It’s not the men

In which a women misinterprets the data:

A report from Britain’s leading universities found that for every 16-point increase in their IQ score, men were 35 per cent more likely to find themselves a wife. Yet for women, each 16-point advance in their intelligence decreased their chance of getting married by more than 40 per cent.

This, naturally, is somehow interpreted as men being afraid of successful women. First, this involves confusing intelligence with success; the two may be positively correlated but they are not synonymous. Even using income as a stand-in for success is not necessarily correct since it ignores wealth.

What’s left out of this equation is the fact that women are not helpless bystanders to the process. In most of the situations I’ve seen, it is the fact that many women refuse to consider getting involved with anyone they consider to be less successful, thereby limiting their marital options. For example, I knew several men in college who dated “townies”, but I can’t recall a single university woman ever doing so. In general, I would say it is much more accurate to say that women are scared of unsuccessful men than to say that men are scared of successful women.

But it is true that women significantly overrate the importance of their income and education to most men. While such things might be quite appealing to the lazy guy, the permanent adolescent, or the artistic dreamer, they’re simply irrelevant to the average man who is capable of supporting himself and is interested in having a family. He’s less likely to be concerned about a woman’s “success” and more concerned about the obstacles that “success” places in the way of her successfully being able to live up to the responsibilities of being a wife and mother.