Dian flexes her muscles and writes:
Actually the friends in my circle are all highly intelligent college graduates and/or self-made women (read: VPs, Tech Writers in Silicon Valley, Managers, etc.). This happens to scare the bejesus out of most men.As a result, my circle of friends have married men who are either weaker in intelligence, education, or accomplishments than the males whom Vox proposes that most women marry “up” to. That is not to say we do not adore our husbands, who are construction workers, drivers, and techs.
Now, first, there’s absolutely nothing wrong in marrying “down”. But for a “highly intelligent college graduate” to say that female intelligence can “scare the bejesus out of most men” is absolutely risible. First, such females’ peers aren’t the least bit intimidated, as they’ve been using such females for at least four solid years before graduating from college, and another two to three years before grad school is done. That cures most of the intelligent males of any desire to waste any more time on what is surely the most conflict-prone, high maintenance group of people on the planet.
It’s entirely possible that smart women scare less intelligent men – I wouldn’t know – but it’s interesting to see how even smart, successful women attempt to evade responsibility for their failures. “It’s not that I’m an unpleasant bitch that no one wants to be around, it’s just that I’m so smart and strong and pretty that everyone is afraid. And in the place of the Dark Lord, there will be a Dark Queen! All shall love me and despair!”
I have news for Dian and everyone else prone to swallowing the Myth of the Strong Woman. Most men don’t fear women. Not at all. While some men may be appear to be afraid of their wives or girlfriends, their actual fear is that if they behave the “wrong” way, their wives won’t have sex with them. Those are two entirely different concepts. Fear of the strong woman” is nothing more than projection that reveals the inherent fear that the physically weaker sex naturally has of the stronger.
Now, Camille Paglia would argue that all men have an instinctive psycho-sexual fear of the cthonic Dionysian Great Mother, thus accounting for the rival Apollonian neuroses of homosexuality and the Church, but this is far outside the scope of Dian’s assertion as it applies to all women, not merely the educated, intelligent and financially successful.