I'd like to see this done by country or year or language or genre.
If I say: "Your manager is good.", it's neutral. You can't figure out if I'm talking about a man or a woman without something additional.
In Romanian, and I guess in most Latin languages, no such luck. Except for a handful of neologisms, everything clearly mentions the gender, for better of for worse.
The direct translation in Romanian: "Managerul tău e bun" is masculine (both the noun and the adjective make that obvious).
The whole neutral gender movement in English sounds kind of funny for us... we could try to do it Romanian but it would be like lobotomizing the language.
I believe in gender equality. But it is worth thinking about other hypotheses even if you don't accept them, that is, the implications of biology in human behaviour.
Gender isn't "made up" in the same way that words aren't "made up"; it is an aspect of society, but unlike words, gender is with some relation to observable physical biological expression, usually termed as 'sex'. But the concept of gender as I have seen it used is certainly depending on society, rather than physical sex.
Variations within sex (such as intersex) is another question and is unrelated to gender, as far as I know.
I believe that denying these differences is sexist, as it results in laws that affect males and females unequally. Should sentences for violent crimes be shorter for men because higher testosterone levels make them more biologically prone to violence? This is dangerous political territory bordering on eugenics but an interesting question nonetheless.
However, I think the interesting point is that this is the culmination of 100,000 plot descriptions. At that point, it's not a reflection of bias in an author, it's a culturally accepted position on the roles of genders. (whether right or wrong)
...or I guess it could be a bunch of biased wikipedia editors :D
More broadly, this is a case of "right for the wrong reason". Many books mentioning slavery will be racist because many books of all sorts were racist, but we're asking whether this is informative or just a base rate fallacy.
It's true that correlation is not causation. It's true that books that use the words 'black' and 'slave' doesn't say anything about whether they're racist. Nobody in this thread was saying otherwise.
It's also true that the history we actually have is one filled with real racism and writing about real racism. It is not one that had a majority of John Brown writing about the evils of slavery. This isn't speculation, we have a historical record and this has already been demonstrated.
Bigger picture, @artursapek asked an interesting question, is a body of literature sexist if it accurately reflects society? Men do commit more crimes, is it sexist for there to be more writing about men committing crimes than women?
@zebrafish answered with an interesting answer -- we might consider it somewhat sexist because our society is still somewhat sexist. If the degree of sexism in literature and in society are the same, then is the literature sexist on it's own? Maybe it is.
Both are hypotheses, and in my book it's perfectly fine to ponder hypotheses. Neither one said something I would presume to call "wrong".
racist ==> "black" correlates with "slave"
"black" correlates with "slave" =/=> racistIts not just about slavery, and I'm not sure how this analysis would even begin to comprehensively find these currently unfavorable descriptions of people.
- I want to be at the top of the pyramid society
- I want there to be no consequences for promiscuity
- I want a calming mind altering drug that has no side effects
- I want peace and stability to focus on my intellectual tasks
Brave New World accomplishes that.
I'd say that if there is, then yes, content which keeps the idea alive is sexist to an extent. (Unless you're writing non-fiction) And the existence of the adtech, and ideas like brand awareness, and catchy jingles, and recent fake news is a decent example that society is relatively easy to influence just by constant repeating and enforcing of information.
What would that mean? That men commit more aggressive crimes or that the users of the language perceive it that way? Also, what would then be seen as a crime or as violence?
The point I am trying to make is that there is probably a cultural factor in this as well. (How the culture perceives things to be.)
I would say most of the research in this area is in abusive relationships. Where only heterosexual abuse from man to woman is noticed and acted on, which greatly distorts reality and cultural expectations.
Many men are physically abused by women, and this is underreported.
Gay and lesbian relationships also produce a power dynamic, which has also gone underreported, as they were already either marginalized, or collectively too busy trying to make all LGBT relationships seem completely benign so that their neighbors wouldn't marginalize them.
Do I have enough quantitative evidence to disprove your "by far" statement? No, but thats not the point. There is something about HUMANS that we should enlighten ourselves about.
Still, doesn't change the fact that most violent agressors (and victims of violent crime) are men.
will a human being pumped with testosterone and upper body strength be violent? a human being with a Y chromosome? thats currently what culture suspects given the reported information available in crime statistics.
I'm telling you that such reductionism isn't an absolute, as there is enough evidence from marginalized people and power dynamics to warrant altering the cultural assumptions. The culture alone (and the stories written in these cultures) is what perpetuates a lack of further insight into this.
Genetic differences are FACTS. If you do not account for facts, you're operating in the twilight zone.
It does not, however, follow that all perceived differences in behavior between gender groups are genetic at root. It would be rather dishonest of me to say "men in the US like trucks, therefore liking trucks is embedded in the male geneome" without considering that there could be a societal aspect to that behavior.
Genetic differences may be facts, but blindly assigning genetic causation to perceived behavior without completely ruling out other possible influencing factors is just bad science.
Seems like the Muslims have taken up the Evil Baton.
That said, what if the Jews had been the outgroup that has no obligations to the ingroup and vice versa? In the Middle Ages there were prohibitions on taking interest and charity was encouraged, which meant credit was unavailable, but relatives had potential to be bottomless barrels. We are still seeing this with athletes from an impoverished background. One can see why a group with no such restrictions would be useful, even successful.
I think in East Africa the Indians occupied a similar position in society, and when Idi Amin emulated the Catholic Majesties and expelled the Indians the outcome was equally disastrous.
Much of this reflects reality. Murder in general is committed more by men. Most reported battery and assault (beat) is committed by men. Murder by poisoning is almost exclusively committed by women. First responders or soldiers who are "saving" people trend male, etc.
When you're looking at 100k fiction works, many of them are going to be romance, mystery and other dramatic type stories that reinforce these concepts.
(I started this post off as tongue-in-cheek, but now I realise it's probably true)