The appeal of intelligent women

Susan has some interesting digressions from her post on the sex appeal, or lack thereof, of Emma Watson:

I am not saying that some men might not find above average intelligence to be attractive, but as a general rule it isn’t something that most guys look for, and unless the guy is a brainiac himself it is likely to be a negative.

Susan: Sounds like you’ve been reading your Roissy. Anything over 120 is just a pain in the ass, as I recall.

Guys with smarts at the upper end of the bell curve wouldn’t agree with Roissy’s maxims, however. Some of them tend toward the Asperger’s end of the spectrum, and I find them to be good company. We “get” each other, and we can sit there and babble on about computer/software/programming/science crap for hours and dig it.

However, Susan and Roissy are correct, the two commenters are not. Any woman with an IQ over 120 has, at the very least, a potential to be a pain in the ass far beyond that of her less intelligent sisters. What is so often forgotten is that the highly intelligent are as far removed from the merely smart as the smart are from the norm. And intelligent men generally aren’t looking for intellectual companionship from women the way most intelligent women think they are, as they’re more concerned about intellectual compatibility. For example, one of my hobbies is writing books, so it is FAR more important to me that my wife be able to amuse herself for several hours in the evening than provide me with a stimulating conversation about the various books we’re reading or whatever.

Also “stimulating conversations” are seldom particularly intellectual in scope or substance, as women tend to prefer talking about subjects rather than actually delving into them. I have met plenty of smart, literate women who enjoy talking intelligently about science, history, literature, and current events, but every single one will flee for the kitchen if something that threatens to go into detail such as intellectual dishonesty in the Euthyphro dialogue or the dichotomy of the Austrian Business Cycle mechanism and equity prices is brought up.

Spacebunny is smart and reads far more than the average individual, but let's face it, if we're going to talk about the latest books we've read, we're going to be discussing the Plantagenet dynasty and some of the historical revisions that have taken place since Runciman published his landmark work, we're not going to be discussing where I think Steve Keen might have taken his critique of neo-classical economics too far and reached some unsustainable conclusions. And with the possible exception of Veronique de Rugy's husband, I can't think of another man who might have the opportunity to do so.

The bigger problem is that for at least the last 20 years, smart women have felt the need to constantly challenge smarter men and it gets tedious constantly have to beat down their pointless arguments. And while it's very easy to blow apart the arguments of a stupid or average woman in such a way that they will accept it, it can be extraordinarily difficult to convince a woman of above-average intelligence of the flaws in hers, even when they are clear and undeniable. The backtracking, the ex post facto redefining, the goalpost-moving, it's all just a vast and tedious exercise in attempted face-saving and it is neither stimulating nor enjoyable.

This is not to say that men of moderate intelligence don't behave exactly the same way when attempting to defend the indefensible, it's just that such behavior is not a relationship concern to highly intelligent men who are not gay.