Belief in female idiocy explains the urban/rural divide

I just wrote flatteringly about life in Huntsville. And I stand by it. But since then an old drunk white man reminded me of something I hate about the deep south.

And in writing about it, I think I’ve stumbled upon an insight about polarization, growth, and authoritarianism.

“You should read Sowell.”

I was already mad. At the bar starting a tab for a Huntsville New Liberals postcard writing event, a drunk, old white man had started a conversation. I told him we were writing to the Alabama legislature and invited him to join us.

Instead, he talked at me about how systemic oppression can’t exist because he became a millionaire despite getting expelled from two high schools.

“I’ve read Sowell,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.” I walked away.

What I didn’t say was that I read Sowell as part of a program in D.C. paid for by the same guys who funded him. I didn’t tell him that I’ve written for some of the same outlets that have published Sowell.

What I didn’t say, because it only occurred to me to say later as I was fuming about it in the shower:

There is no way you’re going to learn anything from listening to yourself. And I’ve heard enough to surmise that I’m very unlikely to learn anything from listening to you. But there’s a lot you could learn from listening to me. The fact that you’re talking at me instead of listening says a lot about you as a person.

I’m no expert on likability. But even I know that you’re going to get a lot further with most people by saying “Have you read X” than “You should read X.”

But if he were the kind of person who could seriously contemplate the possibility that a younger, poorer woman could possibly be better informed than a older, richer man than he wouldn’t be an old, drunk, southern white man telling a woman he’s just met — who is hosting a political event — to read Sowell.

It’s not like men assuming I am dumber and more ignorant than I am is a phenomenon exclusive to the South.

I recall one night in San Francisco doing some of the best coke I’d encountered in that city (which was average coke for D.C.) with a Russian lawyer. Walking from one bar bathroom to the next, I told him I wrote a column about San Francisco housing policy for a local paper. He proceeded to explain the housing crisis to me as if I were hearing about it for the first time.

But more men do it here, and do it far more openly, than in D.C. or San Francisco.

To be fair, statistically speaking, Huntsville is less educated on average than D.C. and San Francisco. And while education doesn’t perfectly correlate to intelligence and informedness, there’s definitely a relationship.

So, knowing nothing about me other than that I am also in Huntsville, I guess it makes sense for them to assume that I am dumber and more ignorant than I am. But what galls me is that these men somehow assume I’m dumber and more ignorant than they are. Which is, to employ some local parlance, going apiece.

I’m mad about this for two reasons. Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first. I’m mad for ego and narcissism reasons.

I’m also mad for feminist reasons. I’ve been mad about this since high school, when I really started noticing men being surprised by the fact that I was smart.

Before circa July 2022, I was mad about it for “this hurts women” reasons. But then I read and wrote a lot about men, gender roles, and status. And now my feminist reasons for being mad about this shit have more to do with how it hurts men. And women. And gender non-conforming individuals.

Books like Why We’re Polarized and Alienated America and articles on superstar cities and agglomeration effects tell roughly the following story. Between five and ten US cities give birth to the vast majority of new good jobs. As a percentage, fewer Americans are moving to opportunity. So only the best and brightest are leaving their hometowns for superstar cities. In so doing, they’re leaving middle Americans to mire in loneliness, vote for Trump, and finally die an untimely death of despair.

What I haven’t seen talked about yet is how belief in female idiocy plays into this cycle.

When people believe something contradicted by copious and compelling evidence, it’s worth considering who believes it and what it’s doing for them.

I would describe belief in female idiocy as a backwards belief. It was pretty ubiquitous in the Western world until fairly recently.

Today, belief in female idiocy is low in places where people tend to care about evidence, tend to be forward-looking (as measured by progressive social beliefs and practices), and tend to be high-achieving (as measured by per-capita patents, education levels, productivity, and incomes). In other words, in superstar cities.

Belief in female idiocy is high in places that are more backwards. In other words, in rural areas and cities in the deep south.

My least intelligent ex (a fellow Alabamian) was also my only partner to tell me he thought he was the smarter one — because of course. Trying to discern how much misogyny we were working with, I asked him if he knew or had ever met any women who were smarter than him. You’ll never guess what he said.

Now, on average men overestimate their intelligence. But some men, like my ex and my new BFF from the bar, underestimate women’s. (In case you’re new here, the average man and woman have similar levels of intelligence. But men are overrepresented at the tails and women are overrepresented in the middle. More here.)

Now, genuinely, #notallmen. I met and dated and friended many men, in the deep south included, who found the fact that I was smarter fun and attractive. But, statistically speaking, most men (and women) prefer the man in a couple to be smarter (certainly at least as measured by income and education).

All else equal, in my experience, dumber, less-educated, lower-achieving men are more likely to believe in female idiocy. My ex, for example, was low-achieving. And one study suggested that more skilled gamers treated female players better than those who were worse at the game.

Growth and agglomeration are cyclical. Good jobs attract smart, high-achieving people to cities who then create more good jobs in those cities. These jobs attract more high-achievers, etc.

Like agglomeration, hollowing out and decay are also cyclical. In middle America, a dearth of smart, high-achieving people lead to fewer good jobs, which then motivates younger smart, high-achieving people to get the hell out of dodge as soon as they can.

Increasingly, gender, education, and geography better predict voting patterns than income or race. The Republican Party is getting less white and rich and more poorly educated, male, and rural. Conversely, the Democratic Party is getting less non-white and poor and more female, well-educated, and urban.

The urban/rural divide has many causes. Increasingly, the best jobs require higher education. Increasingly, higher education is associated with voting for Democrats.

But I’m starting to think that belief in female idiocy is important as both a symptom and a cause of the urban/rural divide.

A high concentration of low-achievers increases overall belief in female idiocy, which then hampers achievement for the entire area.

First, low achievement motivates low achievers to believe in female idiocy.

Low-achieving men believe in female idiocy to support their belief that they belong at the top of the social hierarchy. Low-achieving women believe in female idiocy to explain their low achievement and to improve their dating and marriage prospects.

Belief in female idiocy is adaptive when you’re trying to date among a pool of low-achieving men who not only believe in female idiocy, but feel very threatened by any challenge to that idea. Widespread belief in female idiocy forces women to choose between letting men know we’re smarter than them or giving them a chance to like us.

Where low-achieving men concentrate, widespread belief in female idiocy also hampers female achievement. It motivates high-achieving women to skedaddle off to coastal cities. For the ones who stay, it rewards us for achieving less than we otherwise would, under different incentives.

We’ve studied how systematically losing high achievers has gone for middle America (not well). But to my knowledge we haven’t studied how losing out on female achievement in particular has impacted rural areas.

I’m guessing it’s been big. We know that increases in female achievement are responsible for a huge portion of US GPD growth over the past 50 years.

Which likely means increases in female achievement have been a huge contributor to the rise of superstar cities — places where women move and achieve thrive.

We know that places women tend to leave and don’t achieve are seeing decreasing male achievement and rising violent authoritarian misogyny.

Thus, belief in female idiocy is probably a huge contributor to, and results from, both the urban/rural divide and agglomeration effects/superstar cities.

And demand for female labor is rising, especially relative to male labor. Which means these trends will likely only increase in future decades.

But, then again, I’m a woman. What do I know? I should probably read (more) Sowell.