SEXISM!

[clarsct]

Ok, Where to begin?

First, let's set PC aside for a moment. I'm trying to come at this with as few preconceived notions as possible. I may fail, but I am trying.
Right!
So, there seems to be this idea that one gender is better than another. Seems damned illogical, on the face of it. I mean, to say that a man is smarter than ANY woman just because he is male, well....I can't say I understand how that would be or why anyone would think so. (or vice versa, BTW) But it appears that people hold these types of beliefs. Yet, men and women are different, aren't they? Aside from the topology, I mean. Obviously we're formed differently, and I, for one, am happy with the arrangement. However, men, ON AVERAGE, tend to have more muscle mass than women. Women tend to be more dexterous. I'm not saying there isn't a woman(probably more than one) who could beat me at arm wrestling, or any other show of strength, nor am I saying that there isn't a woman clumsier than me out there, though I would doubt it. (I'm a klutz. But that's a on a personal, ancedotal level.)

But aside from these, statistical arguments. Do we not tend to treat those we're attracted to differently? Everyone has their preferences. Me, I prefer women. Doesn't that bias my judgement? Despite any 'best interests', haven't you noticed a 'double standard' on socially acceptable behavior? Even amongst bisexuals, there is usually one sex that is 'more preferred'. I suppose some would say that it matters only if you let it matter. But I'm wondering if it matters despite your best intent to not let it do so? If you find someone attractive, isn't it natural to give them more leniency than someone you don't? Have you noticed other people doing JUST THAT?

So I guess my question is: Aren't we all sexist, just a little?

Pre-Emptive strike!
Of course there is a difference between this and sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is not a part of my question, really. All I'm saying is that if you have a gender preference in your partners(and I think that most do), how does it affect your judgement? How can it not? And what does this mean for sexual equality?

 

[Kiless]

Certainly, the notion of defining 'attractiveness' means that you're going to have bias. What is attractive in a person is so subjective and depends on a variety of factors.

This seems to be opening up a whole range of discussion points, so I'll just make a few comments on the one that interests me at the time.

I just Googled 'attractiveness gender bias' and 'psychology gender bias' (just as a starting point), and there's quite a few University courses on the topics.... I found this one (admittedly, rather out of date - Spring 1988??): A course on "Living in a Social World Psy 324: Advanced Social Psychology - Gender Differences in Physical Attraction.

http://www.units.muohio.edu/psybersite/attraction/gender.shtml

The statements that caught my eye in the course summary included:
"This gender difference in mating routines is evident across the globe as well. Men around the world are more interested in women who are youthful and physically attractive. However, what men find physically attractive varies from culture to culture. Some cultures value female fatness when courting a women. Anderson, Crawford, Nadeau, and Lindberg (1992) researched the socioecological factors that determine attitudes toward fatness in women. Important factors included food security, climate, value placed on female work, relative social dominance of women, and adaptive reproductive suppression of females in the society."

Naturally, culture becomes a factor in discussing this topic. Who can ignore the trend for Rubenesque women in the Baroque era and how that changed? And what is seen now as a role model for an attractive woman / man is certainly different to my parent's era.

A lot of the links I checked seemed to look at studies of gender bias in terms of physicality towards / against lecturers, lawyers, against women in Psychology textbooks, even... there was this pdf. on 'Physical Attractiveness Bias in Hiring - Why Beautiful is Good'...
http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/ORSP_Shahani-Denning_Spring03.pdf

I recall hearing that 'men's studies' are becoming popular, as a counterpoint, perhaps, to women's studies courses that are available in colleges.

Eh, summation - "Do we not tend to treat those we're attracted to differently" - yes. But how do we treat them, exactly? Positively? Or do we try to 'work against the grain' as it were, and make more of an effort to not be lured by this?

Here's a even more inflamatory question - IS THE WAY WE TREAT DIFFERENTLY THOSE WE FIND ATTRACTIVE A GOOD OR BAD THING?

 

[TragicMonkey]

I don't think it counts as sexism in the conventional sense of the word if one treats the attractive differently, because one is not then treating that entire gender differently, but only certain people in that gender. Unless one's standards are so broad that one finds everyone of a particular gender attractive.

Me, I try to treat everyone equally, but being human I'd let a bit of hotness get away with behavior I wouldn't accept in others, if only because I'm hoping to get something out of it. Or in it, as the case may be.

 

[RandFan]

Me, I try to treat everyone equally, but being human I'd let a bit of hotness get away with behavior I wouldn't accept in others, if only because I'm hoping to get something out of it. Or in it, as the case may be.

I wouldn't kick her out of my bed for eating crackers...

I grew up in a patriarichal society and I resented much of the rediculously stupid and boorish notions that men had about women. Still, over the years I have had to overcome some sexist biases. I would dare say that I still have some that creep up from time to time.

"I told them never to call broads, chicks." --UHF

 

[rjh01]

I strongly believe that treating everyone equally can mean you are discriminating against certain people. You should treat people equitably. For example you expect only women to get pregnant not men. Yet if we were to treat everyone equally then we would expect both men and women to get pregnant. Another example is that we do not expect people in wheelchairs to go up and down stairs.

I like Kiless’ question ‘IS THE WAY WE TREAT DIFFERENTLY THOSE WE FIND ATTRACTIVE A GOOD OR BAD THING?’ Make it broader. Consider it in a non-sexual context. What about people who are of the same gender as us who are attractive?

 

[ma1ic3]

Sexist (from encarta)
believing one sex is inferior: believing that one sex is inferior to the other in a variety of attributes

I would say that we have sexual biases and that sexism is a sexual bias, but someone who has sexual bias doesn't necessarily have the type that is so commonly referred to as sexism.

I would apply this to racism as well. We are usually more attracted to our own race.

Racism (from encarta too)
belief in racial superiority: the belief that people of different races have different qualities and abilities, and that some races are inherently superior or inferior

As an animal, we are going to have a lot of naturally inbuilt biases that exist because they are or were useful for our survival, or because they are an unavoidable consequence of some other characteristic that was selected for. An example of the latter is the child-like features that have been retained in adult foxes that have been bred for their friendliness in an ongoing experiment in Russia. This retention that was unintended, is known as pedomorphism. In general, because of these inbuilt biases, we find the opposite sex more appealing than our own, we find oranges tastier than grass, blue more soothing than red, food better smelling than waste, and we respect unscientific beliefs that are exciting and inspiring more than unscientific beliefs that are boring and lack awe and fire.

But we don't have to let these emotional biases get the best of us and let them cause our logic to be biased as well. Just because something feels, looks, smells, or tastes good to us or better than something else does to us, doesn't mean that it is. We can choose not to believe that our personal preferences are superior. And we can choose not to believe that our personal feelings and inner experiences, such as the experience of the holy ghost, reflect reality more than the inner experiences of others who may feel things that contradict our own personal feelings.

I dont' want to make this sound too black and white, as if you can choose to let your biases get the best or you or not. I don't feel that I or anyone I know have triumphed over all their emotional biases. As skeptics, many of us have shed the greater one, or at least, know what is wrong with them. But everyone, from time to time, slips up on the smaller ones that aren't debated over endlessly.

 

[Tmy]

I like Kiless’ question ‘IS THE WAY WE TREAT DIFFERENTLY THOSE WE FIND ATTRACTIVE A GOOD OR BAD THING?’ Make it broader. Consider it in a non-sexual context. What about people who are of the same gender as us who are attractive?

Appearance will send non verbal que's to people. Ever notice the difference in treatment that ya get when you're dressed up vs. bumming around in jeans and a sweatshirt.

 

[ma1ic3]

I strongly believe that treating everyone equally can mean you are discriminating against certain people. You should treat people equitably. For example you expect only women to get pregnant not men. Yet if we were to treat everyone equally then we would expect both men and women to get pregnant. Another example is that we do not expect people in wheelchairs to go up and down stairs.

Good point. I feel the same. If you treated everyone the same then how could you decide who to hire or should be the captain of your team, or the president of your country?

I think I first started to think about this when hearing about communism. From what my teacher said in high school, everyone is given equal pay. I thought that wasn't fair because some spend more time learning how to do their job. You're not treating them equally by giving them equal amounts of money when the jobs themselves are not equal in hardship or skillsmanship (is that not a real word?).

 

[gnome]

Usually when one talks about sexism negatively, they mean prejudiced behavior.

Treating someone differently once you've MET them isn't prejudice--it's postjudice, and appropriate if done rationally--I treat people I'm attracted to differently. I treat people I don't like differently.

A friend once came to me worried that he was thinking in a subtly racist manner because he had run into some black youths that annoyed him to the extreme. After he described their behavior, my thought was, "It doesn't sound like you have a problem with black people, it sounds like you have a problem with a--holes!"

Just 2c...

 

[CapelDodger]

What about people who are of the same gender as us who are attractive?

You mean we who are attractive.

 

[CapelDodger]

Appearance will send non verbal que's to people. Ever notice the difference in treatment that ya get when you're dressed up vs. bumming around in jeans and a sweatshirt.

I was in the computer business in the 70's, and exactly the same difference existed in reverse. Happy days. The accountants used to slob-out for cred, but the shoes always let them down. The way they stare at them when they're talking to you ...

 

[El Greco]

It's funny how modern science is almost terrified to touch *mental* differences between sexes and races. There are so many studies about physical differences between men and women or black and white people, but nobody seems ready to study the specific differences between the brains of men and women or Asians and whites. As if anything would change if eg the Asians would prove to have a higher average IQ than Caucasians, or men a better memory than women. As if our societies are constructed on the foundations of a fragile mental equality and would collapse if that equality was proven to be false. As if we haven't already decided that those with special abilities or disabilities have the exact same rights. As if we don't already know that some among us are less clever and less able, yet we acknowledge them as equals.

But I guess we are still in doubt when we have to draw a line between "equal rights" and "recompense according to individual abilities". So it's probably safer to leave these things untouched for a few more hundred years.

 

[CapelDodger]

It's funny how modern science is almost terrified to touch *mental* differences between sexes and races. There are so many studies about physical differences between men and women or black and white people, but nobody seems ready to study the specific differences between the brains of men and women or Asians and whites.

You're quite wrong in your assumption, there have been many such studies done. What they've shown is that there are no detectable differences across "races", and that there are detectable differences across gender. IQ is nonsense, forget it. People are people everywhere, and men are different from women everywhere (mentally speaking). Results like that over race don't hit the headlines, so there is perhaps an illusion that research isn't done simply decause differences aren't found.

Something else that is the same everywhere is that markedly good-looking people get higher status and better treatment than the poor normals, what they've had to put up with I shudder to think ...

 

[El Greco]

You're quite wrong in your assumption, there have been many such studies done.

Perhaps, but I've certainly not seen enough of these studies, let alone "many". Besides, when there are numerous studies about the appearance of disease W among the people of race X and about how the genetic background of the race Y makes syndrome Z much more probable, I find it difficult to accept that the brain would be like the only organ not affected by race. Not that I expect a superiority or inferiority of a certain race, but I'm pretty sure that certain differences between races could be discovered. Some people may have better spatial intelligence, others will be better with words, etc. But it is also quite probable that mixing of races will eliminate such differences before we have a chance to discover them.

 

[clarsct]

Originally posted by ma1ic3

We are usually more attracted to our own race

Really? I would question this. Anything to back this up?

As for the rest of your argument, well, that is my point. We are biased. And we can't know we're biased, nor to what extent, truly, now can we?

So if we all have a sexual bias, is the equality of the sexes an achievable goal?

Another idea might be that postjudice might become prejudice. That our bias may lead to generalizations and stereotypes.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

(Who watches the watchers?)

 

[clarsct]

I don't think it counts as sexism in the conventional sense of the word if one treats the attractive differently, because one is not then treating that entire gender differently, but only certain people in that gender. Unless one's standards are so broad that one finds everyone of a particular gender attractive.

Me, I try to treat everyone equally, but being human I'd let a bit of hotness get away with behavior I wouldn't accept in others, if only because I'm hoping to get something out of it. Or in it, as the case may be.

Now, I'm probably going to do a very bad thing here. Most of my examples will be female. This is not any slight on anyone, it is simply the easiest viewpoint for myself. Feel free to substitute the masculine equivalent if that is your fancy.

Now, to find one woman attractive, wouldn't one have to be, generally, attracted to women? When someone posts on the board for the first time with a name that doesn't necessarily give you any gender clues, then you find out, one way or another, does that change your view of them?
Take my name. Could be male or female, at first glance. To most people who have been reading my posts, it becomes clear that I am male(although I was thought of as female a few times by some folks). Now, imagine I had been fibbing, and was really a woman. I posed as a male because I thought I would get more respect. Would that change things? Why or why not? Be honest.

 

[clarsct]

It's funny how modern science is almost terrified to touch *mental* differences between sexes and races. There are so many studies about physical differences between men and women or black and white people, but nobody seems ready to study the specific differences between the brains of men and women or Asians and whites. As if anything would change if eg the Asians would prove to have a higher average IQ than Caucasians, or men a better memory than women. As if our societies are constructed on the foundations of a fragile mental equality and would collapse if that equality was proven to be false. As if we haven't already decided that those with special abilities or disabilities have the exact same rights. As if we don't already know that some among us are less clever and less able, yet we acknowledge them as equals.

But I guess we are still in doubt when we have to draw a line between "equal rights" and "recompense according to individual abilities". So it's probably safer to leave these things untouched for a few more hundred years.

WOW. You have forced me to re-assess. Are there mental differences? Any comprehensive studies? SOMEONE must have done one at some time, but I have been unable to find it. A lot of hand waving stating that women in charge would lead to a more peaceful world, but no hard data to accompany that claim.
A few hundred years? Bah! We're all adult skeptics here and can handle some hard data, right? Why be squeamish?

 

[clarsct]

You're quite wrong in your assumption, there have been many such studies done. What they've shown is that there are no detectable differences across "races", and that there are detectable differences across gender. IQ is nonsense, forget it. People are people everywhere, and men are different from women everywhere (mentally speaking). Results like that over race don't hit the headlines, so there is perhaps an illusion that research isn't done simply decause differences aren't found.

Something else that is the same everywhere is that markedly good-looking people get higher status and better treatment than the poor normals, what they've had to put up with I shudder to think ...

Data? I am interested in this.

 

[clarsct]

*snip*
Eh, summation - "Do we not tend to treat those we're attracted to differently" - yes. But how do we treat them, exactly? Positively? Or do we try to 'work against the grain' as it were, and make more of an effort to not be lured by this?

Here's a even more inflamatory question - IS THE WAY WE TREAT DIFFERENTLY THOSE WE FIND ATTRACTIVE A GOOD OR BAD THING?

No answers, yet, M'Lady. It's a damned good question.
Good:
Because it helps us find mates. It is part of a very complex human courtship ritual.

Bad:
Discriminatory. Why should a good looking person get more breaks in a society where all are considered equal?


And the fact that I can justify both is no answer. Anyone else?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Now, I'm probably going to do a very bad thing here. Most of my examples will be female. This is not any slight on anyone, it is simply the easiest viewpoint for myself. Feel free to substitute the masculine equivalent if that is your fancy.

Ah! You noticed my carefully pronoun-free writing! I conceived a great fondness for the art of deception-without-lying while taking philosophy, and frequently resort to roundabout ways of speech when I don't feel like revealing my preferences. You'd be amazed how few people see it as suspicious that you can discuss, in detail, a romantic encounter or indeed, an entire relationship, without ever using a single pronoun to betray the sex of the parties involved. To me, the omission screams. However, people might just assume I have a pompous manner of speech.

Now, to find one woman attractive, wouldn't one have to be, generally, attracted to women?

I don't think so. I think you start with a broad preference, weak or strong depending on your place on Kinsey's infamous scale, for a particular gender. But that's just the theoretical. You may be stuck in a room with six persons of Gender Desirable, but each of the six is so hideous that they fail to attract you at all. (Although in Desert Island situations, you might overcome the lack of attraction, but that's not the same as finding them attractive).

I think it works from the general (I like Gender A!) to the more specific (I like Person 3!). Possibly, passing through intermediate stages (I like Race D! I like brown hair! I like 'em short and fat!) along the way.

When someone posts on the board for the first time with a name that doesn't necessarily give you any gender clues, then you find out, one way or another, does that change your view of them?

I blush to admit it, but if I don't think I can tell from the name or what they've said, I tend to assume gender from the avatar! Which made it a bit unsettling when BPSCG was using the Iraqi voting lady as his avatar, because I knew he was male before that.

That said, I don't really care what the gender is, apart from curiousity about the posters. I don't want to know for debating points, I'd want to know because I wonder what they're like. I'm always curious about people, at least the interesting ones. I'd also like to know everyone's preferences in bath towels, books, and which character from Buffy they'd most like to a) be, b) be with, and c) strangle (or stake, in some cases) to death.

Take my name. Could be male or female, at first glance. To most people who have been reading my posts, it becomes clear that I am male(although I was thought of as female a few times by some folks). Now, imagine I had been fibbing, and was really a woman. I posed as a male because I thought I would get more respect. Would that change things? Why or why not? Be honest.

I don't know how it would change things. I'm sure some people would change their reactions to you, whether from sexism or psychology or culture or whatever. I don't think I would, because I like to think I'm as unsexist as anyone. But then, I did get caught with that old saw about the doctor and the father and why the doctor couldn't operate on the kid and it turns out the doctor was the mother. So heck, maybe I do have some sexism rattling around in the depths of my monkey mind.

But at least I'm damn sure it's not because I regard women as sex objects!