New link

Since the New York Times link to the IQ story is expired, I posted a new link to the British Times that I think ran the original story. It's worth a read.

Is society short-changing boys?

A story in The Detroit News says boys are falling behind academically. Teachers expect boys to sit quietly in class like the girls, not accounting for the fact that boys and girls mature at a different pace. But, later on in high school, girls get the shaft when they are seen as unfeminine for speaking up in class. What to do?

I would have to think long and hard about sending my child of either gender to public schools. I think public schooling teaches toughness and real-world coping skills, but there are so many negatives, such as incompetent teachers and misplaced priorities. Home-schooling or private schools might be good alternatives, but who has the time or the money? Maybe single-gender elementary schools are the way to go. I think I would have benefited from that environment. Then boys can be boys and girls can be girls.

This whole topic makes me wonder when I internalized the idea that smart isn't cool for girls. I think it was at a very young age, though I can't remember a specific instance. (If you've been reading my posts, you can see that I've never gotten over this.) In elementary school I always wanted to be pretty--it was my greatest aspiration. I wanted to be a scientist--but I wanted to be pretty more. I thought of a career as something you did, but being attractive as something you were. It was only much later that I finally realized that being pretty wasn't enough--I had thought it was. It really doesn't make anything easier.

So everyone, male and female, is permanently screwed up. I guess that makes things even.

Women's chance for marriage drops as their IQ rises

That's what a recent British study found. Read about it at these sites: Times Online and Yahoo News. Seriously--read the the Times story at least.

Sometimes I wonder if our society's need to make men and women exactly the same has made us want to reinforce stereotypes even more. Men know they want a woman who is different from a man, but they don't know what that means anymore, so they are drawn to subservient women or ultra-feminine women who make the distinction between the sexes seem clearer. Just throwing that out there as a possibility.

So, are women drawn to more manly men? Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I'm drawn to men like the guy who was on "That Seventies Show" whose real name is Topher Grace. Now that, my friends, is the most un-manly name in the world.

Continuing the discussion about men and women

I found the comments on my Nov. 14 post interesting, and I appreciate all comments. I thought you might like to read the original article I was responding to, so here's the link to Independence Daze.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not belittling marriage. In fact, I would quite like to get married myself. But I don't believe I have to be married to be complete. I'd like a man in my life, but I can't make that happen by sheer will power. I've HAD to get along on my own, and this has changed me. I hope that the right man will come along, and I hope I'll be able to let him into my life. Many of my female friends are in the same boat, or at least a similar one. I don't know what to tell them. I hate to be so prosaic, prattling on about marriage and courtship. But hey, it worked for Jane Austen. But she was a genius. I'm just a romantic with an outer layer of cynicism.