“Women are wonderful” effect
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
> The authors supposed that the positive general evaluation of women might derive from the association between women and nurturing characteristics. This bias has been cited as an example of benevolent sexism.
Seems an unusually baseless conclusion when in the actual research:
> a task was done to discover whether people associate pleasant words (good, happy, and sunshine) with women, and unpleasant words (bad, trouble, and pain) with men
(conclusions from the study seem to focus on the former positive indicators and ignore the latter negative indicators?)
> men lack a mechanism that bolsters automatic preference for their own gender
I wonder why that might be?
> Other experiments in this study found people [...] associated the male gender with violence or aggression
> Rudman and Goodwin's suggested that [...] male intimidation influences gender attitudes.
I've clipped the positive attitude findings in the above quotes which seems like cherry picking but I'm not trying to negate the findings of positive attitudes toward women. Just pointing out that the clear findings around negative attitudes seem omitted from the conclusion.
The following quote is the clearest example:
> mediation comes not from differences in attitudes towards women, but in attitudes towards men. In more egalitarian societies, people have more positive attitudes towards men than in less egalitarian societies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Smart_(Woman_Smarter)
Look, I love the Dead, but this is a classic calypso tune. I prefer Harry Belefinte's rendition.
Can you point out some examples of such usage for men? Any paper I've found so far defines it specifically in terms of women.
I don't see the logic there.
The "benevolent sexism" is in regards to equating women with "nurturing" characteristics (in this specific case, that's not the only example). My poor understanding of the subject is that the problem is that you are then saying that woman need to be nurturing or they are failing somehow or not meeting expectations, whereas you might not place the same expectation on a man. And that this expectation should guide the roles and opportunities women receive. But it isn't used as a put down against men, just that people don't have the same expectation that men need to be nurturing.
The stance "men are smarter than women" is just plain old sexism since the statement can easily be written as "women are dumber than men".
> The stance "men are smarter than women" is just plain old sexism since the statement can easily be written as "women are dumber than men".
Let me rewrite 'equating women with "nurturing" characteristics' into "women are more caring than men". Or alternatively "men are less caring than women". Do you see the problem now?
I would say you are adding information that wasn't stated, and you are also missing the important part of the issue. Which is types of issues that result from stances like "women are nurturing".
Such as removing woman from consideration from management positions because you feel that their "nurturing" nature would make them unable to make decisions like firing people or taking a stance that is unpopular with their subordinates.
And honestly, I'm going to be blunt here. I feel like people are reacting defensively to the surface level words rather than what the words actually mean.
How is that any less "problematic" than inverting the above to say that ' men are uncaring or mean'?
Casting all men as uncaring can't possibly be viewed as a good thing.
It's just like the concept of positive punishment. You can have positive punishment by adding a consequence (ie. an electric shock) and negative punishment by removing but it's still punishment despite being labelled "positive".
Some people get seriously upset with the “pro life” movement and others the “pro choice” because labeling doesn’t actually change anything.
The only impact from a new political spin is when I have no idea what people are talking about.
I suspect that is because you already have a belief about them and can use that belief to make an informed interrogation of the ideas at hand.
If, on the other hand, as I argued above you did not have a belief yet about an idea, that would not be the case and how it is framed to you would matter. I will give two contrived examples to show my point.
A 7-8 year old little girl is told by her (progressive) mother that "reproductive rights" are important to her and that abortion is part of that and they should fight for it to protect those rights related to her body.
vs.
A 7-8 year old little girl is told by her (conservative) mother that abortion is literally people "killing babies" and they should fight against it to protect the innocent babies.
The way those were framed (even though, I agree with you they are talking about the same concept at the end of the day) would obviously make a big difference to the little girl first hearing about this.
Culture is extremely adaptable with little boys being put into dresses less than a hundred years ago for practical reasons and pink being a manly color as a less overt reference to blood. That swap didn’t depend on some new name for dress and colors.
Looks like your morality is all mixed up and prone to manipulation.
Robin hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor - that's going to be seen one way or the other from the rich person being stolen from vs the poor person being given to.
To have a moral system where defining something as unassailably good is also prone to manipulation - once you decide something is truly good you're more than willing to go to any end to defend or enact that good, including committing atrocities.
Some actions are harder to see as being subjective, sure, but there's always going to be gradients and perspectives.
That's certainly not immediately clear. "Benevolent" is not a synonym of "positive", it's a synonym of "good". The former would apply in your definition but the latter very clearly doesn't.
----
Edit: I see from sibling commenters that this seems to be a compound term that makes up part of an established theoretical framework. That makes sense but I wouldn't assume everyone is automatically aware of that:
> Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating), but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly
It also doesn't redefine the word "benevolent" completely - in this context it just means "the misleading appearance of benevolence".
Here, I think, lies the problem. Trying to re-frame a negative idea as positive. Involuntary imported labor force instead of a slavery?
> By that same logic the bias that "men are smarter than women" is benevolent sexism.
Yes. Exactly. That's not the gotcha you think it is.
You can educate yourself on what the term means here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism
This is different from the phrase "Armenians are good at Chess." Many peoples exist worldwide, so there is no de-facto loser or relative judgment.
Those confounding issues don't somehow make the statement less of a form of benevolent prejudice toward men. It is just that the statement is also clearly prejudicial toward women. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
> I wonder why that might be?
Familiarity breeds contempt?
Hmm, almost like it's ironic. or something. So blatantly obviously ironic, in fact, that I begin to wonder whether they were aware of their own joke. Any by joke, I don't mean social science in general or anything.
It's sexism in both ways, but there's an interesting difference in how to tackle them I think.
Raising a daughter myself, I'm sometimes lost: should I tell her so often she's cute, should I instead vindicate her physical strength, should she do karate or dancing or both ? It's hard to navigate when you know there's a problem, that you're probably part of it and you have a responsibility to try to fix it for your daughter.
For example, if I robbed a bank or stole money from my parents, the solution for those are very different, however they are still both theft.
A bit tangential, but I always dislike this new trendy phenomenon of assigning whether forms of discrimination are "voluntary" or not. I find that it misses the point, and is mostly irrelevant to the conversation. "Oh my manager is totally sexist but nobody else sees it because everyone's been conditioned by society". Just like that, I find that it's a slippery slope into explaining why one is always right or wrong.
Huh? "Asians are good at math" is still racial stereotyping, even if it's not negative.
>(equally "men are bad")
No, read the wiki again.
>mm, almost like it's ironic. or something. So blatantly obviously ironic,
mfw 4chan so irun.
> No, read the wiki again.
My point is that, still, they coined (therefore popularising) only one side (women good), and not the other (men bad).
> mfw 4chan so irun.
;)
They’re ‘failures’ or ‘disappointments’ in their circles despite just being a normal Canadian guy studying what they want, and having some beers and smokes. Meanwhile I’m cool, easygoing and edgy because as long as you aren’t fucking up your life completely, poor white people think you’re doing great.
positive != good
We have different words for a reason: the exact reason you are explaining.
"Benevolent" in this case is defining the category, not the morality of the sexism.
Indeed, sexism is inherently immoral, even when it is framed as benevolence.
What's immoral is to state things that exist differently than what they really are, as if you know.
The real problem is most people don't have the understanding (or, otherwise, safe conditions) to accurately state the differences, but they clearly exist. Otherwise none of us would be here.
If you describe the average woman whom you have interacted with as being more kind and nurturing, that's totally reasonable. You're just being descriptive.
If you prophesy that the average woman that exists will be more kind and nurturing, then you are making an assertion without enough data. There are plenty of women who don't fit that generalization.
If you proport that women in general are inherently better equipped to be in a nurturing role, then you are being prescriptive. That implies that women should be more nurturing, and that those who are more nurturing should be more feminine. That's sexism framed as benevolence.
There are OBVIOUS differences. Maybe they're not the differences you're cherry picking as a straw man. Oh well.
We try to get past our wild roots, the fact that we don't have harems in most of the world is how we became civilized.
Having large masses of men who will never have an opportunity for a wife and family is massively unstable for any society, because these men will either sod off and do their own thing (why should I contribute to society/civilization if it does nothing for me?), or they will forment unrest in an attempt to acquire wives of their own by any means possible.
I think it is possible to have a self stable society without enforced monogamy, so long as you have a mechanism to eliminate the hoards of unnecessary males before they rise up in revolution, but it's not stable in a world where there are some societies that do enforce monogamy and therefore have more males with a stake to fight for.
True.
>The rich and powerful were likewise found nowhere near a battlefield.
False; see the traditional sorting of European aristocrats' sons (oldest is heir, second joins military, third joins clergy). To a first approximation, every single member family in Britain's landed gentry and peerage lost someone in WW1.
Every child also needs a father. Not just his semen or his money.
To believe that you are expendable is just your mind providing a token explanation for deflecting intimacy. That’s the believe that others can only need, but never love you. Such thinking is a symptom for an avoidant attachment style. Those “explanations” tell you nothing about the world. Though they do tell you something about yourself.
Surely this should just be called 'female privilege'.
Benevolent here refers to the intent, not the outcome.
If I say "women are so caring" and then use that as a justification for why I shouldn't hire them, the result is a sexist policy with a benevolent origin.
You see this all the time with stereotypes - queer men are so good at fashion, Asians are so good at math, Black folks are such good athletes, etc. We might think these are compliments, but when they are used to deny opportunities they can be as harmful as any other stereotype.
Any sexist or racist prejudice will either be against one group (women are so weak), leading to a disadvantage for them; or benefit one group (Asians are so good at math), leading to a disadvantage for everyone else. Both are leading to discrimination based on gender or race. Calling one of the two benevolent is just a bad name.
The whole point is that the outcome is not benevolent.
But it's useful to have a nominative difference between sexism that has roots in hate ("women are hysterical") and sexism that has roots in a "positive" stereotype ("women are nurturing").
Those are two different types of sexism with two different root causes and need to different solutions.
That is indeed right in the definition, which you should read:
Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about a gender (e.g., the ideas that women are incompetent and inferior to men). Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating) but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly
The phrase "benevolent sexism" is not an oxymoron though. "Women should stay at home with the kids because they're so nurturing" is a belief that leads to reduced opportunities for women, despite ostensibly being praise of their inherent characteristics. At its simplest definition, "privilege" just means that a particular trait won't be the cause of things being harder for you, and by the example of women being nurturing, that's clearly not an example of privilege.
It's one thing to say that we don't know who coined the term "privilege" in the context being discussed, but to dismiss the possibility of knowing who coined any common term is just clearly false.
And doesn't women being viewed as more nurturing doesn't deny opportunities to nurturing men or men who would like to stay at home and raise their kids?
But I was just talking about "benevolent sexism". The fact that I didn't address a different topic (reverse sexism) isn't a rebuttal, it's just whataboutism. You made some arguments, there are other arguments for and against the idea, none of those relate to my point, which was solely that benevolent sexism alone isn't an oxymoron.
That is indeed not a very convincing argument. A derogatory word invented by a political advocacy group is rarely useful. In this context however it was not coined specifically in regard to male (and white) privilege. It was coined in the social class struggle in regard to the privilege held by the nobles vs the common folks. The meaning was people with legal immunity or exemption from the law that the rest of the people had to follow.
That definition of the word hasn't change much since the 15th century. It is also from this period that the negative connotation occurred with the word pravilege, "an evil law or privilege".
Another analogy I've seen used is that in countries where men violently force wifes, daughters and sisters to veil their entire body, they are all very surprised to be accused of misogyny: they love and admire women like we do dogs, and only aim at protecting them from dirty cavemen as much as possible. But, just like them, you wont ask you dog to vote and you ll give it a slap if it disobeys. Women in turn can then accept this fact of life and embrace their newfound respect for a masculine God protecting them from base men and would show proud humility and obedience, while men burn cars and foreign effigies at the first sign of minuscule disrespect.
This is just a thinly veiled criticism of Iran(?) that has almost nothing to do with the parent comment.
I quite like the idea that prejudice becomes race/sex/whateverism when used to cause harm.
Thus benevolent sexism (i.e. just prejudice and no power) and prejudice based on sex would essentially be synonyms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power
Edit: this comment examplains it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33177570
That's bit icky, because "causes harm" is extremely relative. Any negative attitude (or the shadow of a positive one) causes harm to some degree. Wasn't "microagression" a buzzword not long ago?
Everyone has some degree of power, and ignoring that feels like just another kind of marginalization.
What's so wrong with leaving those words with their current meaning, and if you mean X + power, just say the extra word. Otherwise we wind up with heated arguments over nothing more than the sounds our throats make.
Just want to chime in on this bit here, since it's a bone I have to pick with society on some level, and your comment is providing a good way to maybe hopefully explain it. (I agree with you btw, just to be clear) Though to start off first, I want to make clear that I don't intend harm or any sort of 'flamewar' with this comment, though I can see how some people might take it out of hand.
Sure, there may be degrees to which harm is caused depending on the situation and context at hand, but we (logically, as I see it) should not be concerning ourselves with the lesser degrees overly much; as it creates a societal numbness to the more important things when rallied against too fiercely.
It's like the old "Boy who cried wolf" story. Sure, there WAS a wolf eventually, and so the villagers should have just listened to the boy anyways perhaps, but because the boy fooled them so many times at lesser levels of potential harm, they failed to believe him at higher levels of potential harm.
And yes, I realize that old story is about lying, but sometimes there are similar parallels in life that fit the stories narrative to some degree. Claiming that something is harming you, when there is no immediately understandable effect beyond getting emotional about whatever that thing is, is basically in and of itself, a lie.
Example: If you insult me, have you harmed me in any way beyond possibly injuring my ego?
My answer is no, because the ego is a personal psychological construct. It sucks, sure, but it's not hurting you in any way unless you are already in a mental state where such things become magnified. (I.E. some type of psychosis for example.)
Anyways. The reason why I bring this up, is because I've seen similar arguments about harm being used in the past to try to degrade and reduce the liberty of others, all because someone feels they have right to be more 'equal' than those others all due to the supposed harm being caused. I don't agree with the notion that one should be able to constitute small infractions against another as 'harm'.
I think this is why some people here are quibbling over the differences between 'benevolant sexism' and what they see as 'real sexism'. It's all ultimately some sort of ism, but some have different connotations depending on how they are applied. Ultimately, it's all stereotyping of some degree or another.
In any case, I doubt this was a helpful expansion, just felt important to say.
In my opinion as someone who was constantly bullied in school and have had to deal with people through my life who (in a just world) would have been committed to a psych ward to figure out their issues in why they insist on psychologically harming others... I think we as a society are going too far now with being worried about hurting some random persons feelings over things they technically have no right to be offended over. Which is a tricky thing to discuss, because 'right to be offended' is a hard thing for some people to wrap their heads around when all they ever are is offended at everything.
Which is why I bring up the boy who cried wolf story. I think it suits the situation, since these people are essentially crying wolf at what the rest of society sees as 'nothing'.
Anyways, don't worry about whether or not something is a helpful expansion when discussing these things with me. Sometimes what ends up being the case is we actually agree on many points; but our lexicon differs. That's helpful because others will too, which means now both parties are giving a description that different people will now understand (hopefully) more accurately.
I can't begin to tell you how much I have to say on this subject. I've already written and deleted multiple paragraphs due to the potential of my words being against this sites rules.
tl;dr: Benevolent sexism towards women is considered harmful to women. Benevolent sexism towards men is considered harmful to men.
You can read more about what it really means here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism
> participants had a much less positive response to articles favouring men over women than those that favoured women over men – and, again, this effect was stronger in women, as well as in left-leaning participants
> They also felt more strongly that male-favouring findings should be kept away from girls and not mentioned by teachers and the media.
At different levels of underdevelopment, it can cause women to be perceived negatively; evil, duplicitous, manipulative, etc. At other levels it causes a person to put women on a pedestal, thinking they can do no wrong, viewing them as these perfect, almost numinous beings who are a source of comfort and love.
The common symptom is not viewing women as PEOPLE, as instead of seeing women as they are, all women are viewed through the projection of the persons own "anima"(think of it as an internal construct that represents a persons mother, or more generally, as the archetypal "woman"), and whatever unrecognized complexes or ideas are tied up with that image are projected into the real world. These complexes are developed naturally during early stages of life when a persons mother is perceived as some all-powerful and all-loving source of life, and as a person matures they are supposed to adapt a more and more realistic view of their mother figure and of women in general, but there is a tendency nowadays, especially for men, to not want to give up the comfort and support of their mother(literally or psychologically), and this can cause the immature mother image to persist throughout their life, which then gets projected onto women as a whole
(not complaining, just pointing it out)
If there are two groups (and in addition they are roughly equal size) those are entirely interchangeable as there is no logical "standard" to compare to except eachother
Imagine if there are 200 people, 100 of category A and 100 of category B. It's possible for members of category A to be simultaneously "liked more than average" and "disliked more than average". If 20 A's are liked and 20 A's are disliked, while only 10 B's are liked and 10 B's are disliked, then A's are liked 33% more than average and disliked 33% more than average.
I think it's more naturally interpreted as a frequency question ('given a random A, how likely is it that I would say "I like this person"?') rather than an average/sum question ('what is the total likability of all members of A minus the total dislikability of all members of A?')
The fact that men are specifically feared for some imbalance, whereas women are specifically valued for others, makes it not exactly interchangeable even if the standards only exist in a relative sense. In the hypothetical world, men (and perhaps women) would place extra value on women due to the way sexual desire and attraction works, but men would be seen more neutrally (or with disinterest rather than fear) than in our situation.
I'm not sure what research you are pointing towards, but I sincerely doubt that the propensity for violence is identical, either. Consider the following scenario: a person points a gun to your head and tells you to pick a person at random either amongst all of the women or amongst all of the men (let's sidestep the question of gender neutrality for the sake of the argument) If the person you pick has an aggressive and violent psychological profile, you are shot. Which gender would you pick in this situation to maximize your survival? Would you sincerely rely on your intuition about equal capacity for violence in this case?
Let say you wrote a AI that detected if a person talks negative about a other person in order to make themselves look (or feel) better. We run this AI over a messenger network with true identities. Will men or women be tagged proportional more often?
An other example, let count the number of bullying victim in schools and number of people who are guilty of committing bullying. Will it be boys or girls that are found guilty more often?
A person who wields a gun is more like male because people who own and wield guns in this culture is male. If the person were a poisoner, statistics will say it is a woman. Why? Culture.
What research on violence say is that violence is defined by culture, and if the violence we highlight is those typical of male culture then that is the kind of violence we see. For a very long time researcher did not even consider that female-female competition existed among animals because the only form of competition researcher know of was defined in term of male-male competition. It was only in recent decades that they realized that, in contrast to previous theories, females do compete with each other that mirror the violence seen in males. It just happens to be very different form of violence, although the consequences were often just as deadly as male-male competition.
Let's say we take the cultural argument at face value. If the capacity for violence is identical, why did we come to have a culture that fears men more or highlights male violence? Why were researchers blind to female-female competition in the first place? The explanation is that the violence in question has a dimension of brutality and assertiveness towards challenges that goes beyond just classifying it as male or female and leaving it at that in a cultural relativist sense. If it were completely equal, it would have been very unlikely that we would have assigned such lopsided values to these types of violence since no tradition or cultural expectation is completely divorced from material reality.
In the jungle people find a dead young female baboon. She is apparently dead from starvation, so we hastily conclude it was natural causes. The researcher however who observed the flock gives a different explanation. The young female was healthy just a few weeks ago, but after joining the flock she got continuously bitten and scratched by other females whenever she went to eat or tried to sleep. After weeks of constant stress, lack of sleep and food she died.
In contrast we might find a dead young male baboon clearly beaten to death. They joined the same flock recently and after a large fight over dominance the young male acquired injuries and died. Which of the two cases displayed more capacity for violence, brutality or aggressiveness? Is a brawl better or worse than cold calculated murder?
> why did we come to have a culture that fears men
Very good question. One likely answer is that we have a culture that reward men who commit violence in the right context. Why do men get rewarded for violence? There are many contradicting theories and books on that subject. Are humans inherently violent or peaceful? Is society holding back the savage beast or is cooperation the human default behavior? A lot of questions, a lot of research, a lot of theories.
If you want to dig down into those question there are good books and other sources on it. The stanford Human Behavioral Biology lecture serie on youtube is a good start (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C...). The same researcher has also a book called Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, which focus a fair bit on aggression and violence. There is War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, which also has a counter-argument book which name is currently evading me.
This is also true for basically all large social mammals (cats, dogs, deer, ...), and seems to be a consequence of the fact that female parental investment is greater than male parental investment. In situations like seahorses where the male paternal investment is greater than the female, it is the females that are bigger, stronger and more aggressive.
Size, strength and aggression are directly related to capacity for violence. Men are bigger, stronger and more aggressive, and therefore have a higher capacity for violence. This is why we separate men and women for e.g. boxing or MMA.
An other easy question. Let have two human households, one where two men live together and one where two women live together. Which one is more likely to have domestic violence?
Based on biologically, those two should have a very clear and simple answer. The actually answer is that two female dogs are more likely to fight than two male dogs, and in human households, both of them has statistically identical rates of domestic violence.
EDIT: Note the sarcasm. We are, in fact, a thing.
"men aren't considered more competent, more like expectations are higher"
"white people aren't considered superior, more like expectations are higher"
etc.
Do I need to point it out, or do you see it yourself?
To me 'benevolent sexism' seems just a misleading name. Something like 'positive eugenics'. According to its definition it makes sense to call it that, but you need some context to properly understand what the name actually means.
HS: women are incompetent and inferior to men BS: men are competent and superior to women
Both of these statements are equivalent. The only thing that changes is POV. So if you insist benevolent sexism and hostile sexism are different - you have to assume a POV (for example call the sexism that prefers women benevolent). Which to me seems obviously the wrong thing to do.
It's not a problem. It's an essential part of the definition:
"Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about a gender (e.g., the ideas that women are incompetent and inferior to men). Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating), but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly"
(Related - The problem with putting someone on a pedestal - https://pairedlife.com/etiquette/onapedestal ).
Sounds a bit like the gender-swapped version of "deserters get shot"
That sounds strange. Women are held to a higher standard, yet when they commit crimes, we punish them less severely than men. How would that fit into your narrative?
One rational for this could be that we shouldn't see this in isolation and should also consider other societal aspects too, mainly - (1) women are perceived as the weaker sex (2) women who commit crimes are actually much lower than male criminals and (3) male pride (men too are held to some unreasonably high standards in society, one of popular ones being that men need to protect women and always be chivalrous towards them). So a male dominated society, while holding a "fallen" woman in contempt, might still irrationally blame themselves for "failing to protect" a woman from going waylaid and thus award her a less harsher punishment to assuage their guilt and as an act to "protect" her from further harm. (This is perhaps why many are now advocating for gender neutral laws because some laws do prescribe different treatment based on the gender of the person involved).
Note though that while a judicial punishment might be less severe, the societal contempt that such women face lasts much longer than with a man in a similar situation. Indeed, while, despite the contempt they feel, the judicial system can show restraint due to their legal training to disregard emotions, others in society don't often hold back in showing their disgust and contempt towards a "fallen" women, depending on what gender specific societal standard she has violated. In my own society (in India), I have seen woman who have committed adultery (no longer a crime) being treated more harshly by society than men who have also committed a similar act. From the point of view of our discussion, this could be because the standard ("that woman should display higher level of control over their sexual desire and be more empathetic") is gender specific, and doesn't equally apply to the men for whom the societal standard is different ("men too are expected to control their sexual urges but they can be forgiven as they cannot indulge in it unless a woman consents").
I'm less likely to kick-off at a female call-centre responder if the service is awful, than to a male responder. But the responders I'm happiest with are usually male responders (preferably with a lowlands scottish accent).
men and women both have issues caused by sexism and it's okay to acknowledge both. I only think it's taken too far sometimes when either sex acts like they are the only ones with problems. Also, lets just be honest here, women have it worse as the ROOT of all these dual-edged sexist beliefs stems from a tendency to not view women as REAL people. Some cultures are worse than others with this but I'd argue that pretty much EVERY culture still has certain views on women that, consciously or not, restrict their personal freedom. There are certain benefits to this(e.g being judged less harshly in court, people being more likely to treat you nicely, do favors, etc) but all of those "benefits" are the result of others not viewing the woman in question as a full, independent person who is capable of making their own decisions and forming their own thoughts/beliefs outside the context of being a woman
November 8, 2005
Scientists: remember to portray whatever you find to be true of women as superior.
I've said it before, and I must repeat, the rule is: If you do scientific research into the differences between men and women, you must portray whatever you find to be true of women as superior. And when you read reports about scientific research into the differences between men and women, use the hypothesis that the scientists are following that rule. It makes reading the reports quite humorous.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/11/scientists-remember-to...
Yesterday it was the old OKCupid blogs today it's WAW. I spent some time a few years ago exploring the incel wiki after one of the mass shootings that happened and saw these concepts popping up again and again. I feel like maybe these ideas are reaching a critical mass of young men lately and it will be interesting to see what the ramification of that are....
Looking at how men are doing in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment, career prospects, etc... does make it obvious something has gone very wrong for them as a group but I think there's a real lack of any sort of positive vision going forward. Mostly I see lamentations of how much better women seem to have it or angry calls for a return to the status quo ante.
Is there someone with a positive vision for men? Jordan Peterson spews a bunch of nonsense about fighting dragons and embracing suffering but that's not going to get men into universities or opening up emotionally with one another so that they stop drowning in lonely misery.
The one positive proposal I've seen lately was the suggestion that boys should start school at 6 instead of 5 since girls mature a bit more quickly which gives them a leg up in terms of academic achievement.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/boys-de...
Should male culture become a copy of female culture? That wouldn't work I don't think because I think men have different personality types and tastes on average but it doesn't mean that they can't learn to express their emotions and build friendships with people where they feel comfortable confiding their hurts and fears to each other. Just a basic support network really....
And speaking of friendship, that's another area where me and my girlfriends have noticed that pretty much every man in our lives struggles. It seems like once a guy leaves college his ability to make close friends drops to almost zero. Meanwhile I've made some of my best friendships in my 30s at women's meetups.
The best you can do for the vast majority is handing out winter coats and hope they'll find ways to deal with what life offers them besides drugs and suicide. It is what it is, their suffering usually is damaging only to themselves and thus society at large has no interest in changing it.
I honestly don’t know why I didn’t grow up sharing my feelings, but I believe it has something to do with culture as well as the way paternal figures in my life behaved.
Fighting dragons - Buy into the hero's journey / have big aspirations / reject inertia.
Embrace suffering - delayed gratification / you're entitled to nothing / hedonism doesn't work.
Really, at its very core it drives home ideas of male expendability. You will be loved if you can provide, so 'clean up your room', start providing and if still no women want to be with you, then we can talk about it.
I don't see why you'd call it a "bunch of nonsense" when his messages are merely digestible morsels of the most prevalent traditional thought. The metaphors are obvious enough really. It is adult versions of Aesop's fables & Panchatantra. It is the exact opposite of 'a bunch of nonsense'. They are the most well understood civilizational cliches of humanity.
Do you think it's healthy for boys to be taught that they are expendable and that their lives only have conditional value that can go away at any time if they are unable to work?
Or do you just think "that's the way things have always been so we should embrace it?"
I think probably most manosphere guys think the former which is why I say that there's no positive vision of a future for men. Just this very dreary outlook that life is some sort of hopeless struggle. No wonder so many men are violent and angry if that's the message they get their whole lives. :(
I actually love the men in my life and I want better for them and this slaying dragons stuff doesn't help them as far as I can see. They need to feel like they are valued and loved so that they can open themselves up to more possibilities beyond trying to act tough by building walls around them.
"All models are wrong; some models are useful."
The question isn't "how should men with already healthy co-ed social circles structure their lives?". Those men don't need Peterson. They already have a functioning model of the world. The question is "how do chronically unsuccessful men with zero potential partners avoid spiralling into a cycle of depression, nihilism & misogyny?".
Peterson's "Women behave in ways that perfectly align with their constraints and incentives." message implies that "There is a light at the end of the tunnel if you can grow in ways that align with women, they may reward you with attention and intimacy." Now this might not be a correct view of the world, but it is a useful model for pulling people out of a bad spot into something productive. The more nuanced views of the world will come later, but at least these people are out of their rut for now. It also humanizes women in that "Just like men, women are greedily looking for interactions that enrich their lives". It preemptively dismantles the 'nice guy attack pattern' which places blame on women.
I am not entirely sure women fully realize the extent to which the societal behaviors of single-straight men revolve around finding a romantic partner. The degree of desired promiscuity varies, but it is foundational to male-female interactions for men in their 20s. This is especially true the more starved the men are. "Starved" is the perfect word for it too, because just like food, those living in abundance of it can forget just how desperate a famine can feel.
> men are violent and angry
I'd say it is the opposite. The inability to make peace with male expendability is exactly what leads to the male entitlement, which in turn leads to violence and anger. The old 'patriarchal' image of man was progressively mocked and dismantled, but it was replaced with nothing. Certain toxic parts of the manosphere prey on these empty men, but the real question is why that emptiness has suddenly arisen in the 21st century.
> beyond trying to act tough by building walls around them.
It makes me wonder if you've only ever experienced the meme version of Peterson. He is among the most emotionally intune and vulnerable men I've seen. I mean, just read the the 12 rules he has come up with in his proverbial bible.
"Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street."
"Make friends with people who want the best for you."
"Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today."
"Pursue what is meaningful"
> I actually love the men in my life and I want better for them
Advice for 'Persons' and advice for 'People' are different things. These books are written for 'People'. You are talking about 'Persons' in your life. Advice for People must by definition be generic. Advice for Persons can often contrast 'generic People advice' because you know specifics about what works for them and their circumstances. Then, it is okay for them to be in conflict. It does not invalidate either.
> They need to feel like they are valued and loved so that they can open themselves up to more possibilities
I would genuinely appreciate if you could elaborate on what you mean here. Vague platitudes are one thing. But, universal specific advice is incredibly hard to phrase. If you could phrase a new positive counter-model for these 'disenfranchised men' to follow, then I am all ears.
> I would genuinely appreciate if you could elaborate on what you mean here. Vague platitudes are one thing. But, universal specific advice is incredibly hard to phrase. If you could phrase a new positive counter-model for these 'disenfranchised men' to follow, then I am all ears.
I was just thinking about my own life and the people in it and about how socially cloistered and risk averse some of the less [socially] successful men, and women, I've known have been and how that closed off stance toward the world preceded their lack of success. Feeling like you have intrinsic value gives a person a foundation to stand on so that they can branch out socially. Does that make sense?
It's like how coming from a wealthy family allows you to take more career risks like accepting unpaid internships. Showing your personality to strangers and acquaintances is like taking an unpaid internship. You're putting yourself out there with no immediate reward and no guarantee that it will work out. You could get rejected, but you could also make a genuine connection.... If you're "poor" you might decide that the risk is too much.
Somebody here said something like: "men make society and women are society. Men have to buy their way in to society or die protecting it." I think that message is toxic because while a few guys might hear it and feel gassed up about their "heroes journey" toward "buying" their way into being seen as an actual member of society [human], many others will probably find it paralyzing and be pushed into choosing life strategies which are overly conservative as a result.
Part of having a conservative life strategy would be to close yourself off emotionally right? Showing vulnerability is risky because it can open you up to criticism or lower your perceived value; but at the same time people who are vulnerable tend to build stronger relationships and those relationships have a compounding effect on their well being as having more friends and friends of friends etc.... exponentially increases your chances of finding romantic partners, job opportunities and many other of the things that make for what most people would call a successful life.
Another sad thing about it is that the idea of needing to "buy your way in" to society is that it pits men in a competition against one another for value. Seems worth investigating if this has something to do with the way that men don't support each other the way that women often do. Instead men seem to pile onto other men who show signs of weakness and try to totally destroy them as if life were a last-man-standing video game where taking out the competition leaves more loot for you.
Like, have you read much about female autism? One reason girls are better at "masking" their autism is that neurotypical girls will help autistic girls to fit in. They nurture them essentially. Isn't that interesting? How do neurotypical boys treat autistic boys by contrast?
I'm sort of rambling here, but hopefully this makes sense.
Males can't grow babies inside their bodies. Fish can't run marathons. Whatever. Being able to grow a baby inside you is really cool and important but we don't live in a hunter gatherer tribe that is in danger of going extinct due to lack of babies. Feels like we ought to send boys the message that they are intrinsically valuable and lovable too so that they can feel safe to express themselves and build social networks without worrying constantly about falling out the bottom of society.
I do see your point, however this is an issue with all self-help advice. As a person who looks for such advice, you're looking for something you can fix about yourself. Whether it is a good thing on a society level is not the question.
Mostly because there still is inherent bias against certain genders regarding a degree or a profession, e.g. men as nurses, women as programmers, and those would be way more pronounced back in the 90s.
Technically, people participating in those studies are supposed to be volunteers. Although if part of your "class participation" grade is a result of "doing" a study, then it might not be totally voluntary. And if those studies are unpleasant enough, then you really don't want to be a senior or graduate psych student actually trying to run those experiments.
"Benevolent" is describing the context of the sexism, not judging that the sexism itself is morally good.
The context of the term still heavily implies that "benevolent sexism" is a moral/social failure.
To call out an idea as "benevolent sexism" is just shorthand to say, "despite this idea being framed as a positive affirmation, it reinforces the structure of traditional gender roles and sexism."
> The context of the term still heavily implies that "benevolent sexism" is a moral/social failure.
So...let's just call it sexism?
Personally, I prefer using the adjective. It's descriptive.
"In more egalitarian societies, people have more positive attitudes towards men than in less egalitarian societies."
This makes sense to me- the person you're going to fear the most is someone who has power over you. In the absence of toxic power dynamics, there would probably be a lot more social and sexual openness between the sexes. Probably a big part of what's going on here is that men are seen as threatening in a way that women aren't. And I don't think there's any biological reason that men should be seen as threatening. Cultural reasons, maybe, but those can be fixed.
By the way- please read what I actually wrote, not what you assume I meant, before downvoting. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, in fact I specifically said that men are not bad or any worse than women. If you didn't catch that, read it again. Thank you.
Take a look at this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/
Since then research has shown that people tend to have far more negative views of women in power than equivalent men.
I suspect this derives more from the fact that women were simply not allowed positions of power and so if you guessed a woman was a homemaker and/or in a caretaking job like a nurse or teacher you would almost certainly be right.
Google has so far suggested to me Boris Johnson's "if Putin were a woman...", Kaja Kallas' (Estonian PM) "If women were in charge...", and Sheryl Sandberg's "If women were in charge"; but I am sure I heard this sentiment before 2022.
Probably a good illustration of the effect :-)
Hilary Clinton is another example. Wellesley to warmonger? Something happened there, and my suspicion is that it has to do with "competing" in a male-dominated arena.
Males are more often in the extreme edges of the personality curves. It seems likely to be the case with aggression and egotism also. Women who compete with them are less common (in the field, but also in the female population), but often similarly extreme.
If the women-dominated workplaces I worked in are any indicator, it wouldn't change much at all.
> The Iron Lady was not your Mum
Yeah, and Gengis Khan is not my granddad. What's your point? People cunning, ambitious, and ruthless enough to reach the highest offices will not be representative of the average human, independently of their sex.
But he may be the "grandad" of many people! :-)
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/1-in-200-men-d...
I am unsure if shitty people crave power or power turns people shitty.
i.e.: saying "this shows people are predisposed to favour women, ergo the narrative of gender discrimination against women is disproven."
In actuality, this shows favourable sentiment toward women in quite narrow, specific ways: words quoted from the article are "good, happy, and sunshine" & not things like "competent, reliable, trustworthy, and cool". There's a hint of infantilisation within the words used. Yes they're positive, but it's worth looking at how those specific sentiments might exhibit in real world situations.
Yes. That's exactly how discrimination works. Stereotypes reinforce themselves through the ways we treat people.
Discrimination means treating things differently because they're different. You seem to be assuming that all discrimination is bad; but the "bad discrimination" is discriminating based on irrelevant differences.
> Stereotypes reinforce themselves through the ways we treat people.
Whatever; I don't understand the sentence. Perhaps I should have studied sociology! But a "stereotype" is like a cardboard cutout; it's a super-simplified (ands therefore false) representation of a difference. I don't know what stereotypes have to do with discrimination, unless somehow we're suddenly talking about racial discrimination, or gender discrimination, or some other unjustified discrimination.
At any rate, this is interesting in the large but useless at the individual level. We should not allow fuzzy impressions over the entire human race change our impressions of an individual person.
When the book "The Bell Curve" came out it caused an uproar for this reason. We cannot discriminate against anyone on the basis of their broad studies of race, as the authors themselves noted.
Both genders have a similar average, but you will find more extreme results in make students (very weak or very strong).
Because eggs are scarce but sperm is abundant, males are largely disposable in the context of a species' or society's collective survival. Therefore, it is advantageous for males to engage in high risk, high reward behavior to keep prodding the environment they live in for changes that might require an adaptation from the group. The result is a flatter curve with more extreme failures and more extreme successes.
To get a full understanding of this, compare self reported spousal abuse data against police reported data. The difference is shocking.
It's grotesquely sexist, but lauded by the NGOs.
Also, similar to bullying in childhood, women's bad behavior often doesn't manifest in physical displays of aggression, but psychologically manipulative and emotional ones. Obviously men can be psychologically manipulative too, yada yada... I'm not a woman hater.
There is a maturation stage for men that traditionally happened in late adolescence that doesn't seem as common these days. Now these men relate to women as though they expect women to supervise them, and expect other men to "behave," in a way that is acceptable to their percieved feminine supervisors, or they have some kind of hyper-conscientious responsibility to blunt themselves around women so as to seem "unthreatening" to them, because they are still fundamentally actuated by shame, even though it is just a harness our species uses to manage children.
The anxiety originates from this unmatured Women are Wonderful bias, which boys are taught as children so they can be managed, but with the expectation that they grow out of it or leave it behind during a rite of passage. The result of not breaking men of this childhood harness is they grow up to be "nice guys" who are really just full of anxiety and resentment from navigating the absurd bind of believing their goodness and identity as a protagonist comes from being validated by the women they have placed in their supervisory pedastal roles, and because by treating women as better, they have implicitly made the women in their lives responsible for their feelings instead of taking complete ownership of their own emotions and lives. I meet these "happy wife happy life" guys all the time, and not only do they compete to debase themselves and accumulate sacrifices nobody asked for, but they take it out as resentment of other men whose freedom from that bias casts a light on that undocked lever of shame they wear around like a collar - and then ultimately the women in their lives.
Women are people, and for any quality in a population, people tend to be on pretty long tailed distributions. When you refuse to see the worst examples because of some well meaning bias, it leaves the great ones unappreciated, which I think is the most harmful bias of all. Men and women can be wonderful, but nobody gets there without a lot of practice, imo.
The question isn't whether women are wonderful or not, as that's a dumb dichotomy - it's whether guys have matured into men by ceasing to be controlled by this internalized language of shame that was only necessary to keep them physically safe as children. Part of that is recognizing women aren't symbols, but other people, who like men are responsible for their own actions and feelings, and above all, not a single one is responsible for yours either.
I mean, when attending a birthday or christmas party, who buys the presents?
Bias means that judgment about a topic doesn't match reality. But is it really bias (or even more loadedly "sexism") to think that stereotypical women do more likable things if we were to assume that was perhaps actually true?
Imagine, for example, saying that it's "benevonent species-ism" to think that animals are on average more likely to be quadrupedal than humans. That'd be a silly assertion, because we know for a fact that this is true, and because the idea of more legs being better is weird for human standards. This thought exercise then begs the question: if we do think that thinking "women are nicer" is a form of bias, then what is the reality? Is the implication that they are not? That niceness should account for things other than nurturing attributes? According to who?
IMHO, the more interesting aspect of the observation of this effect is what it says about the people talking about it.
This one confuses me, are you saying that it's a given that women are the one buying presents and men aren't? I've not seen that, nor heard that be the stereotype.
That being said, Octopi are known to bond with humans and I find them pretty neat.
For more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_warning_system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7-yvXf6f8
My personal opinion is the "Bitching Betty" voice with its crisp instructions and authoritative tone makes us subliminally think of our mother giving us guidance or reprimand at an early age. It is a great design; it has saved a TON of pilot lives who otherwise would have accidentally perished.
1-- https://www.debbiegrattan.com/blog/why-trust-female-voice-ov....
“For the exact same crime with the exact same damages, the gender sentencing gap is three times larger than the wealth sentencing gap, and seven times larger than the racial sentencing gap. Having been born female is the single largest get-out-of-jail-free card you could possibly possess.”
This hesitancy by police, prosecutors, judges, and juries to properly charge, prosecute, and sentence women to the same degree as men are treated, is certainly sounding a lot like the “women are wonderful, they couldn’t possibly be responsible or capable of this” effect in action.
That's well documented [0]. Money quote: "In the United States men are most adversely affected by sentencing disparity being twice as likely to be sentenced to jail after conviction than women and receiving on average 63% longer jail sentences."
An interesting side-note: the effect shrinks when the judge is a woman.
But this doesn't seem to account for all of that 10:1 ratio.
They're just emotionally visceral and newsworthy, which is why we think it's a bigger problem than it is in reality.
tl;dr Benevolent sexism towards women is damaging to women. Likewise for benevolent sexism towards men. And yes, it is subjective. That's in the definition.
"Ambivalent sexism is a theoretical framework which posits that sexism has two sub-components: "hostile sexism" (HS)and "benevolent sexism" (BS). Hostile sexism reflects overtly negative evaluations and stereotypes about a gender (e.g., the ideas that women are incompetent and inferior to men). Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating), but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly"