Misogyny has no scientific basis | Steve Moxon
stevemoxon.co.uk
Gender attitudes research shows no misogyny, and actually philogyny
Misogyny formally defined is a putative male-to-female hostile or highly negative attitude; gender attitude, as it were. Gender attitudes, both male-to-female and female-to-male, most recently have been reviewed and freshly examined by Dunham, Baron & Banaji (2016), in a culmination of their own earlier work in various collaborations.
Dunham et al found for boys/men “no negative association with female whatsoever”
The contrast with girls/women in all respects is striking. All age groups are “robustly pro-female” — strongly positive towards females and strongly negative towards males – and all the more so with age.
This builds on much earlier research with groups (where subjects were given all-male and/or all-female groups as the target) likewise showing that, on explicit measures, by adulthood males as well as females have more positive attitudes towards females than towards males (Eagly & Mladinic, 1989; Eagly, Mladinic & Otto, 1991).
Their conclusions were that (regarding same-sex target groups) both sexes were more positive towards women than towards men; in particular in attitude, but also in terms of how responses were manifestations of beliefs (or stereotypes) about the sexes, and even in their emotional content (albeit a difference in this case that was not statistically significant). Notably, despite looking especially for covert negative sentiments towards women, none were found.
Whether in respect of responses that are automatic/default or considered, the findings here indicate misogyny is a fiction, with misandry, on the other hand, real.
Whatever term may be used to denote it, and however it is elided with and diluted by other notions, misogyny is a figment of ideological imagination. As such, it is not misogyny but a charge of misogyny that becomes itself the very contempt for or hatred towards the other sex it purports to call out. In other words, accusation of misogyny actually is itself a manifestation of hostile sexism in the form of misandry, making this the real phenomenon now in need of study.
That this actual sexism is not seen for what it is, shows up in research into bias in respect of sexism. Evidently, sexism of any form by females is unseen: not just women’s anti-male sexism (Rudman & Fetteroff, 2014; Goh, Rad & Hall, 2017), but also their anti-female sexism (Baron, Burgess & Kao, 1991); this being the perception of both males and other females.
Hence the great surprise that greeted the Demos findings in 2016 that the bulk of on-line misogynistic abuse, on Twitter, was by not men but by women. Goh, Rad & Hall replicated in inter-personal dyadic behaviour what Rudman and Fetterolf had found regarding groups: women being biased to (mis-)perceive hostile sexism from men when it isn’t there; conversely not seeing men’s benevolent sexism when it is (albeit regarding this last, Goh, Rad & Hall’s findings were not statistically significant). By contrast, men actually under-estimated women’s hostile sexism as well as over-estimating women’s benevolent sexism.
