Are big brains as important as big bazoongas?

The title isn't completely germane, but I took the opportunity to be gratuitously porcine. And it's not such a bad question, really. In a subculture that encourages stay-at-home moms and female students in search of their MRS. degrees, are men intimidated or attracted by women more intelligent or educated than themselves? A column in BYU-Idaho's student newspaper considers the question.

Women often are forced to choose between a career and a family. Latter-day Saint women have been taught that their families are their most important responsibility, but they are also taught to be educated. So when education intimidates so many men, what’s a Mormon girl to do?

While some BYU-Idaho women do experience problems with intimidated men, many Latter-day Saint men desire to marry intelligent women. Their support for educating women does not wane. Actually at BYU-I, it flourishes.

Max Checketts, Academic Vice President, explained that education helps a woman be more confident in the world and better prepared to live in it. Checketts encouraged each of his daughters and his wife to get an education. Education can lead to women living at what Checketts calls her “highest and best use.”

Still, some female students feel that their level of intelligence intimidates men.

Lydia Jones, a sophomore from Rexburg, used to be a math education major. When she met guys, they would be intimidated so she would try to ease the message.

The moment she would say math, men “would put a wall up right there.”

“Because you’re a girl you’re kind of expected to know less,” Jones said.

Personally, I think it's because women have to be a little deficient mentally to marry us in the first place, especially the sort of guys who refer to "bazoongas." But less flippantly, I have to side with the men in the article who said that they prefer their women smart. My Lovely and Brilliant Wife isn't called that for no reason. She would dispute it (yeah, but what does she know?), but I think she's probably quite a few synapses ahead of me. Certainly, there's no shortage of gray matter betwen her dainty shell-likes. Am I intimidated? Do I feel unneeded, as the article suggests? Not at all. I can keep up pretty well with her (except when she tries to explain her Carmelite lessons to me), and I don't feel like I need to be smarter when I'm also the one who can reach the stuff in the back of her tea cupboard. To be honest, before I met her I had dated women who didn't keep up with me mentally, and it was just frustrating for both of us.

So here's your question: Gents, have you ever felt like a woman was outstripping you intellectually, and if so, did it bother you? Ladies, have you ever dumbed yourself down to keep from bruising some fella's tender ego? Be honest, now!

A/T to Dave's Mormon Inquiry.