Gender Follies II

One of the weird, sad stereotypes of heterosexual interaction has long been that men don’t want to marry smart, successful women:

Their research, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, found that in 1956, education and intelligence ranked 11th among the things men desired in a mate. The respondents were more attracted to someone who was a good cook and housekeeper, had a pleasing disposition, and was refined and neat.

But nowadays:

Psychologist Rosalind Barnett of Brandeis University and journalism professor Caryl Rivers of Boston University have found that 42 percent of college-educated married women who work outearn their partners, and their marriages are just as stable as those in which the husband makes more than his wife. In fact, Barnett’s new study of dual-earner couples, based on data from the 1990s, found that as the wife worked more, the husband’s view of the quality of his marriage actually improved. Surveys also show that the longer a woman holds a job, the more child care and housework her husband is likely to do, and that well-educated men have increased their housework more than less-educated ones.

No orgasm denial needed. Just don’t marry a dope.

The Romantic Life of Brainiacs

Men are just as gossipy as women. Except when they want to impress them.

On their own, men gossip, with only 0-5 per cent of conversation time devoted to non-social subjects such as work, politics, cultural matters, etc. It is only in mixed-sex groups – where there are women to impress – that the proportion of male conversation time devoted to these more ‘highbrow’ subjects increases dramatically, to 15-20 per cent.

And men are more likely to talk about themselves.

That feminine women shouldn’t crack jokes - or whistle? - was something I heard for the first time maybe two years ago. Did women’s magazines make this up because they weren’t already worrying them about enough silly crap already?

But then again, female humor is easily bent into the worst cliches about women. Funny men, after all, are considered smart, confident and sexy. But wisecracking chicks risk accusations of bitterness, hormonal instability and the assumption (no matter what they look like) that they’re using wit to compensate for physical unattractiveness.

What Hillary’s humor reveals

(Christopher Hitchens, normally a writer of whom I’m fond dumbfounded me a couple of months ago when he wrote a column explaining why women aren’t good at humor.)

And it never hurts to sting a finger in the eye of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, its sequels and profitable spin-offs:

Despite its promotional hype, at its very core it is a sexist, patronizing, male-centered invective which does little more than perpetuate long-held negative gender stereotypes.

The Rebuttal From Uranus