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To return to the story of Poker Maven and his chest-thumping pride in being able to gain sexual access to very young and very vulnerable females by employing the simple stratagem of paying their bills and giving them a roof over their heads….

In response to Poker Maven’s expressed predilection for waifs, someone raised the question of why he wouldn’t want to consort with more intellectual women.

His answer, and I am quoting:

“Alphabetically:

Albert Einstein

Ed Miller

Arnold Snyder”*

The presumed intent of this response was to give examples of men who have been brought low by being foolish enough to involve themselves with “intellectual” women. (I used the scare quotes because the thread was rife with perplexed little emoticons, apparently expressing disbelief that there is such a thing as a female intellectual.) Another thread contributor appended his own list: Adam, Samson, and David (with the Bathsheba incident in mind). This second list was of particular interest to me because it is exactly the same list that Sir Gawain adduces in his misogynistic rant after he learns that he has been set up by Morgan le Fay and the Lady of the Castle. Someone in Poker World has been doing his reading.

I will leave Arnold Snyder out of this because I know zip about him and his wife and his ostensible “brought-lowedness,” but what about the others? Albert Einstein’s first wife was herself well educated in science, to the point that there is controversy as to whether she did or did not contribute to his scientific work, and if she did, to what extent. Now, they were ultimately divorced, so we can assume that their marriage was not unalloyed bliss, but did Mileva bring Albert low? I would say not, because his paradigm-shifting papers were written and published during his marriage. It is not as if he did great things before taking up with Mileva, and then she suddenly turned him into a stumblebum.

As for Edward, I gather that in Poker Maven’s mind, the severing of Edward’s ties with Poker World is (a) a matter of professional ruination and (b) all the fault of the intellectual woman he married. Both of these propositions are simply untrue, and Poker Maven finally had to resort to “Just kidding!” As for the other list that goes back to Gawain’s rant, it could be argued that Adam and Samson were indeed brought low by the machinations of intellectual women (Eve, for example, was specifically tempted by the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), but all Bathsheba did was take a bath in the privacy of her own home, unaware that she was seen by a Peeping David who was doing what he wasn’t supposed to do where he wasn’t supposed to be doing it.

So much for Poker Maven’s contention that brilliant men are brought down by intellectual women, an idea that, despite its lack of supporting evidence and indeed its inherent foolishness, nonetheless resonated with  a significant percentage of the denizens of Poker World.Â

When I first became involved with Poker World, I was sure that its members’ constant characterization of women as hos and bitches and skanks and sloots, totally lacking in reason and intellect, was merely the lockerroom bravado of immature male adolescents, endlessly striving to become skilled PUAs (Pick Up Artists), whose sexual experience was nonetheless primarily confined to jerking off to internet porn. They couldn’t REALLY believe their misogynistic drivel, could they?

But the more I read of what the poker dudes have to say, the more I am convinced that misogyny is a cherished part of their core beliefs, not that this is anything new under the sun (see Jankyn and his Boke of Wikked Wyves). How else to account for the venom and vitriol they are still spewing all over my daughter-in-law a good half year, an eternity in internet time, after she left Poker World? According to the poker dudes, she was a loud, confrontational troll, illogical and always running off at the mouth before she got her facts straight, in short, to use a favorite phrase, “bat-shit crazy.” Even if she were all of those things (and I am not saying she is), Poker World is full of poker dudes who run their mouths without having a clue, who are loud and confrontational, who troll and are generally obnoxious. If Poker World purged itself of all such poker dudes as it purged itself of Elaine, Poker World would be a mighty quiet place.

Now Elaine is in fact an outspoken woman who likes to stir the pot and is more than capable of being deliberately provocative. And so am I. (That’s Edward in the background whistling, “I wanna a girl just like the girl….”) But Elaine pushed all the poker dudes’ buttons, and I, saying many of the same things and explicitly expressing contempt for the misogynistic ravings of so many of the poker dudes, didn’t. Why the difference? I can only guess it’s because I am a crone, and we crones finally get to say whatever we want because no one takes anything we say seriously anyway. But Elaine is in her prime childbearing years, and that’s a different story.

My conclusion is that the poker dudes (representative perhaps of the majority of men?) are simultaneously absolutely convinced that the mere possession of penis and testicles renders them automatically superior to all who lack those anatomical features and desperately afraid that it doesn’t. Any woman who threatens this precarious balance of fear and loathing cannot be tolerated.  Thus Elaine must be burned at the stake.  Thus Poker Maven, a 58-year-old man who is fixated on the SAT score he earned when he was 18, does not dare to allow a grown, intelligent, educated woman into his life–God (or rather There-Is-No-God), what if she had better SATs than he did?–and focuses his sexual desires on very young, very vulnerable women who cannot possibly give him a run for his money.

Happily for intellectual women, there are self-confident men who enjoy women with brains, but that’s a topic for another day.

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*For those not familiar with Poker World, Arnold Snyder is a writer on gambling topics who had the chutzpah to challenge something Poker Maven wrote, and his wife had the temerity to chime in.