There’s an old joke in conservative circles that the New York Times headline on the last day of time would read “World Ends: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit.” I had to think of that joke when reading this New York Times article on how the shortage of men on college campuses is impacting the social lives of female undergraduates.
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Steve says:
I knew a woman who went to grad school at MIT, in a program that was well over 90% male. I never heard her get very excited about the abundance of social “opportunities,” that’s for sure.
Maybe it’s like an attractive young lady told me once in Alaska, another place with a gender imbalance: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” Steve(Quote)
Zywicki says:
So does that picture mean that Expos caps are cool these or that things are so desperate for women that even a dude with an Expos cap can get chatted-up? Just wondering whether we Nationals fans should be investing in throw-back gear... Zywicki(Quote)
Dilan Esper says:
This is going to incentivize LUNG’s. Dilan Esper(Quote)
yao says:
The NYT also runs articles on the destabilizing gender imbalances in present-day China and the impact it has on the social lives of Chinese men. Does this reinforce or weaken OK’s NYT stereotype? yao(Quote)
ASlyJD says:
Steve,
At my engineering school, the joke was:
The women are like parking spaces — if they’re not handicapped, they’re taken. ASlyJD(Quote)
Go Horns! says:
Sounds like we need to let more Chinese men in to American universities. Go Horns!(Quote)
Orin Kerr says:
Yao:
I find it hard to know based only on your description; I would need to read the article, which I haven’t seen. Link? Orin Kerr(Quote)
MJH21 says:
I think the article paints a pretty pathetic picture of the college age gals they interviewed:
We don’t like the fact that there aren’t packs of guys fawning all over us; it disproportionately gives them power in when it comes to setting the terms for sexual relations; we have to bend our standards if we want to have a boyfriend; and we have to overlook annoying behavior just so as to continue the relationship.
Why it makes them sound like they have been relegated by their circumstances to being treated . . . like guys at every other place and at every other point in time in the history of the world.
Welcome to the other side ladies. It kinda sucks. MJH21(Quote)
Kharn says:
UDel’s incoming class my freshman year was 60/40 F/M, but I never saw an elementary ed major trolling the chem eng building for potential dates.... Kharn(Quote)
JMA says:
[cackling noises deleted] JMA(Quote)
Mike says:
Related to the NY Times article is this awesome Weekly Standard piece on “The New Dating Game.” http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/new-dating-game Mike(Quote)
CJColucci says:
The joke is a good bit older than that, and relates not to the Times but to the long-defunct PM, whose apocryphal headline read: “World Ends: Negroes, Jews Hit Hardest.” And it wasn’t a joke in “conservative circles,” it was, as “political correctness” used to be, liberal irony. You young whippersnapper! CJColucci(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
I thought this bit was interesting:
It makes one wonder what hidden consequences we will see for our society in coming years. Chris Travers(Quote)
Constantin says:
Not this young woman’s fault, but collectively, you sure have come a long way, baby. Constantin(Quote)
Houston Lawyer says:
I call BS on this line. Damn few colleges admit solely the most qualified applicants. I don’t think that the girls would mind if the administration tried to keep the male/female ratio closer to 50/50. A rational administration would keep this in mind so as to provide a better experience for their female students.
Also, what makes the girls think that this is going to suddenly get better when they get out of school? All those guys that they weren’t willing to date while they were in college will still be around. They won’t date those that didn’t go to college because they don’t make enough money. What’s left, dating married men? Houston Lawyer(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
That’s a good observation. It really makes me wonder if we are conditioning a society which will be generally accepting of cheating generally....
One solution would be to legalize polygamy though..... Chris Travers(Quote)
Mike says:
The dating market is much like the economic market. The middle class is dying. Alpha males of the dating market are getting as much @55 as they want. The middle class is getting scraps, and they are always getting cheated on.
Think of the pick up artists (PUAs) as the Goldman Sachs of the dating world.
These are the salad days of the good-looking, interesting, and in-shape male. Mike(Quote)
David Chesler says:
Except they don’t even realize that. From the article:
She won’t consider dating men who aren’t in the top half of the dating pool. That bottom half of the male undergraduates is having just as bad a time as they would at any other time or place.
(I and a few of my friends found ourselves no longer married in our mid-forties. And demographics be damned, we’re in the same patterns as twenty years ago. The stud is still a stud, the nice guys weren’t seeing particularly more action and have settled into monogamy. Which is a lot less stressful the second time around.) David Chesler(Quote)
Spitzer says:
Orin: I assume you mean “affecting” the lives of co-eds, not “impacting” them. Unless you were trying to be humorous... Spitzer(Quote)
Orin Kerr says:
Spitzer:
Random House Dictionary:
(emphasis added) Orin Kerr(Quote)
Bruce Hayden says:
The problem is not that there aren’t enough guys, but rather, that there aren’t enough guys of a social or educational status as high or higher than the women’s. The problem is that women tend to marry (and date) across and up, and the men marry across and down.
What is a bit scary is that these trends are even worse in the African-American community, and there are a lot of well educated women there who never marry as a result.
What is a bit scary about college right now, as compared to when I attended 40 years ago, is how feminized it has gotten. Back then, I could ace a physics class by acing the tests. No longer. Now group projects, homework, etc. are often as important. In other words, going through the correct motions and getting along with peers is as important as really knowing the subject matter.
Finally, polygamy has its own problems. Yes, it would to some extent solve the problem of the women, but it wouldn’t help, and may even harm, the guys who are not was well educated or affluent. And, in the long run, I would argue that they are the more important issue. Without marriage, they often end up running in juvenile packs (i.e. gangs today), until they end up in prison. Bruce Hayden(Quote)
rj says:
Several undergrads selected for quotation in a feature article engage in hyperbole about how hard their dating life is?
Stop the presses! rj(Quote)
Orin Kerr says:
Bruce Hayden writes:
This is so contrary to any experience I have had or even heard of that I really would be quite interested if you will say more, Bruce. Here are three questions in particular, if you will let me put you on the spot for a second here:
1) What is “feminized” about Physics problem sets, which are the ordinary type of “homework” in physics classes?
2) Can you link to any syllabi or other evidence, especially from physics classes, the example you picked, to support your claims that “group projects” and the like are “often as important” as tests?
3) Assuming you can answer #2, what’s the basis for your claim that the skill measured by assignments outside exam measure the ability to “go through the correct motions and get along with peers”?
Of course, you’re under no obligation to answer these questions if you don’t wan to. But I would be interested in your answers if you’re willing. Orin Kerr(Quote)
Malvolio says:
Noun. Noun, noun, noun.
(So I’m a prescriptionist, so shoot me.) Malvolio(Quote)
TRE says:
Is the guy sitting at a table with all women wearing an expos hat and a scarf an alpha male? I’ve seen this phrase “alpha male” and I don’t understand what it means when we are talking about people. In the animal world, animals fight, and whoever wins is the alpha male, who then gets a monopoly on procreation in the pack or whatever. At some point he is taken out by a “beta male” who then becomes the “alpha male.”
For humans, men are called alpha male because they get female attention. There is no requirement for combat, the sole determination is the female’s. There is no requirement for procreation, most of this activity explicitly does not result in procreation.
If we are to follow the actual logic, some of the least exalted people in our society are closer to the ideal of an alpha male. Rural denizens of Mississippi trailer parks for example or whomever is out there creating babies like mad. TRE(Quote)
Joseph Slater says:
These are the salad days of the good-looking, interesting, and in-shape male.
As if internet blog readers weren’t already painfully aware of that. . . . Joseph Slater(Quote)
MaryG says:
Those were thoughtful questions to pose to Bruce H., Orin K.
Things like that, they are kind of par for the course on blogs like drhelen’s (where I recognize Bruce H. from). So I’m glad you asked those questions to explore the topic more fully.
(Bruce H. has a gifted daughter he has mentioned, so perhaps his experience is based on hers? Regardless, this “feminization” meme when you ask young men to follow rules or turn in assigned work on deadline — I think it comes from a NYT story a year back, and the generational elders missing their boyhood have run with it.) MaryG(Quote)
DNJ says:
You know, interracial marriage is legal these days.
Orin, I do think the NYT has drawn attention to a real problem. The power dynamics the disparity creates and the pressure it puts on women are very troubling. Do you disagree? DNJ(Quote)
SuperSkeptic says:
How is criminalizing it constitutional now? SuperSkeptic(Quote)
yankee says:
Orin has mostly gotten to this before, but how are problem sets more “feminized” than tests? You have to do the same sorts of problems and get them correct either way. The major difference is that with problem sets you have more time to consider the correct answer, which is hardly more “feminized.”
As for “group projects,” I have no idea how prevalent they are, but when I studied physics as an undergraduate a few years ago I was assigned exactly one group project: groups of students were assigned various bits of the syllabus to figure out on their own and present to the class instead of having the professor lecture on the subject.
Whatever the merits of these pedagogical/evaluative techniques, the fact that you regard them as “feminized” and therefore bad says a lot more about you than it does about the curricula. yankee(Quote)
SuperSkeptic says:
Feminization = Politicization? SuperSkeptic(Quote)
Spitzer says:
Orin: you cite the word’s noun usage, not its use as a verb. English is a great and malleable tongue, and I am not opposed to the evolution of vocabulary and grammar. ‘Impact’ is traditionally a noun, with some uncommon uses as a verb. This usage, however, reflects a common problem that has cropped up over the past generation or so, largely as a consequence of the fear of confusing the proper use of affect/effect.
It is well established that something can “have an impact on” something else, or “make an impact on” something, or “impact against” something, and something can even impact something else (i.e. squash it, pound it, press firmly against it). Of course “impact” can be used intransitively as well (the meteor impacted right over there). But “impacting” a girl’s social life is downright barbarous. See, e.g., OED (“the phrase verb ‘impact on’, as in ‘when produce is lost, it always impacts on the bottom line’ has been in the language since the 1960s. Many people disapprove of it”); Websters II New College (vt. 1. to pack firmly together; 2. to strike forcefully; 3. Informal. To have an effect on. usage: The use of ‘impact’ in this sense is unacceptable to many”); Garner (Impact has traditionally been only a noun. In recent years, however, it has undergone a semantic shift that has allowed it to act as a verb. . . . These uses of the word would be perfectly acceptable if ‘impact’ were performing any function not as ably performed by ‘affect’ or ‘influence’. . . . the careful writer might use ‘have an impact on’ which, though longer, is probably better than the jarring impact of ‘impacted.’ Reserve ‘impact’ for noun uses and ‘impacted’ for wisdom teeth.”) Spitzer(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
That would be only the case if polygamy was defined only being multiple wives to a husband. If polyandry were legal as well, it might address the guys who are less well educated or affluent....
This proposal is offered partly in jest, of course. but it is interesting to think through the problem and propose solutions.
One would be to suggest that men should marry up and women should marry down but that probably won’t fly and not sure how one would mandate that sort of cultural shift.... Chris Travers(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
Just because the Supreme Court is unwilling to revisit 19th century precedents.... Chris Travers(Quote)
yankee says:
Except for all the places and times where women were in no position to pick and choose because had no route to economic self-sufficiency other than through a man, were set up in arranged marriages, were sold for bride prices, etc.—i.e. an enormous portion of world history (possibly most of it), including large parts of the world today.
The fact that you and your friends are not in a position to be choosy does not mean your situation reflects the entire history of the world. yankee(Quote)
Orin Kerr says:
Spitzer,
That’s an interesting take on stuff, but if you think it’s gonna be impacting what I write on the blog, you’re way wrong, dude.
Orin Orin Kerr(Quote)
sardonic_sob says:
It won’t fly because out there in the trenches, it is still worse to be a non-breadwinning male than a non-breadwinning female. Women want providers. A man who cannot provide more for a woman than she can provide for herself is automatically relegated to the bottom of the consideration list. He may win his way back up, but he’s already got a strike against him. sardonic_sob(Quote)
A. Criminal says:
#1: I’m not sure if “feminized” is the right word, though it probably is, but class content has been revamped to make things easier for the stupid kids; clearly it’s easier for a stupid kid to get answers from a book, internet or friends than to ace a test.
#2 Here’s an example (the first appropriate one I found w/google [college “group projects” physics grading]):
http://pico.unh.edu/Teaching_web/S09syllabus.pdf
(MATH 426H / PHYS 408H Studio Calculus/Physics)
Grading Schemes: Half of your grade is based on work you will be doing in collaboration with others: class work including attendance (10%), homework (30%) and project(s) (10%). A consistent effort throughout the semester is essential for success. The other half is based on two semester exams and a number of quizzes (30% total) and the final exam (20%) where you show what you can do on your own.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/impact
Impact: –verb (used with object)
9. to have an impact or effect on; A. Criminal(Quote)
Orin Kerr says:
DNJ writes:
My point isn’t that it isn’t an interesting story, but rather that it’s just one narrow story out of so many that could be told. It’s the choice of that one story over the others that is interesting.
Any time there is a gender imbalance in education there is always a range of stories to tell. Common examples include: 1) How the underrepresented group isn’t getting the benefit of the education that the overrepresented group is getting, 2) How the underrepresented group feels underrepresented, and what impact those feelings might have, 3) Causes of why one group is overrepresented and the other underrepresented, and 4) Whether steps should be taken to equalize the representation. This story is a fifth one that isn’t normally reported, 5) How the social lives of the overrepresented groups tend to suffer by the imbalance.
What is interesting about the story is that I don’t recall this angle ever being reported in a major news outlet with the genders switched. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a newspaper reporting the story with the genders switched; A hypothetical story about college guys bitching about how every party is a sausage-fest is something we imagine seeing in the pages of The Onion, not the New York Times. Orin Kerr(Quote)
ShelbyC says:
I don’t know about physics, but I got a English degree in the early ‘90s and a Business degree in the late aughts. I had exactly 0 group projects the first time around, and the second time almost half our grades for every class was based on group projects. ShelbyC(Quote)
yankee says:
That’s one way to tell the story, another is to say that men don’t women who earn more than them because they feel the need to be in control in the relationship and feel emasculated if they earn less than their wife. Of course these explanations (women don’t want men who earn less than they do, men don’t want women who earn more than they do) aren’t mutually exclusive. yankee(Quote)
Prof. S. says:
This is probably the most accurate statement so far. This story reflects that women have fewer guys who they are willing to chase (or be chased by). The guys who weren’t getting any before still aren’t getting more now.
I went to a school athat was about a 55/45 — 60/40 F/M split. Because of the urban environment, that just meant that a lot of women were dating guys who weren’t in school, not that those of us who were there were enjoying better odds.
Funny — Law school had this same disproportionate number of females, but the women were smarter than in this story. Instead of competing, they just dated associates at law firms. Prof. S.(Quote)
yankee says:
Leaving aside the merits of this “clear” claim, the fact that you think “feminizing” is “probably” the right word to describe making things easier for dumb kids says a lot about you. yankee(Quote)
jab says:
Mr. Hayden...
I respectfully say B.S. I am a professor of physics... still in my 30’s. I teach at a VERY liberal public university in California. Grades are strictly based on quantitative problem sets and exams. It is that way at pretty much every public university in California... it is still true at the Ivy League school I did my undergraduate studies and where I later taught as a postdoc... I am very much in touch with at least a few dozen college professors of physics from Ivy League universities, to large public flagship universities, to small liberal arts colleges, and even community colleges. Subject matter competence is all that matters... I have no idea what institution you must be talking about. jab(Quote)
Dilan Esper says:
What is interesting about the story is that I don’t recall this angle ever being reported in a major news outlet with the genders switched. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a newspaper reporting the story with the genders switched; A hypothetical story about college guys bitching about how every party is a sausage-fest is something we imagine seeing in the pages of The Onion, not the New York Times.
I take Professor Kerr’s point in the lighthearted fashion that I am sure that he intended it. However, there’s certainly an international relations version of the converse story, which is the stories about the glut of young marriageable males in many Asian countries due to sex-selective abortions. And you could also argue that the stories about Mormon Fundamentalists’ “lost boys” are a version of this story as well. Dilan Esper(Quote)
mjh21 says:
Yankee:
That’s called a joke. It’s funny, you see, because those complaints made by the women in the article, as a general proposition, sound similar to complaints men make about dating women. Jokes are different than categorical imperatives. Maybe you can ask your programmer to upload a few jokes into your hard-drive for analysis. Some rules of thumb about jokes:
1. Sterotypes are often used to over-simplify complex problems and intereactions simply for humor’s sake.
2. There is no scientific evidence that blondes have lower IQs than people with different colored hair.
3. Almost anything can be made un-funny if a robot like you says afterwards, words to the effect of “Yes, but not in________________ (Insert involuntary servitude, a caste system, or Nazi Germany, here) mjh21(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
Hence we should suggest that upper-class men should be free to marry more than one woman and lower-class women should be free to marry more than one man. A win for everyone..... Chris Travers(Quote)
Mike says:
Yep. http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/then-and-now/
Those of us who follow the PUA movement are not happy about this. But, well, you can be Robert Bork and complain about the decline of culture — to no effect. Or you can start dressing like a douche bag and getting the women. Choice is yours. Mike(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
I like that the girls are honest that they consider half of all men on campus categorically undateable. “Yeah, guys are slovenly, cheat on us, and push outrageous sexual demands, but it’s that or date a math/science/computer/engineering guy.” John Armstrong(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
“prescriptivist” (BANG) John Armstrong(Quote)
Mike says:
Why do you want to be a provider chump? I’m not willing to enslave myself to a woman. Why are you?
Go to a site like Hot Chicks With Douchebags. Look around. I know many of those kinds of men. They are financial dead beats. Women still flock to them.
This changes as a woman gets older. After a decade of going for the douchebags, though, women are looking for a man to help them realize their Mommy and Homeowner fantasies.
So...I guess if you’re in your 30s and are willing to go for the sloppy scraps...Women in their 30s who have been run through by d-bags...You’ll have a chance...Not really how I prefer to live my life.
Go to the gym. Tan. Take steroids. Wear True Religion jeans and Ed Hardy shirts. Read the “Mystery Method.” See how quickly your ability to be a beta provider becomes irrelevant. A PUA, when asked what he does for a living, will deflect. Only betas are eager to show their resumes to a woman.
It’s not just “dumb girls” who go for that PUA stuff, either. Female doctors, lawyers, professors all go for the bad boys/d-bags...At least until they are in their 30s and the clock starts ticking. Then they want a nice guy/beta. That’s when a guy’s stability matters.
I dunno...Seems pretty gross to me to be the guy waiting patiently for a chick to finishing having her “fun,” and then being there for her. Mike(Quote)
Turk Turon says:
The NYT had a memorable piece on the M/F imbalance in Beirut, Lebanon back in 2006 at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/world/middleeast/02beirut.html
To paraphrase Janeane Garofalo, “I know our body image problems are mostly our own faults, but I still blame men.” Turk Turon(Quote)
gobstopper says:
I laughed out loud at the first comment. gobstopper(Quote)
Michelle Dulak Thomson says:
Orin Kerr,
What is interesting about the story is that I don’t recall this angle ever being reported in a major news outlet with the genders switched.
Well, of course not. If it were a story about colleges that were 60/40 m/f, and college guys lamenting that they had so few female classmates to date (and that, of those few, only half were even borderline-acceptable date material), the first two things readers would think would be
(1) What a pathetic bunch of whining wankers. Do you imagine that women exist only in college classrooms? Get a life!
and
(2) WTF! What insidious social force is driving bright young girls from college? How can there be a gender gap like this? Someone ought to do something!
With the genders reversed, though ... Well, college women dating men without a college education is the closest thing we have to “scandalous” these days. And gender gaps that have women on the winning side are just not news. Michelle Dulak Thomson(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
A prescriptionist is a pharmacist, right?
Or is this one of those “take two nouns and call me in the morning” things? ;-)
(all in light humor of course) Chris Travers(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Meanwhile, individuals of either sex who have both clear values and something to offer, continue to do just fine. But no one writes articles about them.
My daughter had a whole bunch of group projects in middle and high school. I used to resent having to spend my time ferrying her around until she could drive herself, b/c these had to be done outside school time; and I wasn’t in school, and didn’t appreciate having my time scheduled like that. Not that that was her fault at all. And I remember her begging her friends on the phone to please work together to come up with some kind of schedule so they could get their project done: “I need this grade, guys.” I resented that on her behalf.
But one or two projects were pretty cool. I assisted with one, by bringing a Feedstuffs issue with a cute ad about carbadox, a growth promotant used in pigs, and an example of the calibration curve, chromatograms, and calculations we had to do when analyzing pig feed for the stuff; and her group built an entire presentation around it.
My daughter attended a university whose student body was about 85% female (down from 100% in my day). She majored in biology and they worked her tail off, group projects or not.
I will say that in the real world, people who cannot work in groups are a real disadvantage for the rest of the team. I don’t know whether group projects teach people to work in groups very effectively. We didn’t really have those in my day, but I can work in a group. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Mike says:
This is nicely bookended by the complaints that men here and elsewhere have voiced, that it’s such a travesty that the HOT women don’t want them. Whereas, the women who are not HOT might as well be cats and dogs, regardless of their fitness as a life partner.
As I said — individuals of either sex who have both clear values and something to offer, continue to do just fine. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
D.R.M. says:
“A lot of guys know that they can . . . not treat girls to drinks or flatter them, and girls will still flirt with them”
Cool, feminism has achieved another social goal. After all, why should we expect men to buy women drinks and flatter them? D.R.M.(Quote)
Frank G says:
Something about this topic reminded me of this quote:
http://www.bash.org/?369 Frank G(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Funny, Frank. Am reminded of Pride and Prejudice:
That was Darcy, of course. He ate his words later, when he found himself attracted to Elizabeth but he’d already ticked her off. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Mike says:
Great point. Of course, it goes back to the common rejoinder: Women want equal rights, but they don’t want to pick up the dinner check. Mike(Quote)
Dan the Chemist says:
I’m not sure what physics course you’re talking about, but in my undergrad physics classes it was never possible to get the answers to problem set questions from a book or the internet. Problem set questions were always tons tougher than exam questions precisely because you were given more time. Dan the Chemist(Quote)
1040 says:
they are different degrees, with different skills that you are expected to get.... 1040(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
I am actually going to argue something else.
I have known a lot of women (including some of my relatives and an ex-girlfriend) who felt a need to “save” troubled souls. I don’t think it is universal but it affects a certain subset of women. Generally if the guy starts to improve, the girl loses interest. This seems rather counterproductive to me.
Who do I blame? Disney! The fact is that Disney has taken a number of very great fairy tails and turned them into stories of unrealistic expectations fulfilled in the areas of love and romance. Young girls are raised on this crap and they copy the wrong sorts of imaginary role models.
We would do better to read to our children the unsanitized versions of the fairy tales (The Frog Prince, Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, etc) than to poison the spirits of our children with Disney’s versions.
Our culture provides the wrong ideals, esp. for girls. This isn’t the end of the world, but it means parents have twice the job to do. Chris Travers(Quote)
Perseus says:
But as Steve Sailer argues, there are distinct patterns in interracial marriage that make it unlikely that the obvious solution of more Asian men marrying black women will occur anytime soon (regardless of whether the causes are physical or social). Perseus(Quote)
TRE says:
I don’t really buy it. It stretches the term to meaningless if it just means guys who have the most sex with the girls of their most choosing. I’ve heard it may not even be a good term for the animal kingdom.
As to this story, I’ve heard it in several forms, and yeah, what a joke. Unfortunately, I don’t think the joke will be got until we find out in 20 years what the social ramifications of all this means.
It seems to me there is something to the argument that our school systems (including public universities) are tilted towards females, which results in this skewed university distribution. TRE(Quote)
Orin Kerr says:
Mike, Laura, everybody:
Please be civil. Orin Kerr(Quote)
Anatid says:
So women lowering their standards would be a good first step. But your average 19-year-old, only a year away from her parents’ nest, isn’t likely to have discovered yet that the quiet, skinny chemistry major will treat her like a princess while the self-confident, handsome athlete is sleeping with half her sorority.
Give ‘em time. Anatid(Quote)
Diana says:
As one of the undergraduate females in question I cannot wait until the day we can abandon the myth of the math geek with a heart o’ gold. Just because somebody is awkward and intelligent doesn’t automatically mean they are an affectionate partner or a kind soul. Why should women have to lower their standards? They are surrounded by loutish bores and the socially reclusive but the problem is, of course, the women! If only they weren’t so darn picky!
Charming! You associate dumbed down curricula with femininity. I can’t imagine that kind of enlightened attitude would put you at any disadvantage among today’s college girls. Diana(Quote)
Anatid says:
Diana, this is a problem that both young men and young women share: the tendency to put more weight on physical appearance, charisma, and confidence, and less weight on intelligence, kindness, and all-around personality. It’s easy to get lured in by someone who’s full of himself/herself.
If you’re as gold-plated as you seem to think you are, then you should have your pick of plenty of men to date. If not?
We give the exact same advice to shy guys who bemoan their inability to find a woman to date: rather than dreaming about the hotties you’ll never touch (who you don’t have much in common with anyway), instead, pay attention to the quiet cute girl who never seems to get noticed. Sure, sometimes she’ll fulfill the stereotype and is a noxious waste of time, but much more often, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
(And I have no idea where this guy got these notions about problem sets being easy. All my physics/biochem/electrical engineering/etc friends would spend hours and hours on a single set, because they’re far harder than the material on exams. But then, in a lot of these classes, 50% curves to an A.) Anatid(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
Diana, you’re right: just because a guy’s a math “geek” (there’s that othering tendency...) doesn’t make him a saint.
I actually think the current sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” gets it pretty much right, where each of the four male leads is a math (well, astro/physics/engineering, but still) “geek”. Of them, one can’t talk in front of a woman unless he’s drunk, one is arrogant and monomaniacal, and one is lecherous. The best of the bunch is still awkward and tone deaf in dating situations.
But there’s a converse: while the mathematically– and technically-oriented may not automatically have hearts of gold, they aren’t categorically undateable either.
As for being able to set aside the trope, I think a precondition is that these young men — as a class — feel appreciated for their positive traits. When “geeks” are seen as a valued group instead of as disincentives to be outweighed, then there will be less of a reason to promulgate a social narrative to try and do the outweighing.
That is, “geeky” guys prop up the “heart of gold” line themselves because they believe (and not without evidence!) that without something like that, they don’t stand a chance in the current society. To compare: overweight women prop up the “great personality” line because they believe that without it they don’t stand a chance in the current society. John Armstrong(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Suppose that your average 19-year-old, only a year away from her parents’ nest, IS the quiet, skinny chemistry major who would treat her boyfriend with the courtesy and respect one person ought to have from another. But she doesn’t have a boyfriend, because she is not HOT. Eventually she does meet a man who appreciates her, and they have a long and happy marriage. But she gets to listen to complaints about how horrible women are, how they only want the a-holes, etc.
I do have a happy marriage, and have since 1982. But I look back to that lonely girl I used to be, who thought she must not even be female for the lack of male attention she got, and when I listen to the compaining of men who would not have given her the time of day if their paths have crossed, I have no sympathy. Nor for a person who was stupid enough to enter an unadvisable marriage, who has the absolute nerve to tell a man such as my husband that he was a fool to get married because I will certainly leave him. Or that, being a woman, it is a given that I “married up” for God’s sake. I am so sick of reading that term, as though a woman is never as good as the man she partners with.
However, I will try to be civil from now on. It’s just that I know exactly where to go to read the misogynists’ viewpoint and I’d like to find places with vigorous and interesting discussions, that don’t feature it. Beginning to think they don’t exist. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Dan Weber says:
Humans seek mates that will enhance their standing in the primate status game. The bulk of men pursue the top women and the bulk of women pursue the top men.
At least, until they grow up. The “top” of the other gender isn’t set by some pure antiseptic function. I can’t remember the study (if you really really want it I can search for it), but a group of researchers took photos of an “average” guy and, upon telling women that other women wanted him, they all wanted him, too. The entire phenomenon can be self-fulfilling. I’m sure it happens with the genders reversed, and probably also in homosexual mating.
I went to MIT in the 90’s and it’s pretty hard for me to set aside my experience as a result of that. My high school classes were well over female and I had never learned to be aggressive, which was required when the scales flipped such. At least the men didn’t consider “there are 40% women but you only would consider about half of them.” Pretty much all the women were fair game, even the 17 year old freshmen, who had the distinct advantage of not having had to put up shields to filter out the aggressiveness.
My sons won’t have the same problem, which a little atavistic part of me enjoys, but being in the gender minority also has its disadvantages. They may be able to choose well, but when your mates have to compete so fiercely it becomes hard to get true signals of who people are. Dan Weber(Quote)
sardonic_sob says:
Excellently said. sardonic_sob(Quote)
sardonic_sob says:
I like you. And I say that having been, literally, all four of those things. sardonic_sob(Quote)
Bob White says:
Laura,
The shy chemistry girl loses out to the cute el ed student. But if you change the scene to where the el ed student doesn’t exist and the shy chemistry girl is the only option, the shy chemistry girl gets a date. The dorky math major loses out to the cut athlete. If you remove the cut athlete out of the picture and the dorky math major is the only option, the dorky math major still doesn’t get a date. You seem to be missing that distinction. Bob White(Quote)
sardonic_sob says:
I didn’t say I did. But absent the majority of men becoming disciples of Game, which not only won’t happen but would make Game largely ineffective (i.e. that classic cartoon where Bugs and Yosemite Sam chase each other with larger and larger guns) men are going to take women as they find them and that is how they will find them.
Incidentally, it tends to make disciples of Game angry when I say this, but learning Game does not make you an alpha. It makes you a beta who can convincingly imitate an alpha such that less attentive and/or intelligent women will believe you are one and become attracted to you. A sheep in wolf’s clothing is still a sheep, even if all the female sheep are attracted to his false aura of danger. sardonic_sob(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
What you are missing, Bob, is that if the dorky math major had asked me out, I’d have been over the moon. He didn’t want a date with me, I reckon, or he’d have had one. At the perspective I now have, I can say “his loss” but at the time it was damn hard.
I have to learn to read these things and remember that in the context, I am not a “woman”. I think that will help me to scroll on by. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
sardonic_sob says:
Advocates of Game, along with others of various philosophical bents, will respond to this by saying that despite what the girl may say she wants, or may have been told she wants, and even may think she wants, she doesn’t *want* to be be treated like a princess, and therefore it is irrelevant whether she has made or ever makes this discovery.
I personally think that both sides wildly overestimate the validty of their theories and overdiscount individual variation. It is just as foolish — and more importantly, just as inaccurate — to say that every woman wants to be treated like a princess as it is to say that every woman wants to be treated like a toy. sardonic_sob(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
I think it would be interesting to learn what various people think “treated like a princess” means. Is there a dichotomy, wherein a man can treat a woman like a princess, or he can be a jerk, and there’s no in between? Like just common courtesy and consideration? Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Dan Weber says:
He probably would have also loved it if you had asked him out.
Of course I’m ignoring the social setups both of you were in. Maybe you were discouraged by the lack of attention. Maybe he was discouraged by the lack of responses he got elsewhere. Dan Weber(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Mississippi, 1978. A girl who asked a boy out was a scary predator.
I don’t want to suggest that I NEVER had a date, because I did. But these were few and far between. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Bob White says:
Laura,
You’re still missing my point. From what you say about yourself, you sound like you were a low status choice. When there’s a high status choice, men will go for the high status choice. When there’s no/limited high status choice, men will go for the low status choice. Flip that around, when there’s no/limited high status choice, women will still go for the high status choice and ignore the low status choice. Put another way, men will go after the 7 and ignore the 4 if there’s both a 7 and a 4, but if they can’t get the 7, men will go after the 4. Women, OTOH, will continue to ignore the 4 and go after a smaller pool of 7’s. Bob White(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Bob, I guess I am totally missing your point.
If a male geek had sat around whining that the girls didn’t want him, yet would not ask me out, did he, or did he not, have a grievance?
And if I would have gone out with the 4, but he didn’t ask me, then when you say “Women, OTOH, will continue to ignore the 4 and go after a smaller pool of 7’s.” you are confirming that I was in fact not a woman? Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
Take a person who’s been told that they’re socially worthless pretty much their entire life. Put them next to someone who’s shy and (understandably) socially defensive. Is the first person more likely to interpret the second’s behavior as shy interest or defensive disinterest?
In short: he didn’t ask you out because he thought you didn’t want anything to do with him. But, madam, I see that you still insist that the man has to make the first move. Why does the chemistry student have to wait for the math student to approach her anyway?
And we’re the misogynists? John Armstrong(Quote)
Bob White says:
Laura,
Hmm, I guess we’ve been sort of talking past each other. I’ll take another stab at it.
In a 60% male environment, you might expect females to be better off from a dating perspective. This is generally true. The high status women get dates, and the low status women generally do as well. This is in a perfectly closed world, which is rarely the case in the real world. In a more open world, men may look outside the 60% male environment to avoid the lower status women there to find women of higher status or similar status with different status qualities (beauty over brains, in a 60% male college context).
In a 60% female environment, you might expect males to be better off from a dating perspective. In fact, that’s only true for high status males, as the quote from the article posted upthread, “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider”, shows perfectly. Even in a closed world, women don’t look to men of low status.
If I may, a numerical example. 100 men and 100 women, each age 20. 60 of the women go to college, 40 of the men do. It’s increasingly true that college-educated women tend not to marry non-college-educated men. So, the 40 non-college women marry some of the 60 non-college men. We’re at 40 couples and 20 non-marriageable men. The 60 college women are not willing to marry 20 of the college-educated men. We’re up to 40 couples and 40 non-marriageable men (some of the college-educated men marry non-college women, but that increases the number of non-marriageable non-college men, so it nets out). Going back to our quote, half of those men are paired, so let’s say they end up married. We have 50 couples and 40 non-marriageable men, which leaves us 50 non-married college women and 10 marriageable men-and with a ratio like that, why would these marriageable men get married? In practical terms, that’s how you get single females in Manhattan with average sex partners 10–15 times the national average. If you prefer state of society grandstanding, that’s half the wombs out of circulation and half the men whose personal good is orthogonal to societal good, which may be a recipe for species-death.
Feel free to quibble with the numbers, and I’ll note I don’t agree with the state of society grandstanding, but that’s the general dynamic at play. Bob White(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Er, because when I tried I didn’t get anywhere?
Have you ever been in the position of being invisible? People’s eyes sliding past you when you tried to talk to them?
One of the things that attracted me to my husband when we first met was that I expressed an opinion and he gave me his full attention, and responded to what I said. I said that I did not like raisins, and why. From there we went to science fiction and that convo went on for quite some time. This was 1981 and I remember it distinctly. I was visible to him. I still am. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
That quote was from one person. From there, you jump to “women”. Athletes bore the crap out of me. So do men who think they’re God’s gift to women, and feel no need to make themselves pleasant or act like they had some raising. I suspect that this eliminates high status men, so we are back to me not being a woman.
My daughter once told me what she was looking for in a boyfriend: “He has to have a brain, and act like a human being”. So she’s not a woman either. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Bob White says:
Laura,
There are always counter-examples; my college roommate married one of them. Former VC contributor Tyler Cowen’s comment that “weird men should marry foreign women” is also apposite; that’s another college friend. But, in general trends, men seem to relax their status desires where necessary while won’t. Bob White(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
Yes, I taught college algebra in my last professorial position.
But seriously, yeah that’s been pretty much my situation since way back. Socially, a mathematician is a nonentity. And yes, I’ve pined for the shy chemistry students as much or more than the insipid “high status” cookie-cutter cheerleader types. Those that weren’t swiftly snapped up or mooning over the high-status men radiated disinterest and unapproachability. In retrospect, maybe it was a defense on their parts, but at the time it seemed apparent that the attitude was “don’t even bother”. John Armstrong(Quote)
Anatid says:
Presumably, now that it’s socially acceptable for college women to ask out men, some of Laura’s difficulty will have lessened?
(Laura, instead of taking a “If you say X about all women, and it does not apply to me, then I am not a woman” perspective on some of these comments, try instead “If you say X about all women, and it does not apply to me, then you’re an overgeneralizing tool.” I take a similar philosophy to the endless “all liberals think X” comments I have to wade through on this blog in order to get at the intelligent discussion.) Anatid(Quote)
lucia says:
Orin–
One feature I’ve noticed in these articles is that they first explain how the gender imbalance makes the women’s live difficult and then suggest lower standards to admit men with lesser academic qualifications would benefit the women.
In contrast, in the late 70s-80s, my make classmates in engineering complained about women not dating them. But no one suggested their difficulties getting dates presented a good reason to lower admissions standards for women, or provide better financial aid.
Programs to encourage women to apply did spring up– but no one ever really suggested schools lower admissions standards; moreover, no one suggested the average female student enrolled in engineering had lower high school gpa, board scores or letters of recommendation. Those in admissions complained the contrary was true. It was mostly women themselves who chose to avoid engineering. lucia(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
John: Here.
Anatid, my difficulty is lessened by my being 49 years old (and hence on the shelf anyway) but more importantly, having been married for all of my adult life to a man who does not think I am an entitled princess or a nonentity.
I wonder about my daughter, though. I keep seeing the idea that men think women are attracted to a-holes, and that a man has to act like a jerk to attract a woman. Is she going to be running into that? Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
Laura: yes, I acknowledged that it’s possible. On the other hand, Randall writes fantasy as much as common reality. How is one to tell the difference in the everyday world?
It’s as maybe, anyway, for now. There are other more pressing difficulties with a mathematical background than a terrible dating life.
As for your daughter, probably yes. Note that the disgusting “Pick-Up Artist” culture has only become as popular as it is recently. It certainly wasn’t around ten years ago when I was an undergraduate. John Armstrong(Quote)
Northern Dave says:
Wow....so different from my physics/math/comp.sci/engineering crew’s experience from way back.
No, there were fewer females in our divisions (and way fewer that we would have considered dating — one would have got dates except that she began every second sentence with, “All men are scum!”, which tends to make men demure as in the male mind dating is for fun and not conflict....). So we polite, well groomed, well-informed young fellows that we were either took optional courses in classes populated highly by females (all the subjective topics like Psych.) or got out and did stuff (I was heavily involved with my faith groups, S. was with a band, etc. etc.)
We didn’t talk about our specialties in mixed company — the eyes glaze over in around 3–4 seconds. We talked about what they liked and were interested in.
Don’t recall any of the guys ever having a problem getting a date....(mind you, we were tall....).
It’s analogous to fishing. If one wants X variety of fish (say bass) one goes to where the bass are.
If Laura’s daughter is looking for someone with strong values she won’t find them at keg parties or Spring Break (though if she’s looking for a thin waist and malleability.... :-) ).
I’ll end with a question.
All of my near kin who have found lifemates these last few years have found them through the online process where like-mindedness and a few basic criterion (one of my old female fellow students demanded bank statements before dating anyone, with a minimum requirement before any date would occur...mercenary, but honest :-) ) act as filters.
Have these young lasses never heard of eHarmony? Northern Dave(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
1 — My daughter would not go to a keg party if her life depended on it. Her spring breaks were spent with us, at home. She is, however, preparing a costume for MegaCon.
2 — “...one would have got dates except that she began every second sentence with, ‘All men are scum!’...” and we are not surprised to learn that her dating success was equivalent to those whose every second sentence starts with “The modern American woman is an entitled princess!”. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Anatid says:
Presumably, she’s been dealing with them since she was a 14-year-old entering high school. And presumably, since you raised her well, she’s long since grown out of the stage of her life where the charismatic a-hole seems attractive, and has discovered that the desirable characteristics in a man to date are very similar to the desirable characteristics in a male friend. If she has good taste in opposite-sex friends, I wouldn’t worry a bit. If all her friends are female (which would be an eyebrow-raiser, since from what you’ve said in other threads she’s a geeky type with many stereotypically-male-geek interests) then I’d worry. Anatid(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Anatid, she has been dealing with jerks. I think she compares them to her daddy, though, and they fall short.
We went to see her last weekend. She’s recovering from mono, so I wanted to do her laundry and take her to the grocery store, to spare her a little bit. Her dad volunteered to stay in the laundramat and deal with her things while we shopped. She told him which of her t-shirts did and didn’t go in the dryer. While we were shopping her phone rang, and as she was fishing around for it she said, “That’s Daddy, asking me about a shirt.” And indeed it was. He went through each of her shirts, with her telling him yes — no — yes — yes — no. She put the phone away, smiling because her daddy cares about her. When we were done with the shopping he was through with her laundry, and had her little things carefully folded and stacked. This is what she is used to and what I want her to expect to give and to get.
I just don’t want her to go through a lot of crap before she finds someone. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but why should she be different from everybody else? John Armstrong(Quote)
Laura(southernxyl) says:
John, because she’s my little girl. Laura(southernxyl)(Quote)
Dan Weber says:
To lighten the mood a bit: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38788 Dan Weber(Quote)
jerome says:
VERY INTERESTING PIECE, I’M GLAD I CHECKED IT OUT. THERE’S ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW TO GROW ON. jerome(Quote)