Sometimes, when mentally gender-reversing a situation in my mind, some part of my brain pops up and says, “But… $stereotype_about_men, whereas $stereotype_about_women!”. I try to ignore it because the stereotypes are often wrong. (E.g. the slut-shaming one: IIRC, a survey—with WEIRD sample, but people I interact with are also usually WEIRD anyway—found that
people who frown upon sexually promiscuous women, but not upon sexually promiscuous men,
people who frown upon sexually promiscuous men, but not upon sexually promiscuous women,
people who do both, and
people who do neither
comprise more or less 10%, 10%, 40% and 40% of the population respectively, and IME that’s not obviously wrong.)
Really? IME that finding does seem wrong. I’ve seen females slut shamed way more than males. People often disapprove of both, but when it is a female they seem to disapprove more and are more compelled to speak up about it.
If a male sleeps around, he might be seen as a jerk who uses women, or as undesirable for a partner...but he wouldn’t be considered weak, dirty, or lacking in self respect.
Caveat—IME it’s mostly women doing the shaming, so if your friends are mostly male you might not see this trend.
When someone fills out their opinions explicitly in a survey, the double standard is thrown into their face.
Only 10% of people would admit to having a double standard.
Imagine that survey was about racism. I bet only about 5% of people would admit to having racist sentiments on a survey, but experiments which did not involve explicit stating of values (like resume studies) find that people often hold prejudices that they claim not to hold.
Caveat—IME it’s mostly women doing the shaming, so if your friends are mostly male you might not see this trend.
I can’t recall the topic ever coming up with my friends (more or less equal number of males and females) in the last couple years, so I don’t know for sure about them. (From what little I can infer indirectly, the difference between the average male and the average female is less than differences within each gender, or between the average practising Catholic and the average atheist/agnostic/etc.) The friends I usually hang around with in high school (almost exclusively female, and almost exclusively non-religious) did seem to laugh at the promiscuous guy we knew slightly more good-heartedly than they did at the promiscuous girl we knew (though neither was anywhere near outright ostracised), but there were other differences between the two confusing the issue.
but experiments which did not involve explicit stating of values (like resume studies) find that people often hold prejudices that they claim not to hold.
What experiments? (Googling “resume studies” doesn’t seem to turn up anything relevant—“resume” is used as a verb in most of those results.) Anyway, I’m not sure we should care about prejudices people don’t want to have (and sometimes aren’t even fully aware of having), as per Yvain’s “Real Preferences” post. (They might be consciously lying, but who does that on anonymous surveys?)
Some researcher sent identical resumes with different names to apply for similar positions. Some resumes had names that code as white in the US, while other resumes had names that coded as black. The rate of interviews scheduled was substantially different based on the apparent ethnicity of the applicant. Summary.
Okay. That also answers the “I’m not sure we should care about prejudices people don’t want to have” thing—such a discrimination is Bad whether or not the interviewers are consciously aware of it, and whether or not they endorse it.
Sometimes, when mentally gender-reversing a situation in my mind, some part of my brain pops up and says, “But… $stereotype_about_men, whereas $stereotype_about_women!”. I try to ignore it because the stereotypes are often wrong. (E.g. the slut-shaming one: IIRC, a survey—with WEIRD sample, but people I interact with are also usually WEIRD anyway—found that
people who frown upon sexually promiscuous women, but not upon sexually promiscuous men,
people who frown upon sexually promiscuous men, but not upon sexually promiscuous women,
people who do both, and
people who do neither
comprise more or less 10%, 10%, 40% and 40% of the population respectively, and IME that’s not obviously wrong.)
Really? IME that finding does seem wrong. I’ve seen females slut shamed way more than males. People often disapprove of both, but when it is a female they seem to disapprove more and are more compelled to speak up about it.
If a male sleeps around, he might be seen as a jerk who uses women, or as undesirable for a partner...but he wouldn’t be considered weak, dirty, or lacking in self respect.
Caveat—IME it’s mostly women doing the shaming, so if your friends are mostly male you might not see this trend.
When someone fills out their opinions explicitly in a survey, the double standard is thrown into their face. Only 10% of people would admit to having a double standard.
Imagine that survey was about racism. I bet only about 5% of people would admit to having racist sentiments on a survey, but experiments which did not involve explicit stating of values (like resume studies) find that people often hold prejudices that they claim not to hold.
I can’t recall the topic ever coming up with my friends (more or less equal number of males and females) in the last couple years, so I don’t know for sure about them. (From what little I can infer indirectly, the difference between the average male and the average female is less than differences within each gender, or between the average practising Catholic and the average atheist/agnostic/etc.) The friends I usually hang around with in high school (almost exclusively female, and almost exclusively non-religious) did seem to laugh at the promiscuous guy we knew slightly more good-heartedly than they did at the promiscuous girl we knew (though neither was anywhere near outright ostracised), but there were other differences between the two confusing the issue.
What experiments? (Googling “resume studies” doesn’t seem to turn up anything relevant—“resume” is used as a verb in most of those results.) Anyway, I’m not sure we should care about prejudices people don’t want to have (and sometimes aren’t even fully aware of having), as per Yvain’s “Real Preferences” post. (They might be consciously lying, but who does that on anonymous surveys?)
Resume studies:
Some researcher sent identical resumes with different names to apply for similar positions. Some resumes had names that code as white in the US, while other resumes had names that coded as black. The rate of interviews scheduled was substantially different based on the apparent ethnicity of the applicant. Summary.
Okay. That also answers the “I’m not sure we should care about prejudices people don’t want to have” thing—such a discrimination is Bad whether or not the interviewers are consciously aware of it, and whether or not they endorse it.