Girls v. Boys

Dear Mr Luse has a post up in which he fails to share with us his feelings on finding his toothpaste tube emptied of toothpaste. He does allude to a thread somewhere on the Interweb discussing the relative intelligence of men and women, and then provides his own commentary, including a salacious confession to asking three — three! — women to be his Valentine.
Go read the post, it’s good. Meanwhile, I am happy to report that two men asked me to be their Valentine and I said yes to both of them. So there. (Neither of them blog.) And on the topic of “are men smarter than women” I just have a few things to say:
1. Even if it’s true that twice as many men as women have 120 +IQ’s, that still means that the big differences are going to be on the skinny ends of the bell curve, where the extremes show up. Most men and most women are going to fall in the vast middle of the curve.
2. For most of us, lofty talk about averages and populations and medians and percentiles isn’t going to be of much use in our daily lives. We’ll never meet The Average Man and The Average Woman because they don’t exist. We’re going to meet individuals: Adam, Eve, Sally, Joe. And it doesn’t matter where The Average Woman and The Average Man fall on the bell curves; what will matter is what Adam and Eve and Sally and Joe can do. They’ll each possess their own unique constellations of intelligence and virtue. More men than women might be super-geniuses, but that doesn’t mean Joe is a super-genius — or that Sally is not.
3. Speaking of virtue, this would be a good place to note that without traits such as perseverance and self-control, the only thing a high I.Q. for good for is membership in Mensa.
3.5 Plus, as we know from comics and the movies, having a very high IQ puts one at risk for becoming a megalomaniac sociopathic super-villain.
4. Given how theories about average intelligence of populations have been misused in the past to justify mistreating individuals… well, maybe there was something to the idea of an Index.
I am happy to report that my Valentine is a really smart guy. After dinner on Wednesday, he announced, “Skip the dishes. Let’s go watch ‘Persuasion.’ ” (Because he knows how I love this movie.)
One of the best parts of Persuasion is a friendly debate between two characters on the differences between women and men:

…”I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps, you will say, these were all written by men.”
“Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”

The whole passage is in the extended entry.

The background: Captain Harville’s sister had been engaged to Captain Benwick when she suddenly died, leaving Benwick to wallow in Byronic grief and self-pity, never to love again, etc.. But Benwick found that his poor suffering heart could love again. Within a few months, Captain Harville has seen his friend Benwick not only recover from his sorrow but recover completely enough to become engaged to another woman, as if he had completely forgotten the sister whom Harville still mourns:

“…[S]he would not have forgotten him so soon!”
“No,” replied Anne, in a low, feeling voice, “that, I can easily believe.”
“It was not in her nature. She doated on him.”
“It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved.”
Captain Harville smiled, as much as to say, “Do you claim that for your sex?” and she answered the question, smiling also, “Yes. We certainly do not forget you so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.”
“Granting your assertion that the world does all this so soon for men (which, however, I do not think I shall grant), it does not apply to Benwick. He has not been forced upon any exertion. The peace turned him on shore at the very moment, and he has been living with us, in our little family circle, ever since.”
“True,” said Anne, “very true; I did not recollect; but what shall we say now, Captain Harville? If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man’s nature, which has done the business for Captain Benwick.”
“No, no, it is not man’s nature. I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.”
“Your feelings may be the strongest,” replied Anne, “but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It would be too hard, indeed” (with a faltering voice), “if woman’s feelings were to be added to all this.”
“We shall never agree upon this question,” Captain Harville was beginning to say, when a slight noise called their attention to Captain Wentworth’s hitherto perfectly quiet division of the room. It was nothing more than that his pen had fallen down; but Anne was startled at finding him nearer than she had supposed, and half inclined to suspect that the pen had only fallen because he had been occupied by them, striving to catch sounds, which yet she did not think he could have caught.
“Have you finished your letter?” said Captain Harville.
“Not quite, a few lines more. I shall have done in five minutes.”
“There is no hurry on my side. I am only ready whenever you are. I am in very good anchorage here” (smiling at Anne), “well supplied, and want for nothing. No hurry for a signal at all. Well, Miss Elliot” (lowering his voice), “as I was saying, we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you — all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps, you will say, these were all written by men.”
“Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
“But how shall we prove anything?”
“We never shall. We never can expect to prove anything upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin, probably, with a little bias towards our own sex; and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle; many of which circumstances (perhaps those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or, in some respect, saying what should not be said.”
“Ah!” cried Captain Harville, in a tone of strong feeling, “if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, ‘God knows whether we ever meet again!’ And then, if I could convey to you the glow of his soul when he does see them again; when, coming back after a twelvemonth’s absence, perhaps, and obliged to put into another port, he calculates how soon it be possible to get them there, pretending to deceive himself, and saying, ‘They cannot be here till such a day,’ but all the while hoping for them twelve hours sooner, and seeing them arrive at last, as if Heaven had given them wings, by many hours sooner still! If I could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear and do, and glories to do, for the sake of these treasures of his existence! I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!” pressing his own with emotion.
“Oh!” cried Anne eagerly, “I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as — if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!”