. Married trads having and educating kids is the best chance we have for reversing the civilisational decline.
CSiUSA: "The social science is that women want to date "up" and men don't care what women do for a living, as long as they are agreeable and attractive." I was dating a chick, cute as a button, obsessed with her music, her tattoos, how she looked, and not much else, and was completely ignorant, and it was perfect. We were driving, and she was complaining about how our air is dirty, and how it doesn't matter if you smoke, and then I told her that we have some of the cleanest air in the world, and that India and China are the filthy polluters, and she goes, "really?! I didn't know that! You know a lot of stuff! I need to come to you when I want to know about something!" Yep, that's what I like. None of this, "I'm a conservative women! I want to be a doctor and a lawyer!"
That was so freaking brilliant: painful truth about what men think they want. Now it may occur to you that CSiUSA is probably not himself a doctor or a lawyer. Very few men are. I don't actually know what the average guy does for a living. Whatever he can, I imagine. Something boring and often unpleasant. No wonder they think they just want women to be attractive and agreeable.
Me, JBN: Okay, I got it. She didn't set herself [up] as competition instead of as a partner, and she made it clear that you were attractive for your brains and added something to her life. Sounds like good girl-friend material! What did she do for a living, if I may ask?
Wrong question. The right question was "What do you do for a living, CSiUSA?" Too late, though.
CSiUSA: I actually think she was a hair stylist.
And thus my point was proved: women who work in beauty salons are very smart about life. I didn't ask CSiUSA why he didn't marry Miss Completely Ignorant Perfect--probably because unbeknownst to him he hasn't sorted out his own feelings about class, or that she picked up that she can do better than a guy who thinks she's an "airhead." Like I said: beauticians I've met are very smart about life.
University-educated women can also be very smart about life if we stop thinking courting men works the same way as getting a job. I had a bad Pretend Mother moment when Polish Pretend Son wrote about some attractive Nordic atheist he had met who had umpteen scholarships but told him that he was the first man she had ever met who was smarter than her. Every pretend-maternal siren went off.
That Nordic woman was an evil genius, with real smarts as well as scholarships. I respected her the way you respect a worthwhile enemy, as does the hero of a Chesterton novel for his enemy, you know? But virtue must triumph over evil, so I pointed out to PPS that he was being snowed, and now he's marrying a Nice Polish Catholic Girl*, so my job there is done.
One thing the rom-coms get right: if you want a boy to like you, and he already kind of likes women like you, impress upon him that he is smart and can add to your life. The one caveat is that you should pick a nice boy. I'm not sure CSiUSA is actually a nice boy.
*Incidentally, the NPCG is a doctor. But she got PPS's attention, which she didn't necessarily want that badly, by singing him a song about some nefarious fictional character of whom he reminded her. Song girls are such sirens, especially when they don't know it... Jordan Peterson would have a field day.
Update: One thing I think we would have problems getting men to admit is that men also always have been interested in marrying in such a way as to improve their financial circumstances. Anyone who has read a Georgette Heyer novel--do men read Georgette Heyer novels?--should know this. It is quite obvious that one contemporary reason for men's rejection of marriage is that they believe (wrongly) that marriage is a bad financial risk. What is bad for finances is divorce, not marriage. Divorce-prevention is indeed very important but not impossible.
I once broke up with a guy who worried a little too obviously about my ability to earn money. That wasn't the only reason I broke up with him, but it certainly added to the Negative side of the ledger. I'm a bit more sympathetic to such concerns now, but then I was still of baby-having age.
An anecdote to corroborate: My husband was a PhD candidate when we met and we exchanged phone numbers after I, being genuinely impressed by his physics course, mentioned that I had been an English major and would relish the chance to proofread for him. A totally innocent and organic suggestion, but he later said that he saw in that offer that I was willing to cooperate with him rather than compete. He was also impressed that I had an MA, but had left academia when it made me unhappy.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I firmly believe girls should be taught to stop competing with boys once outside the classroom (in the classroom, fight like the dickens, but in a sportswomanlike way--no humiliating the defeated, accepting defeat with grace, handshake at the end, congratulate the guy or gal who did the top mark, all that). T-shirts reading "Anything a boy can do, girls can do better" (or "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them") should be strongly discouraged as the mean-spirited (and deeply stupid) rags they are.
DeleteI am reeeaalllly sorry I grew up thinking boys were the enemy. I had good schoolyard reasons for believing this, unfortunately, but I am still really sorry. It wasn't good for me or anyone else except, possibly, other women who had to witness (or survive) nasty sexual bullying. I'm still sorting it all out. I now think the baddest of the bad apples may have been a survivor of child sexual abuse himself.
DeleteI don't understand why a man would want a woman who was less intelligent than him. Genuinely don't get it. Don't they want an equal partner they can be inspired by? Maybe not *more* intelligent but why significantly less?? You seem to think it's true, Mrs McLean. Can you explain why?
ReplyDeleteI don't think they do. But I do think they THINK they do.
DeleteThe problem is not intelligence. The problem is competition. Even men who enjoy competing with men don't enjoy competing with women--or at very least not the woman he'd be around most. I think this has been exacerbated by a 35 year emphasis on getting women into traditionally "male" careers at the expense of young men. Then there's the whole problem of women-in-generally preferring men who are better educated and better paid than they are, which has not yet been resolved, and men know it. See Jordan Peterson and also Mark Regnerus.
This is why some Harvard-educated women have called the big reveal that they went to Harvard "the H-bomb". Very few men (like very few women) go to Harvard, but all American men know what Harvard is (or what it represents, anyway), so if a woman tells a guy who went to a state college she went to Harvard, he'll think "Out of my league" and reject her before she can reject him.
Canada doesn't have a caste system based on colleges, thank heaven, but I was definitely Miss Smarty-pants O'AnythingboyscandoIcandobetter, for about 37 years. I got my best, most truthful Catholic female friend to tell me why I was still single, and she thought about it and told me it was because I wanted a man who was smarter and better educated than I was, and there weren't that many around. This has to be the best answer to "Why am I single?" ever, so I am not sure why she thought I'd get upset.
Actually, that last bit is related to, but not the same thing as, competition. That's part of the "I make X a year and speak 2 languages, so I respect most those men who make X+1 and speak 3 languages" problem.
DeleteI don't think there's anything wrong with a man wanting to date someone who is less intelligent than he is, but I don't get why the CSiUSA is writing about dating 'redpills' vs 'airheads' when he could date either and no one much would care? Does anyone care who dates whom? I don't really notice it.
ReplyDeleteI am perpetually curious about who wants to date whom and why, and what "dating" now means, and what the difference between "just having fun together" and "courtship" is. This is partly because I am interested in people being happier, or at least less unhappy, and definitely less confused by social life.
DeleteI have read enough of the "red pill" women blogsphere to confidently say that these guys would find issues with those women, too. There's still something inherently quasi-feminist about their thinking and ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is these guys want a women who's in factory settings mode, and it ready to go. No learning, no growth, etc.
I should also add, a lot of the "red pill" type women are extremely competitive. It's obvious with the married women, and they tend to set arbitrary standards for women in general without factoring what the men think. Which is ironic, considering CSiUSA appears to be interested in women who will consider his opinions above their own.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I have seen the problem is not intellegence or competition. Men are told to be the leader in catholic families so they are looking for obedient women. Fr Ripperger lays it all out nicely is his marriage conference talks and in How to Raise a Man.
ReplyDeleteIt is very hard to be a leader in any situation and men's inclinations are towards shying away from leadership roles so ot is easier on us when a women is more obedient.
Hmm. I think we may have to unpack that word "obedient" so it does not sound like "subservient" because that is what it sounds like to women today. If obedient means "respectful" and "co-operative" (obedire is Latin for "to hear" or "incline hearing toward", I believe), that's great. If obedient means "like a child", that's not so great. I will have to have a look at Fr. Ripperger's work to see what he means.
DeleteThat said, I take you point, and thank you for adding such an interesting comment. I wonder if everyone is terrified of the idea of "obedience" to another adult? I know seminarians sometimes wrestle with the idea of obedience to their bishop and presumably some monks and nuns find it difficult to obey a foolish or wicked superior.
DeleteThere is a lot to unpack for sure. As long as everyone understands that authority over anyone is only given for the good of the people under you then it is more palatable. I am sure there are plenty of bad examples of jerk fathers who lord it over their wives. All the bad examples in my life made me realize how important it is to have strong balanced leadership.
DeleteI would listen to some Fr Ripperger talks if you are giving advice to young girls. They are great and my girlfriend and I have learned a lot.
Also as a woman or religious under a superior would you not find it consoling spiritually to never be in the dark as to what is right or wrong as long as you are obedient? Bishops and fathers (obviously to a much lesser degree) have no one to turn to when faced with tough decisions. And both have to account for everyone under them at their judgement.