"He's so smart! He agrees with everything I say."

Roissy’s post on Girls and Politics got me thinking. As someone whose political leanings fall outside of the DC mainstream, this is something I deal with on a regular basis. It also got me thinking about something else I’ve been noticing. On a recent trip to Whole Foods (which, by the way, is always good for observing multiple incidences of SWPL) I observed a new phenomenon. I saw multiple couples where at first I thought there was huge mismatch in favor of the girl (i.e. the guy was better looking). In all instances I soon realized that there was something evening up the score: the guys were total morons. Granted, that’s a tough diagnosis to make from a few moments observation in a supermarket; but when one guy is wearing a crooked baseball cap and making awkward, gang-ish hand signs and another is goofily grinning at some checkout-aisle tabloid, they just might not be the sharpest tools in the shed. Not to mention, the women in both cases did not seem to be the slightest bit amused. They honestly looked like mothers dealing with annoying children.

I’ve heard a lot from women recently about using certain political or ideological litmus tests for men they hook up with or date. This seems a strange idea to me. Personally, I hate echo chambers; nothing irks me more than being surrounded by people who think exactly what I think. I like debate. I like to hear other people’s viewpoints. I like my own opinions to be challenged, because I realize that’s the only way to know whether I’m full of shit or not.

Where does idea of not dating guys who don’t share your politics come from? More importantly it seems a recipe for guys developing attachment to ideas they don’t really care about because it’s getting them laid. I tend to think that, in a democracy, the route that people take to come to their opinions is as important as those opinions themselves. Am I alone in this?

Almost every girl I know or meet claims that she wants a man of above-average intelligence, which just doesn’t jive with this desire to have someone who agrees with you on everything, or on everything you think is important. Incredibly intelligent people tend not to just go along to get along. There’s a choice to be made. And it seems that plenty of women are choosing agreeable over intelligent. Bringing this back to Whole Foods: is it possible that women in DC are starting to look for ‘mimbos’?

This goes along with my dislike of most things SWPL. It’s not so much that I hate any of these things in particular (I even like about a fifth of them). It’s the hypocrisy that goes along with this way of seeing the world: I’m a free thinking, progressive, liberal who just happens to only associate with people who look and act exactly like me. And I won’t tolerate anyone who isn’t as open minded as I am. Never mind that this whole way of looking at the world grows out the same upper-middle class, white bread background that hipster/yuppies spend so much time trying to distance themselves from.

Being a Democrat or a Republican says very little about how open minded or intelligent you are. In fact, if you think it does, there’s a good chance that you are neither.