[Study] Men who treat women the same as they treat other men, without benevolent sexism/female privilege, are seen as overwhelmingly sexist by both men and women.

I read the whole thing. It's a good idea for a study, but there are a ton of flaws. The whole premise is based on people's perceptions of people who displayed "Benevolent Sexism" and "Hostile Sexism". The problem is that the questions they used to judge what makes someone a Benevolent Sexist and a Hostile Sexist are completely flawed.

Start with the Benevolent Sexist. He agreed with the following statements:

No matter how accomplished he is, a man is not truly complete as a person unless he has the love of a woman. People are rarely truly happy without being romantically involved with a member of the opposite sex. Every man ought to have a woman who he adores.

If I was taking part in this study, I would judge this person to be somewhat hetrosexist, and maybe even full on homophobic. That adds a completely different factor to judge this person on, separate from his attitude toward women. The author completely leaves out more obvious examples of benevolent sexism (for example "A man should never hit a woman" or "Women are better with children") in lieu of questions about relationships. 7 out of the 11 of the "Benevolent Sexism" questions are about how a woman should be treated in a romantic relationship. Contrast that with the Hostile Sexist questionnaire, where there's 1 question about relationships.

Onto the Hostile Sexist. He was judged to be sexist toward women based on agreeing with questions like:

Feminists are seeking for women to have more power than men. Many women are seeking special favors, such as hiring policies that favor them over men, under the guise of asking for "equality" Feminists are making entirely unreasonable demands of men

5 of the 11 questions indirectly or directly have to do with attitudes toward feminism. The problem is that a hostile attitude toward feminism =/= a hostile attitude toward women. Of the 11 statements, there aren't really any that an average pedestrian would say indicates "Hostile" sexism toward women ("Hostile" sexism might be "Men are naturally better at math and science" or "Women should stick to cooking and cleaning and leave the work to men").

Finally, there's the conclusions drawn. The participants were asked to estimate how likely these "Hostile" or "Benevolent" sexists were to behave. To measure if these men would "support female professionals", here are some of the questions asked:

How likely is this person to vote for a policy aiming to increase women's participation in fields where they are currently underrepresented? How likely is this person to vote for a policy aiming to increase women average wage to match men's average wage? How likely is this person to vote for a policy that provides incentives and loans to women who wish to start a business?

Remember, these questions were not part of the "fake" questionnaire meant to measure attitudes toward "Beneficial Sexism". These were questions the author used to gauge who was perceived as "supporting female professionals". Only 1 out of the 5 questions doesn't start with voting for special privileges for women. Ironically, this is a perfect example of the exact thing this paper illustrates- Not supporting special benefits for women is perceived by the author as not "supporting female professionals."

Sorry for dragging on so much, but this study is an example of why I'm skeptical about a lot of the conclusions drawn from academic social sciences. So often studies are filled with didactic phrasing that leads their test subjects, false equivalencies (criticism of feminism = criticism of women), or completely unfounded conclusions.

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