From: kovarik@utkux1.utk.edu (SaintMeechTheChaste)
Subject: Re: fat smelly boyfriend
Organization: University of Tennessee Oil and Lube Center
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 20:07:27 GMT

In article <1992Aug14.131155.17144@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> tcarsten@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Teresa C D Carstensen) writes:
>In article <1992Aug14.040827.10042@utkux1.utk.edu> kovarik@utkux1.utk.edu (SaintMeechTheChaste) writes:
>
>Hmm.  It sounds like your experience with smart women has been quite different 
>than mine.  The high-IQ women I know either have a great a great amount of 
>confidence in their intellectual abilities (unfortunately often as in "I may 
>be homely, but at least I'm smart!) or have no confidence and end up hiding 
>their smarts so well you'd never guess they were geniuses.  I don't know any 
>that feel a need to prove or question their intelligence all the time.  
>

Maybe, I am attracted subconsciously to that type.  Most of the women I have
dated have been like this. One of them was a highly competitive medical 
doctor who was in charge of an Intensive Care Unit in a big hospital.  She
and her bosses (all men)  just did not get along.....  I got along with her
just fine, but because we lived in different cities things fizzled.  After
we parted ways, she could find no one she liked to date, and then she met
an unambitious character who was nice, but not too smart, and not at all
demanding, and they got married, and within a year they were separated.

And then there is the most recent one who has created a totally false 
professional persona of great confidence, who then remains aloof from everyone
who she thinks has the ability to get beneath the facade.  Who prefers to be
a big fish in a small pond because those little fish are not really capable
of understanding her, and will be impressed by her image.  Who sometimes
takes offence at beind asked questions because those questions are
perceived as personal slights.  As I found out, a clear case of the wrapper 
not matching the contents of the box.  She's not a bad person, but she clearly
does not want to be known as the person she is.

>> I think that the constant competition
>>with men in the workplace leaves them with a complex. 
>
>It starts way earlier than that.  I keep seeing studies on how children are 
>taught that say teachers spend much more time on the boys, encouraging them 
>to learn and express themselves, than they do on the girls.  When your 
>intelligence is being ignored all through your life, I can see how that might 
>give one a severe complex.  Then even when their intelligence is acknowledged,
>they tend to be treated as freaks because of it.  That no doubt applies to boys
>as well.  Oh, the trials and tribulations of being a supra-genius!  
>

I don't think it applies to supra-genius types. I have met women who may not
be geniuses (genii?) who claim to act dumb deliberately around men. So that
men do not feel threatened.  In my work (beyond the Realms of Physics) I
interact with a lot of women, and except for one case, I don't think that
they are intimidated by me, nor I by them.  My immediate non-physics bosses
are women, and we have no trouble interacting.  I have no problem being 
told what to do by women.  Well, ok, it does depend on what it is....
But anyway.... I don't think I am unusually threatening to members of the
opposite sex.

>> So that they feel 
>>compelled to say to you:  "Why are you interested in me?  I'm boring! I'm not
>>beautiful!" and feel unjustly provoked by everything you say, and no matter
>>what you say, they cannot believe that you honestly care about them, 
>>even though you do, and they don't hear a word you say, and
>>then they wind up attached to somebody who has a job mowing lawns, who
>>seems so outrageously wrong for them, that you cannot but be hopelessly
>>confused as to why they would even bother speaking to such a person,
>>because you know you wouldn't.  I don't think that is what you are
>>talking about.
>
>I know plenty of women like that, but they are either of average intelligence
>or are the kind that hide their intelligence.  It's pathetic to see someone 
>who has so much going for them have their mind so warped.  But what can you do?
>Pity it isn't legal to force people to go see a psychotherapist, not that a
>shrink could necessarily get through to them, either.

Well, after getting to know a few women like this, I feel like I should
be the one going to the shrink.

					Meech

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