Advice to Female Ivy students: Get a husband

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The "realities" of dating, such as "a woman's happiness is due to her man", "women can't date younger men, but men can date younger women", "women can only be happy with a man who's her intellectual superior"? Or is there something even more profound in there I missed?

Edit: Also, "biological tendencies" and gender roles tend to have significantly less overlap than most cultural conservatives would like one to believe.

You shouldn't use quotations if you don't actually quote the letter, and you're still confusing description with prescription. The only normative statement she made in the entire letter was that women shouldn't marry their intellectual inferiors because the majority of women are unhappy with less intelligent partners. The other statements and assumptions are simply statistical facts. Most people's happiness is strongly correlated with the quality of their relationship. Most age differences do involve an older male with a younger female. Therefore, a female in a selective university that is open to finding a mate while still in school has a much better chance of landing one with characteristics that the majority of women seek.

I have yet to read any comments in this thread that address the letter's actual content rather than put words in the author's mouth and assume that she thinks that anyone who bucks these trends is either inferior or non-existent. The only issue I have with the advice is that people tend to change so significantly over the course of their 20's that the risk of such a young couple drifting apart over the years could outweigh the advantage of choosing from a larger pool of smart, driven, single candidates.

[Spoonist]

The advice and the tone is socially conservative and she is clearly aware of that. As such it will of course piss off a lot of people. Had she put in a lot more caveats and changed the tone this would have been a non-issue. But this was meant to be a bit provocative I just don't think that she realised just how provocative it is.

Having read the follow up interview which I linked to above (3rd post). I'd say this has less to do with the advice she is giving and the life she has lived. A bitter divorce after a long and likely unhappy marriage would lead anyone to want to warn the next generation, of something but not necessarily of the things that was actually the reasons. Sprinkle that with a hearty dose of jewish mom self fulfilling stereotype and you get what you got.
However this runs straight into the generation communication gap. Social liberties are going forward at record speed, contraceptives-divorces-non married relationships-etc, everything is changing. You have to be pretty ego not to realise that the advice for my generation wouldn't necessarily be 100% accurate for the next, or the one thereafter. So when talking to the next generation or the one after that, are you just ranting or do you really want them to listen? And if you really want them to listen wouldn't you put in a lot of caveats and change the tone to a more "this is how it was for me" kinda narrative?

[Simon_Jester]

One thing I think the author may be trying to push is that if you are an intelligent, thoughtful person in the current generation of college-goers, you should be thinking hard about whether to break from current dating and relationship trends.

For example, one current trend is increasing casual sex, "hookups" at the expense of formalized "dating" and courtship. This is good if you want to have a lot of sex, neutral if you simply view sex as a neutral 'add-on' to people's lives. It's probably not a good thing, though, if you're looking at someone's life as an integrated whole and you think that long term relationships are important. Even for the (many) people who aren't going to meet someone in college and stay with them for the rest of their life, having some practice at successful or unsuccessful relationships in college is an important learning experience.

You can pick up the same experience outside of college, but that means postponing it, which ties into all the earlier comments about people waiting too long to get into relationships at all. If you spend three or four years in college getting 3-6 boyfriends/girlfriends who Did Not Work Out, you're going to learn something from that experience, and hopefully grow as a person. You would otherwise have to spend your early to mid-twenties learning all that and experiencing that growth.

Is it one-sided, is it automatically a case of "1990/1980/1960 social mores are the best!"? No. But an intelligent person in this era may want to stop and think carefully about where they want to fit into the trends, whether following them now is going to make them the person they want to be in ten or twenty years.

[Stark]

Are these real trends or the sort of thing you pick up watching teen movies?

[madd0ct0r]

nah, he's just stuck in the 60's.

My goddam parents were 'hooking up' at uni, and I really doubt it was any more or any less extreme then my social circle at uni a generation later. Some didn't, some were serial monogamists, others had single long-term relationships that have mostly now ended in marriage (the rest having simply ended).

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The advice and the tone is socially conservative and she is clearly aware of that. As such it will of course piss off a lot of people. Had she put in a lot more caveats and changed the tone this would have been a non-issue. But this was meant to be a bit provocative I just don't think that she realised just how provocative it is.

This is precisely what I take issue with. An expressed viewpoint shouldn't have to be full of caveats and "on the other hand" statements to avoid people assuming an entire set of worldviews and attacking those assumed viewpoints instead of the actual content. I had to defend against a pile-on in an ARSE dating advice thread fairly recently due to this behavior, and it shat all over the quality of the discussion. It's like everyone forgets what a strawman argument is the minute they catch a real or imagined whiff of social regressivism.

[Spoonist]

The advice and the tone is socially conservative and she is clearly aware of that. As such it will of course piss off a lot of people. Had she put in a lot more caveats and changed the tone this would have been a non-issue. But this was meant to be a bit provocative I just don't think that she realised just how provocative it is.

This is precisely what I take issue with. An expressed viewpoint shouldn't have to be full of caveats and "on the other hand" statements to avoid people assuming an entire set of worldviews and attacking those assumed viewpoints instead of the actual content. I had to defend against a pile-on in an ARSE dating advice thread fairly recently due to this behavior, and it shat all over the quality of the discussion. It's like everyone forgets what a strawman argument is the minute they catch a real or imagined whiff of social regressivism.

Huh? What are you on about, did I miss a context somewhere? Because you seem colored from something unrelated.
If I write an angled opinion piece on anything at all I can of course expect flak from opposing viewpoints. It's what fills the readers' pages of any respectable newspaper. Its the same thing that drives a lot of blogs and the resulting numbers of views or comments they recieve.
The more narrow I make my view, or the more provocative I make it, the more flak I recieve. This is no suprise.

If I write an opinion piece that states that the moonlanding is a hoax I will get flak for that. If I write an opinion piece that specific acts of sex is 'icky' and shouldn't be allowed due to my conversations with the invisible unicorn, then I will get flak for that.
It doesn't matter that the context is a single point of view, what matters is how I come across when trying to get others to accept it as theirs as well.

It doesn't necessarily take any strawmanning to extrapolate from such opinion pieces. If there is an opinionpiece that says that you cannot trust crooknosed jews with money, its a pretty safe assumption that there is some antisemitism going on even if the opinion piece didn't include that phrasing.
So if I go back to your earlier post, let me demonstrate:

You shouldn't use quotations if you don't actually quote the letter,

Those are clearly not used as quotation marks, but rather as scare quotes or air quotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
you can see it in the first part, "The "realities" of dating", which clearly points to a sceptical view of the other's viewpoint as they obviously don't agree on the "realities" in this case.

The only normative statement she made in the entire letter was that women shouldn't marry their intellectual inferiors because the majority of women are unhappy with less intelligent partners.

That is silly, she makes lots of normative statements. Do you have a differing definition of normative?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative
Any opinion piece worth its salt will have lots of normative statements.

The other statements and assumptions are simply statistical facts. Most people's happiness is strongly correlated with the quality of their relationship. Most age differences do involve an older male with a younger female. Therefore, a female in a selective university that is open to finding a mate while still in school has a much better chance of landing one with characteristics that the majority of women seek.

Nope. You see, an opinion piece like this one builds on a context. That context then reflects on the statements which could relate to statistical facts. One of those contexts in this case is that the audience is a certain clique. That makes most of your "statistical facts" (scare quote) factually wrong. For instance how many relationships that start in princeton will result in longterm happy marriage+children? How many relationships that start with one partner actively seeking marriage+children at such a low age will actually result in that happy longterm marriage? How many of those princeton boys would be favorably disposed to such a pursuit? How many of those princeton boys would fake to be favorably disposed to such a pursuit with some other motive?
The statistics are already against you. So we can statistically say that those who does what she advices, will not end up with what she is trying to advocate. Instead statistically that will end in failed relationships, divorces and unhappy marriages - regardless of the IQ relation of the pair.
So "a female in a selective university that is open to finding a mate while still in school has a much better chance of landing one with characteristics that the majority of women seek" (quotation) that they have a failed relationship with. Not one which they will have a lifelong happy and rewarding relationship with.
Something which you yourself say in the same post without realising what that does to the correctness of your "statistical facts" (scare quote).

I have yet to read any comments in this thread that address the letter's actual content rather than put words in the author's mouth and assume that she thinks that anyone who bucks these trends is either inferior or non-existent.

Again, huh?
The first post that actually critique the piece is this one:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 4#p3766814
Please show where that post fits your statement.

The only issue I have with the advice is that people tend to change so significantly over the course of their 20's that the risk of such a young couple drifting apart over the years could outweigh the advantage of choosing from a larger pool of smart, driven, single candidates.

Agreed, especially if one or two of them seeks marriage+children+career at that point.

[Simon_Jester]

nah, he's just stuck in the 60's.

My goddam parents were 'hooking up' at uni, and I really doubt it was any more or any less extreme then my social circle at uni a generation later. Some didn't, some were serial monogamists, others had single long-term relationships that have mostly now ended in marriage (the rest having simply ended).

It's possible the proportions haven't shifted at all and the stuff I've read is all just random handwringing. In which case there are no trends, everything's been holding steady since some time in the '80s or so, the Sexual Revolution only happened once and we won.

[Who's we? Everybody!]

Conceded; I'm too tired to try to sort out random handwringing from real surveys, so by default we assume you're right and nothing's happened.

[Lagmonster]

Also, "biological tendencies" and gender roles tend to have significantly less overlap than most cultural conservatives would like one to believe.

Leaving aside that it is irrelevant what any group would or would not like to be true, what do you mean by "significantly less overlap"?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

This is precisely what I take issue with. An expressed viewpoint shouldn't have to be full of caveats and "on the other hand" statements to avoid people assuming an entire set of worldviews and attacking those assumed viewpoints instead of the actual content. I had to defend against a pile-on in an ARSE dating advice thread fairly recently due to this behavior, and it shat all over the quality of the discussion. It's like everyone forgets what a strawman argument is the minute they catch a real or imagined whiff of social regressivism.

Huh? What are you on about, did I miss a context somewhere? Because you seem colored from something unrelated.
If I write an angled opinion piece on anything at all I can of course expect flak from opposing viewpoints. It's what fills the readers' pages of any respectable newspaper. Its the same thing that drives a lot of blogs and the resulting numbers of views or comments they recieve.
The more narrow I make my view, or the more provocative I make it, the more flak I recieve. This is no suprise.

If I write an opinion piece that states that the moonlanding is a hoax I will get flak for that. If I write an opinion piece that specific acts of sex is 'icky' and shouldn't be allowed due to my conversations with the invisible unicorn, then I will get flak for that.
It doesn't matter that the context is a single point of view, what matters is how I come across when trying to get others to accept it as theirs as well.

It doesn't necessarily take any strawmanning to extrapolate from such opinion pieces. If there is an opinionpiece that says that you cannot trust crooknosed jews with money, its a pretty safe assumption that there is some antisemitism going on even if the opinion piece didn't include that phrasing.

Fair enough. I suppose previous debating experiences on this board might have made me overly sensitive to assumption by its members.

So if I go back to your earlier post, let me demonstrate:

You shouldn't use quotations if you don't actually quote the letter,

Those are clearly not used as quotation marks, but rather as scare quotes or air quotes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
you can see it in the first part, "The "realities" of dating", which clearly points to a sceptical view of the other's viewpoint as they obviously don't agree on the "realities" in this case.

I know what air quotes are, and using them in this context is still bad form. It can cause readers to waste time re-reading the article looking for the hypothetical quotes if they don't jibe with their understanding of the original piece.

The only normative statement she made in the entire letter was that women shouldn't marry their intellectual inferiors because the majority of women are unhappy with less intelligent partners.

That is silly, she makes lots of normative statements. Do you have a differing definition of normative?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative
Any opinion piece worth its salt will have lots of normative statements.

I reiterate that the normative statement I cited is the only "should" statement she made, aside from the letter's premise (which is that Princeton women should try to find a husband from among their peers before graduation). The other statements describe relationship tendencies.

The other statements and assumptions are simply statistical facts. Most people's happiness is strongly correlated with the quality of their relationship. Most age differences do involve an older male with a younger female. Therefore, a female in a selective university that is open to finding a mate while still in school has a much better chance of landing one with characteristics that the majority of women seek.

Nope. You see, an opinion piece like this one builds on a context. That context then reflects on the statements which could relate to statistical facts. One of those contexts in this case is that the audience is a certain clique. That makes most of your "statistical facts" (scare quote) factually wrong. For instance how many relationships that start in princeton will result in longterm happy marriage+children? How many relationships that start with one partner actively seeking marriage+children at such a low age will actually result in that happy longterm marriage? How many of those princeton boys would be favorably disposed to such a pursuit? How many of those princeton boys would fake to be favorably disposed to such a pursuit with some other motive?
The statistics are already against you. So we can statistically say that those who does what she advices, will not end up with what she is trying to advocate. Instead statistically that will end in failed relationships, divorces and unhappy marriages - regardless of the IQ relation of the pair.
So "a female in a selective university that is open to finding a mate while still in school has a much better chance of landing one with characteristics that the majority of women seek" (quotation) that they have a failed relationship with. Not one which they will have a lifelong happy and rewarding relationship with.
Something which you yourself say in the same post without realising what that does to the correctness of your "statistical facts" (scare quote).

This goes back to my point about growing apart, so I of course agree. I posted to fight the assumption that the letter could not be good advice because it did not apply to everyone, not to defend all of its contents.

I have yet to read any comments in this thread that address the letter's actual content rather than put words in the author's mouth and assume that she thinks that anyone who bucks these trends is either inferior or non-existent.

Again, huh?
The first post that actually critique the piece is this one:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 4#p3766814
Please show where that post fits your statement.

That post attacks the author's presumed worldview rather than the actual content, even going so far as to invoke the "equally yoked" Bible phrase so often used by religious bigots.

The only issue I have with the advice is that people tend to change so significantly over the course of their 20's that the risk of such a young couple drifting apart over the years could outweigh the advantage of choosing from a larger pool of smart, driven, single candidates.

Agreed, especially if one or two of them seeks marriage+children+career at that point.

Maybe better advice would have been "go to the 10 year re-union and gun for the best divorcee"

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Also, "biological tendencies" and gender roles tend to have significantly less overlap than most cultural conservatives would like one to believe.

Leaving aside that it is irrelevant what any group would or would not like to be true, what do you mean by "significantly less overlap"?

A large amount of supposed innate differences in gender behavior don't actually exist at all, and much of the rest turn out to be culturally-induced when studied more closely. There's a reason a lot of evopsych ideas tend to support the traditional gender roles of the society of the one proposing them, and it has much more to do with the misuse of evolutionary psychology than the way people actually work.

[Spoonist]

The only normative statement she made in the entire letter was that women shouldn't marry their intellectual inferiors because the majority of women are unhappy with less intelligent partners.

That is silly, she makes lots of normative statements. Do you have a differing definition of normative?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative
Any opinion piece worth its salt will have lots of normative statements.

I reiterate that the normative statement I cited is the only "should" statement she made, aside from the letter's premise (which is that Princeton women should try to find a husband from among their peers before graduation). The other statements describe relationship tendencies.

??? You seem definately to be using a different definition then.
"At your core, you know that there are other things that you need that nobody is addressing. A lifelong friend is one of them. Finding the right man to marry is another." is the first normative statement she makes. You should have a lifelong friend. You should marry. You should find the right man.
"For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.", "Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal. "
are all normative statements. Almost every time she uses "you" she makes a normative statement.

I posted to fight the assumption that the letter could not be good advice because it did not apply to everyone, not to defend all of its contents.

But it isn't good advice, it is bad advice even to those so inclined. You even agreed to that. So I'm guessing that you are actually not fighting the assumption that the letter could be good advice.
Instead you seem to be driven by some other agenda.

I have yet to read any comments in this thread that address the letter's actual content rather than put words in the author's mouth and assume that she thinks that anyone who bucks these trends is either inferior or non-existent.

Again, huh?
The first post that actually critique the piece is this one:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 4#p3766814
Please show where that post fits your statement.

That post attacks the author's presumed worldview rather than the actual content, even going so far as to invoke the "equally yoked" Bible phrase so often used by religious bigots.

Huh??? Your response simply doesn't fit with that post.
The post actually quotes a passage from the letter and specifically cites two things the author explicitly expresses (1-smart women should marry their intellectual equal 2-only same age or older are valid options). The poster expresses a personal reaction to such normative statements. Then the poster makes a personal association which has caveats for them possibly being true but not necessarily being true. (While if you had read the follow up interviews with the author is confirmed).
So from where does your accusation that it attacks the worldview rather than the text come from???

Maybe better advice would have been "go to the 10 year re-union and gun for the best divorcee"

I hear the young ones these days have some confounded contraption called the interwebs...