Jezebel has directed my eyes to this Forbes write-up of a study on the effects of confronting men over sexist comments.
Surprise! Turns out instead of causing men to act angry, defensive, or agressive (which is what one sometimes fears when weighing whether or not to remark on a coworker’s or friend’s sexist language), being called out on sexism made the men in the study act nicer.
The study paired men with female partners, had them read and discuss a set of “moral or ethical dilemmas,” then had the women confront the men either for sexism (“i.e., having assumed the nurse in the story was female, which every male participant did”) or for a gender-neutral disagreement.
As expected, men had much stronger reactions to being told that their remark was sexist than they did to mere disagreement. But the reactions weren’t what you might expect. The men accused of sexism smiled and laughed more, appeared more surprised, gestured more often and with greater energy, and were more likely to try to justify or apologize for their remark.
And!
Men were significantly nicer to their female partner while discussing a second set of dilemmas after having been accused of sexism, than they were after merely being told they wrong.
The “sexists” were more agreeable, more likely to try to search for common ground with their partner – they even smiled at her more. And because they had worked harder to make the relationship work, at the end of the study the men accused of sexism reported liking their partner more than those who weren’t accused of it.
Read the rest, and remember it the next time you feel like calling someone on their sexism would be awkward. ‘Cause science says it might not be. Or at least, that the awkwardness could be worth it.
pssshh a chick WOULD say that.
In my opinion, feminists are selling themselves short when they limit themselves to the most surface level analysis and literalism by asking ‘what is it’ rather than ‘what does it do.’ There are actually a lot of parallels to fundamentalist Christian analyses and moralizing.
I’d like to see some kind of estimation of effect size whenever the story you’re drawing my attention to is an experimental study.
(a) This is interesting.
(b) 91% of American nurses are female [1]. Assuming a gender-less nurse is female is not an inherently sexist assumption – it’s a completely evidence-based assumption. If there’s an issue at all, it might be an underlying need to assign a gender to someone whose gender is not specified (perhaps due to discomfort with ambiguity around gender?); but if you know someone’s a nurse, you’re searching for a pronoun, and you don’t like mis-using “they” for a single person, then OF COURSE the nurse is female.
[1] http://www.nursingjobshelp.com/male_nurs…
Is it sexist to assume a nurse in a story is female? The vast majority of nurses are female. I can see how it would be more sexist to assume that a doctor is male, but this is primarily because we have already reached gender parity in terms of medical students, and soon will reach parity in terms of practicing physicians. But with nurses, a large majority are female. In my anecdotal experience, there are 10 female nurses for every 1 male. Would it still be sexist to assume that a midwife is female, since there are a handful of male midwives around the country?
@5, so obviously I agree. But let me emphasize my belief that this is actually the least interesting part of this story. Vastly more important is the point that confronting men about sexism doesn’t seem to make them hostile, and so it should be done more.
Of course, there are better and worse ways to confront sexism, and the study is not specific about that. It assumes that both parties are emotionally neutral, and the sexist “offense” is barely an offense at all, and made with the best of intentions. That’s not how a lot of sexism plays out in the real world. Often it’s way more rude or arrogant, and the response is likewise angry and unforgiving, so boom — you have a fight that’s much trickier to resolve.
Still, this suggests that in those situations when your dealing with reasonable people, it’s worth it to bring up the slight in a straightforward, neutral way. Good to know, because I often let it go (in the real world, that is; Slog is different!)
Or the men could have just adjusted their behavior to deal with an oversensitive nitpicker in order to make the situation more comfortable.
In other words, ‘correcting’ someone who barely knows you might make them opt for the path of least resistence (politeness) until the situation has ended. It’d be nice to know how many sighs and eye-rolls occurred after the men left the room.
Woman is offended at what you say = I got her to pay attention to me.
Woman lectures you about your bad behavior = I got her to pay attention to me.
Woman acknowledges your improvement = I got her to pay attention to me.
So, men, what did you learn today? If a woman ignores you, just behave badly until you get her to pay attention to you.
Calling him out will result in his being nicer to you to your face … and also wanting to discuss things with you less, and spend more time with the guys, talking about you behind your back.
How about them apples, Science?
@8, @10: I guess you guys missed this part, even though it was right there:
@11 — But Science sees this form of context-conditioned response bias all the time … doesn’t She?
@12, you’ve done a wonderful job of proving the point I made @7 about sexism often being more arrogant (and in this case, obtuse) than their study suggests. So I think I’ll find someone more reasonable to chat with, in the hopes of having an amiable conversation and perhaps even finding consensus. Bye!