Negative Stereotypes?

[slemslempike]

Most of the feminist blogs I read have picked up on this story - that there is an article published this month in Sex Roles journal that "proves" that feminists have happier, more stable heterosexual relationships than non-feminists, and that the negative stereotypes are unfounded.

This is a pretty pleasing report, and I planned to put it online for our students to read, mark, and inwardly digest. I got permission, but thought I'd better read the full article first in case there was anything else that I wanted to highlight.

HUH. The abstract talks about "negative feminist stereotypes (i.e., that feminists are single, lesbians, or unattractive)". I was a bit perplexed that they would leave that unchallenged (that any of those things are in fact negative), but figured that you are short of space in an abstract, so have to kind of rely on people knowing that these are the kind of things that get trotted out as negative by anti-feminists.

They never challenge it. Not once. Throughout the whole 13 page article, there is no suggestion whatsoever that being single, or gay, or unattractive is not a problem, that people might conceivably be content with, even proud of, these attributes. The introduction reiterates the so-called negative stereotypes without explaining why they are considered negative, either by the authors (if this is the case), or by those that seek to denigrate feminism. "Feminist stereotypes are also unflattering; feminists tend to be stigmatized as unattractive, sexually unappealing, and likely to be lesbians".

Again, no context whatsoever. It is a psychology journal, so it's mostly about statistics and correlation between the data. Admittedly, I am not particularly interested in quantitative research (which this is), but I don't think it is asking too much for it to be reflective while it is telling us about null hypotheses. I think their methodology is a little strange ("They also rated their popularity with the other gender. The items were, “It is not difficult for me to get a date,” “I am frequently hit on for sex,” “I seem to be very popular with the opposite sex,” and “I was popular (datingwise) in high school"") but kind of fits in with what they're trying to do.

The "negative stereotypes" part lies dormant throughout their first study, which is with students, and then rears its head again in the second study, with older men and women. In the concluding part: "we found no support for the accuracy of stereotypes suggesting that feminist women are likely to be lesbian, single, or sexually unattractive–in fact, they were more likely to be in a romantic relationship than nonfeminist women. Thus, we found no evidence for the accuracy of negative stereotypes that, if true, would likely impinge on women’s relationships with men." I know what they're trying to do - I understand that the research is coming from a pro-feminist place (even if it's not where I would stand), and that they're trying to do their bit to change the anti-feminist backlash. But this is an academic paper, and I don't think it's asking too much that they be more reflexive with their work, and don't propagate misogynist and homophobic attitudes, even if unwittingly.

Heaven fucking forbid that women should be neither straight, sexually attractive nor romantically involved. As a content "none of the above" I'm a bit personally outraged. However, the main thing is that feminism is not about pleasing men*. It is not a bad thing not to want to have sex with men, it is not a bad thing not to be in a relationship with a man, it is not a bad thing not to fit into the conventions of being attractive to men. And pseudo-feminist research that does not acknowledge this, that fails to take up the opportunity to refute the innate negativity of these stereotypes, even while proving them untrue, is failing feminism.



* While feminism is good for everyone (except possibly Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson), and as such is in fact beneficial for men, a large part of feminism is breaking away from the pressures of having to please (an idea of) men the whole time.

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

yes, it annoyed me too.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Presumeably it was peer reviewed, and I don't really understand how a journal devoted to sex roles wouldn't have someone go "hmm, do you mean to imply that lesbians are bad here? Or would you like to clarify it to sound less horribel?". Bah.

[whatho.livejournal.com]

Grr, essentially. Also, you're a bit great. Except I'm not a man, so probably my opinion on your greatness doesn't actually count so much....

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Well, second best to being a man is being in a relationship with one - anything else would be ODIOUS.

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

*boggles*

Does the journal have a letters page? Because if so, please please PLEASE put in this entry, or at any rate, a modified version of it. I can't begin to say how uncomfortable that makes me.

YES, it's good to say "look, it's possible to be feminist and have a happy, straight relationship" but NO, it is NOT good to implicitly agree with the suggestion that being gay, so-called-unattractive, or single is a bad thing.

This is scary.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I won't be writing to them because it's a psychology journal, and so I don't have the appropriate disciplinary background to properly critique it. I might write a politer note to the authors though.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Haha! Way to COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT OF FEMINISM, dude. I am a fat lesbian, and very happy indeed to be that way. Without feminism, I'd still be a fat lesbian, I'd just be miserable. The whole point of feminism - well, not the whole point, but a main point - is to say that women don't need to be responsible to patriarchal standards for how they should live their lives, and that there's more that matters than men's opinions of us. If I get stereotyped as being unattractive to men, that's fine, because I never wanted to be attractive to men in the first place. There's no negative there.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I knw! it's so sad, because the paper's got a lot of coverage from feminist blogs, but none of them have mentioned that the negativity of the stereotypes is just presented as fact. And apart from that, it's a reasonable paper, and quite interesting.

Don't be silly, of course you wanted to be attractive to men. Lesbians are only lesbians when they have failed at heterosexuality. Everyone knows that. Nothing to do with liking women, oh no.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

To be fair to the feminist blogs, it is only up for online reading to institutions that subscribe to the journal, so they're likely to have only read the press release thing, which is a lot more positive and less accepting of homophobic discourse. And I'm really disappointed in the article, because I was so pleased that there was going to be something good about feminists!

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Wow, er, yes. Bit of a missing piece there.

Are you still planning to let your students have at it?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

No - I don't think I can justify it. It was only going to be in the discussion section anyway, so I doubt they'd have read it, but I don't feel comfortable going "yay, feminists look" when there seems to be an underlying thing of "yay, straight pretty feminists look".

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Might be an interesting exercise in looking at assumptions, though?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

It was only going to be up as an optional extra for them to read (so about three of them would) - I can't fit it into my seminars for the moment at least, so I won't put it up without a discussion. Also, it's not really a good basis for looking at assumptions. It's not a terribly discursive or reflexive paper, just statistics, so there isn't anything for them to get their teeth into.

[gair.livejournal.com]

Oh. Em. Eff. Gee. I didn't like the feel of the article when I saw it referred to on LJ in the first place, and this is totally why. Thanks for reading all 13 pages so we didn't have to!

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I thought it seemed quite a nice article, if a bit blah (I mean, does anyone except virulent anti-feminists really think that feminists would have worse relationships?), and something not too taxing to show the first years. But, yes, dubya tee eff and other ejaculatory acronyms.

Since my mind tends to skip statistics unless absolutely necessary, it didn't take nearly as long as you'd think!

[slightlyfoxed.livejournal.com]

Fuck on toast. I was just reminiscing about my college days when the women's officer thought 'Come to the Women's Group, we're not all lesbians' was a great rallying cry.

I'd far rather have evidence that feminists give less of a toss about their partnerhood, their straightness and their conventional attractiveness.

(Actually, I'm wondering what they did with the lesbians. Specifically, and generalising wildly and idly: I imagine that a load more lesbians will probably self-identify as feminists, so that's going to skew your sample away from 'more likely to have stable heterosexual relationships' (oh horrors). So
a) if the feminists are still having more stable het relationships, even including the feminist lesbians, then just how dire and unstable are the non-feminist heterosexual relationships?
b) if they had some lesbians in the sample, did they just knock them out (in which case it should have mentioned that) or did they just let them count for the stuff about being attractive (which is kind of cheating if you've ignored them and weed on them in every other aspect of the study)?

This is an only half-series question on an empty stomach. I will check their methodology.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Was the coda to the cry "...some of us are dykes?" If not, then oh urgh.

They only surveyed male and female college students in heterosexual relationships (or maybe just mixed-sex, I'm not sure) for their first study. For the second study, they recruited through websites and then they took out all the queers. But fear not! Even with such a methodology, they were able to conclude that: "Among women, there were virtually no relationships between feminism and heterosexuality, r=-.07, ns, or sex appeal r=-.03, ns. There was a small but reliable tendency for female feminists to be more (rather than less) likely to be in a relationship, r=.10, p<.01. Thus, we found no support for Hypothesis 5. On the contrary, negative feminist stereotypes appear to be inaccurate, and thus, their unfavorable implications for relationships unfounded."

So basically, "As in Study 1, our focal analyses were conducted only on
heterosexuals who were currently in a relationship." Which somehow translates to proving that feminists aren't likely to be icky lesbians. Which is certainly statistically true from their sample.

[slightlyfoxed.livejournal.com]

"Among women, there were virtually no relationships between feminism and heterosexuality, r=-.07

OH THE RELIEF LIKE A STONE FROM MY FRAIL SHOULDERS.

Thanks for the info. How depressing.

No, sadly the women's officer had a few issues (that whole thing about asserting the heterosexuality of feminist space, in case the close friendships and the solidarity and the critiques of heterosexism made it all look a bit gay, into which I suppose this study ties neatly).

[slightlyfoxed.livejournal.com]

I'm still rereading your post and their stuff still makes less than no sense.

('To the original source material, Batwoman!' 'Yes, but not now, I'm supposed to be working. And don't call me Batwoman, bats may be ninja cool but they're leathery and unattractive and thus not a good role model for feminists.' 'Sorry.')

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I can send you the pdf if you have difficulty getting it.

[blindfish.livejournal.com]

What a wonderfully astute piece of analysis, it made me very happy :)

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Thank you :) As long as you're a straight, pretty woman in a heterosexual relationship, long may that happiness continue!