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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.
> > men lack a mechanism that bolsters automatic preference for their own gender
> I wonder why that might be?
Familiarity breeds contempt?
A study finds that women are viewed more positively than men, then researchers coin phrases like "women-are-wonderful" (equally "men are bad") and "benevolent sexism" (no, it's just sexism).
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.
Like many others on this thread, you are misinterpreting the term, "benevolent sexism".
"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.
Maybe unvolontary sexism ? There s a difference between the base macho sexism, embracing the gender divide, degrading women as sexual consumption near-objects, and the simp putting women on a pedestal so high he d even rather they don't speak so they dont break his illusion.
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.
> "benevolent sexism" (no, it's just sexism).
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.
It seems like this explains, or perhaps is explained by "male expendability".
It’s definitely in the same orbit, but I would connect it more closely to the high risk, high variance strategies taken by males, which drive mentioned traits such as aggression, disagreeableness, & danger.
Women create society, women ARE society. A few chosen men (rich, powerful, handsome) hold key positions in this society, meanwhile most men are just outside, looking for a way in. You can buy your way in by being productive and hard-working. Or by dying for the society. Note that in times of war, women were handing out white roses, not putting on their combat boots. The rich and powerful were likewise found nowhere near a battlefield.
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.
If you are interested in men's issues, but hate misogyny or red-pill, check out r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
'benevolent sexism'??? It sounds like newspeak to me.
Surely this should just be called 'female privilege'.
The definition of benevolent sexism makes no sense. If "women are cooler than men" is benevolent sexism, then either you admit sexism is defined subjectively from the female POV, or you have to admit that "men are better at math" is also "benevolent sexism".
Maybe they are borrowing from the defintion that: racism = prejudice plus power [1]
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
No it's a well known phenomenon. It's like opening the door only to women to simplify, but it will impact for instance a vote decision: "women are too precious to be dragged into political fights".
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.
Or you haven't educated yourself on what the technical term actually means.
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
Considering the term "privilege" (in that sense) was coined specifically in regard to male (and white) privilege, it is definitionally not "female privilege", though clearly that on its own isn't a very convincing argument.
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.
Related, recent study: https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/people-are-more-scept...
> 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.
I think Carl Jung did a great job of describing the origin of this effect with the concept of the underdeveloped anima - which is an especially common condition among modern men(technically it's common among all men before they reach emotional maturity, but this specific type of maturation is often stunted nowadays).
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
"benevolent sexism"? there is always a flipside to -isms:
If women are preferred, man are logically dispreferred.
(not complaining, just pointing it out)
>Ambivalent sexism is a theoretical framework which posits that sexism has two sub-components: "hostile sexism" (HS)[1] 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 (e.g., the ideas that women need to be protected by men).
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.
It depends. There's a practical and mechanical difference between one group being more liked than average, and one group being more disliked than average. Even though the situations can be equivalent in a purely logical sense, the nature of the difference changes
That's very literally the meaning of the phrase.
It doesn’t say women are preferred, more like the expectations are higher. It’s not benevolent.
There are studies showing bias against women, there are studies showing bias against men. This should remind us not to take any one reported bias and conclude that it represents the overall relationship between the sexes, even if politically convenient to do so.
Note though that even though this sounds like a positive and "well-meaning" bias, it can be dysfunctional too. Holding someone to a higher standard also has a "reverse" psychological effect that when they deviate or stray away from the expected standards, people are harsher on them than they usually would be. This is why, when coupled with regressive societal norms, "honour killing" of women happen (the extreme worst-case example).
(Related - The problem with putting someone on a pedestal - https://pairedlife.com/etiquette/onapedestal ).
any sexism inherently has a counter-effect on the opposite sex. e.g women being viewed as homemakers and not being taken seriously in professional environments has the counter-effect that men are hoisted with the responsibility of making a living and creating a successful career and are judged more harshly for failing to do that.
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
They say that female call-centre responders are preferred to male ones.
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).
I thought the phenomena was called the "Althouse Rule," from the below blog post observation.
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...
Meta comment:
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...
I think encouraging healthy emotional relationships among men is probably a better idea for society than the "the world is harsh and unpleasant so you must be strong" sort of rhetoric that I hear men tell each other on this website a lot.
All the studies cited were performed on psychology students. Would the results be the same for physics or CS students ?
So many of the comments in this thread are misinterpreting the phrase, "benevolent sexism".
"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 most interesting part of this -besides the obvious absurdity of "benevolent sexism"- is this line:
"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.
All this research appears to be from the 80s and 90s. When women were still largely confined to being homemakers and soft jobs.
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.
I'm trying to remember someone's words that if <politician(s)> were a woman, there wouldn't have been <bad things>. As if...
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 :-)
Is this a bad thing if it's accurate? Women are more well-behaved on average, no?
Reminds me of kid shirts that say "the future is female".
While I was hesitant to comment on the topic at all, it's worth it for men to have words for the bias, because the entire moral code of a lot of men who tend toward agreeability is based on not-upsetting the women in their lives, or anywhere for that matter, and the effect is pernicious.
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.
> Benevolent sexism
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.
Fitting that in an article like this author Alice has a wiki page but author Antonio does not.
Is that why Alexa, Siri, and OK Google, which are all wonderful, default to female voices?
Out of curiosity I googled "percentage of US prison population that's female" and it's ~10%. So is this partly why we have the "women are wonderful" bias (because women are apparently much less likely to commit violent crime)? Or is it that because of this bias fewer women end up in prison?
Folks are rushing to criticize the term "benevolent sexism" without knowing what the technical term means. It's not the gotcha you think it is.
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"
I'm curious to what extent the effect is country-specific.
I assume this is for western societies. I can imagine in the middle east this is a little bit different...