Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

If I read this correctly, it seems an oddly positive spin on what should actually be referred to as the "Men are awful" effect.

> 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

Yep. And calling it "benevolent sexism" is absurd. By that same logic the bias that "men are smarter than women" is benevolent sexism.

"That's right, the women are smarter, the women are smarter, that's right, that's right."

Attribution? The writing style seems interesting enough to follow up on.

https://genius.com/The-grateful-dead-women-are-smarter-lyric...

Not a song I'm familiar with. Thanks!

Here's the actual attribution

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.

TIL. I just googled the phrase in quotes - didn't actually know the song.

It's actually an old calypso song the dead covered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Smart_(Woman_Smarter) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAHfo49iN1w

Man Smart, Woman Smarter was Harry Belafonte. I came across the song through the Grateful Dead.

Indeed, use of the phrase "benevolent sexism" for this is in fact an example of "benevolent sexism" (because nobody would use that phrase to refer to sexism in favor of men).

As has been pointed out elsewhere, benevolent sexism is a technical term in the field, and is just as applicable to situations where positive traits are assigned to men as it is when positive traits are assigned to women. It has nothing to do with judging about the moral status of the sexism.

But it doesn't apply where negative traits are assigned to men, which is what this study partially shows.

> [it] is just as applicable to situations where positive traits are assigned to men as it is when positive traits are assigned to women

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.

Yep. And calling it "benevolent sexism" is absurd. By that same logic the bias that "men are smarter than women" is benevolent sexism.

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".

Would you interpret "men are smarter than women" as a stereotype harmful to men because it sets them higher standards?

> 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?

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.

GP's point was that both "Everyone Prefers Women" and "Men Are Smarter" are equally "benevolent" and "malevolent" (depending on POV) and thus the adjective is "absurd" (meaningless).

'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.'

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.

Yes, the association of men with intelligence more often than women would be benevolent sexism. I don't understand the issue you have with the terminology. Benevolent doesn't mean morally good here, it just means the person exhibiting the bias is assigning a positive attribute rather than negative. On the other hand, "women are dumber than men" would be hostile sexism. Yes, they are just different ways of saying the same thing, but they are framed differently.

The problem is that the results of this study aren't benevolent from the perspective of men.

> Benevolent doesn't mean morally good here, it just means the person exhibiting the bias is assigning a positive attribute rather than negative.

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".

What’s the actual difference between believing women are more X vs men are more !X? Presumably someone would believe one believes the other, and one of those is going to be a positive trait if the other is negative.

As I said in my comment, they are more or less equivalent as statements of fact, but different in how the fact is framed. Framing, or the context in which you state a fact, matters.

I don’t see how framing a belief matters. People will interchangeably flip the context simply based on the subject.

Framing a belief can matter when it is first presented to a person. For example think about the phrases "reproductive rights" vs. "baby killing" or "estate tax" vs. "death tax". If you are first being introduced to these concepts, it matters how it is framed to you when you first start forming your opinions or beliefs about the idea.

I don’t see a difference in those names.

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 don’t see a difference in those names.

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.

Indoctrination isn’t people independently coming to their own options so the names are irrelevant. A 7-8 year old girl can feel equally strongly about red vs blue being a boys/girls color.

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.

So the same thing can be either good or evil, depending on how it’s framed?

Looks like your morality is all mixed up and prone to manipulation.

You're missing the point, where benevolent doesn't equal good, but either way, yes, "good" or "evil" is relative.

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.

> I don't understand the issue you have with the terminology. Benevolent doesn't mean morally good here

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.

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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".

> Yes, they are just different ways of saying the same thing, but they are framed differently.

Here, I think, lies the problem. Trying to re-frame a negative idea as positive. Involuntary imported labor force instead of a slavery?

Calling it "benevolent sexism" is using a technical term you seem to be unfamiliar with. Benevolent sexism towards women is considered harmful to women and equality. Likewise attributing something overly positive to men would be considered harmful to men.

> 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

I didn't know that was a technical term. I guess my views on race are benevolent racism.

This issue with "men are smarter than women" as a form of benevolent prejudice stems from the fact that there are largely only two bio-sexes (vs. genders). That, plus the explicit relative value judgment, makes it clear who the "loser" of the statement is.

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.

> > men lack a mechanism that bolsters automatic preference for their own gender

> I wonder why that might be?

Familiarity breeds contempt?

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