insideMAN

Wanted: Stupid male writers to say why women are more intelligent than them. Paid.

by 15 Comments

At the end of last week, as I skimmed through a few of the people I follow in twitter, I came across a tweet from a glossy women’s fashion magazine — it was a RT, honest — asking for single male writers for an article on what it’s like as a man navigating the desolate wastes of the dating scene. I added the bit about desolate wastes.

Anyway. Not only do I happen to fit very neatly into that demographic — and when I say neatly, that’s in the sense that a noose fits neatly around a condemned man’s neck – the 140 characters included the only four that matter: Paid.

What’s more, I optimistically thought to myself, as an editor for a men’s issues magazine, this might even be a great opportunity to reach out to a new audience of women and offer them an insight into what it’s like when the Nike Air Classic is on the other foot, so to speak.

So, I cheerily fired off a quick email: “Totes. Can do. Wotchuafta? How much you payin?” (Or words to that effect).

Clooney and Amal

This came the reply:

“So basically I need to find a single guy to write an opinion piece about deliberately dating women who are cleverer than him – hooked off George Clooney’s comments about Amal being smarter than him, and some new statistics also saying that men deliberately date women who are cleverer than them too.

“If this sounds like something you can relate to, and you’re interested, could you write me a few quick sentences about what you think on the subject and wing over a headshot, and I’ll pitch you to my editors this afternoon!”

Having read and carefully considered this offer, my first impulse was to “wing over” a couple of other four-letter words, connected with a couple of three-letter ones.

Instead, I decided to ask if I could see the research she was referring to, and having noticed they were also looking for a single woman to describe her experiences of dating, I asked what angle they’d be looking for in her dating story.

Teachers now mark down boys

For some reason they ignored my questions and said they’d found someone else.

Now, I know it’s a stretch to try and base some kind of devastating social commentary on this squalid little exchange, but let’s face it, it wouldn’t be the first time and it’s way too much fun for it to be the last, so just bear with me on this.

You see, I couldn’t help but notice that just the day before the magazine’s interest in smart women and stupid men, there was a major news story that addressed exactly the same stereotypes.

According to the BBC, an international report found that not only are boys falling behind girls in education across the globe, there is evidence of widespread prejudice against boys by teachers, who are marking down boys in comparison to girls, even if they are of the same ability.

Woman rolls eyes. Cut.

In another study in 2010, this prejudice was found to start very young, with both girls and boys believing girls are more intelligent than boys by the time they are seven or eight years old.

Meanwhile, there is the near-universal media trope in adverts, TV and film, of smart women and stupid men. (It’s so pervasive in fact, that there’s now a visual shorthand that tells us everything we need to know in a split second: woman rolls eyes. Cut.)

So why I wonder, would the editors of a women’s magazine think their readers would be interested in reading about men who fancy women who are more intelligent than them?

Could it be that the magazine’s readers now believe men in general are less intelligent than women, and despairing of finding a partner, want to be told there are men out there who don’t mind this intellectual power imbalance? Or perhaps, less charitably, these women like the idea of a nice-but-dim hunk, who looks pretty but won’t answer back?

Who knows. Whatever the reasons, none of them seem very pleasant for either women or men.

By Dan Bell

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  • Nick

    I wonder if this prejudice is framed in biology as females mature much more quickly than males instilling a false advantage which is grasped as superiority?

    • Inside MAN

      Ni Nick,

      My view is that it’s at least as likely to be the product of relentless negative messages about boys and men. Or to put it another way, it’s well-known that consistently depicting an identifiable group of people as less intelligent than their peers, will have a measurable impact on their actual attainment. It affects what that group strives to achieve and affects how they are treated by those that assess them. Our culture has been relentlessly depicting men and boys as less intelligent than girls and women for at least 30 years, is it really that surprising that this might be having an impact on attainment?

      One thing that I tweeted about when the BBC story broke, was how there was zero outrage at the idea that teachers are actually prejudiced against boys and are damaging their future prospects as a result. This is a shocking travesty, yet the response is a collective shrug of the shoulders. It’s been cropped off the image on this post, but the text below the picture on the BBC story effectively stated as fact that boys are less intelligent than girls, or at least that this idea has become accepted as fact. That’s what all bigotry tries to do — assert that it’s not prejudice, just the unavoidable reality of things. Dan

      • http://redpilluk.co.uk William Collins

        The link you give in the article actually describes an exercise which demonstrated directly that teachers’ low expectations drive low achievement.

        The recent OECD/PISA report is not the first time that teacher bias in marking down boys has been noted. I identified the effect myself in KS2 SATS here http://mra-uk.co.uk/?p=121.

        A US study from 2011 cited in the same link also concluded that, “grades awarded by teachers are not aligned with test scores, with the disparities in grading exceeding those in testing outcomes and uniformly favouring girls”.

        There is also indirect evidence from the fact that the gender gap in performance at age 16 set in when GCSEs replaced O Levels in 1987, the point being that GCSEs brought in course work for the first time (and hence an element of teacher influence). Independent support for this contention is obtained from the 2006 OECD/PISA programme. Boys did better than girls on these PISA tests in both science and maths, though doing less well than girls in GCSEs in these same subjects taken just a few months later.

        There is also a recent paper by Daniel and Susan Voyer (2014, April 28), “Gender Differences in Scholastic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis”, Psychological Bulletin, which is a huge analysis of teacher assessments from many countries. It also shows teacher bias in favour of girls. I plan to do a review of this paper at some point.

        • http://redpilluk.co.uk William Collins
          • Inside MAN

            Thanks

        • Inside MAN

          Thanks very much for those sources William, will read with interest. Please do let us know when you review the Voyer paper, perhaps there could be a piece in it for us? Dan

          • Nigel

            I do hope William does this and bring together the information. To me this is a matter of the Education system failing its pupils pure and simple. It is “gendered” because it clearly runs across the whole school population. In Manchester City there has been a ,rather half hearted, attempt to increase boys performance in reading but of course these sorts of initiatives need constant support by “prodding” local politicians. I know I keep saying this but it is a mistake to assume public bodies do any serious analysis of the data they collect. As a prime instance the existence of a Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy prompts analysis of data only with regard to w & g though the same data sets could have revealed a lot about males. It is indolence on the officials part rather than a determination to ignore the data. And of course the existence of the Equality Duty and Impact Assessments does give active members of the public the opportunity to bring to “light” this information. I cannot stress too much the importance of equality Impact Assessments in the realm of local government. If you try to complain about something to Ombudsman or Court the test isn’t on the decision as such (which the body’s are entitled to make) but did the public body follow the required process to arrive at its decision/action. So when one sees that a person or group has “won” usually they haven’t directly won a change of mind but that the public body didn’t follow the correct process in making the decision. Body’s know that Impact Assessments (being required by law) are a key element in that process.

          • http://redpilluk.co.uk William Collins

            I have produced the review as promised, here http://mra-uk.co.uk/?p=437. It’s rather long for insideMAN. Perhaps I could produce a summary version.

          • Inside MAN

            Thank you for this William — look forward to reading. I’ll check it out, but not necessarily a problem if it’s exceptionally long. Thanks again, Dan

      • Nick

        Absolutely and unequivocally it is not just biological, I suggest that as the default which leads to the shrug of the shoulders. The cultural atmosphere promotes female grandiosity juxtaposed to male buffoonery – but then It has was long ago decided that the success of the modern service economy was dependent upon the soft skills of women as well as their consumerist power. Men don’t factor greatly in this current state of affairs and reducing the male ego works quite well in a system dependent on compliance. I think the ‘shrug of the shoulders’ is hypocritical however I am not quite sure how it is resolved: As far as the system is concerned masculinity must accept its ‘anomie’ until it becomes what the system demands. The current ‘future of men’ (interesting book) is based upon what marketers want us to be in their cultural narrative: reduced.

  • Nigel

    On the dating thing Norah Vincent (in Self Made Man) has a chapter on her dating experience (posing as a man). She concludes that is isn’t an edifying experience as generally she was expected to listen as her female dates talked endlessly about themselves. Of course other writers with more scientific approaches confirm this by Norah is very amusing as her frustration with her sex grows. So finding a quiet man, whose comments, when made, are sympathetic to his date’ s narratives is probably what is sought. In fact she is unlikely to have much idea about the intelligence of her date (or much else about him) if Norah’s experiences are any guide. I have to say that it does seem to match the frustrations my sons have found in their dating (hardly science I know).
    On the education this you are quite right to observe the self fulfilling prophecy thesis. I’m old enough to recall the huge hubbub (rightly) when this same self fulfilling prophecy was seen to be applied to girls. Indeed the huge programme around getting girls into STEM is built upon the idea of changing what is a seen as the effects of self fulfilling prophecy that girls don’t “do” science !
    Previous research tends to confirm that in course work or teacher marked work, the factors at play in this direct discrimination are a combination of lower expectations of innate ability for boys and a sort of conduct awarding . In some ways I’d not be against the latter so long as its explicit that pupils are being awarded points for how compliant they are so they have the opportunity to change their behaviour, in the past teachers did say they were giving marks for “neatness” .
    This conduct effect probably is the most powerfully effected by the slower pace of physical maturity in boys, as “maturity” in our culture tends to be a shorthand for compliance with desired social norms.This compliance does appear, for whatever reason .to be slower to develop in boys overall. Certainly in my field it is clear that the same behaviours recorded for boys and girls tend to be interpreted differently, a combination of a difference between “sassy” and “arrogant” and the simple fact that boys tend to be bigger and more intimidating even when that isn’t their reported intention.
    Thus boys are the majority of exclusions, special educational needs and so on as well as being routinely “marked down” in their academic work.
    All this adds up to a pretty clear case that education is considerably less successful for boys as an institution overall. Findings that should kick off work into what would improve this lamentable state of affairs. But of course one needs those in charge to see the links and the sheer scale of these failings.

    • Inside MAN

      Thanks Nigel. By the way, I saw Norah Vincent do a talk about her book when I was living in New York many years ago. But that’s a story for another day… Dan

  • Nigel

    Yes I haven’t got shares in her book but I found it very good when she was participating in the more ordinary experiences ( Dating, The Bowling Club, working in commission only sales). It has always struck me, from early days of being a keen supporter of feminism (based on my mother’s experiences as a young widow and the carnage in the various “proxy” wars of the cold war ) That there has been remarkably little examination of what boys and men’s actual experiences are or have been. In a sense the raw material is readily available in biographies and so (and for instance sports biographies frequently contain the material though I quess these are never read by gender warriors) though much less so in quantitative research (questionaires). Yet it isn’t used to form a nuanced view. One would have thought “Gender Studies” would have returned to a consideration of male experience.
    This absence led the entertaining Norah to observe that to her, middle class literary New Yorker , the men she mingled with appeared to inhabit a semi hidden sub-culture.

  • Nigel

    Just finished reading Mr.Collins’ excellent essay . There are a series of articles in it I’m sure. I really do hope inside man and William can work together to publish in a series. Not only attainment but social expectations and indeed the judgements that the children themselves make about the way they are viewed are just a few of the important issues evidenced in the research William had brought together. My own biggest issues are around the exclusion,” treatment” and special needs areas. And these are not separate from the differential expectations so clearly evidenced in so many studies .
    As I say this is so rich an essay it could spawn a riveting series. 

  • Nigel

    Well just prior to the election campaign a flurry of female friendly (well what the politico’s think are) announcements. This caught my eye (link below). Quoting the research the Equalities Office appears not to notice that boys are labelled “stupid” something that should be of concern given the early gender gaps in educational achievement.

    Other things to note are the fact that the Girls favour indoor and therefore both more expensive and difficult to schedule sports. This gender difference in “outside games” will automatically make a difference as its a lot easier to sort an open space “in the cold”!

    Of course the other thing is that Girls and women may prefer activity that isn’t a “sport”.

    The research found in respondents:
    •Gender perceptions are already emerging in relation to sport; girls think boys are ‘stupid’ and ‘their’ sports rough, the boys think girls lack skill and competence. Also, while school sports participation is roughly equal, outside school things look very different, with many more boys than girls involved in out-of-school sports clubs;
    •The girls disliked playing games outside in the cold, whereas boys enjoyed the extra space associated with outside games. This difference is reflected in the sports they participate in with girls leaning towards swimming, dance, tennis, netball and gymnastics and boys more often highlighting football, cricket and rugby; and
    •Girls were also beginning to notice the lack of female sporting role models available to them. Girls and boys agreed PE should be different for both sexes. Girls felt that boys can be overly competitive, cheat and play rough and boys perceived girls as ‘less sporty’ and skilled, as well as less interested in ‘rough’ and muddy outdoor sports.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-research-shows-seven-is-heaven-for-girls-and-sports