The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[DanaC]

I suggested the experiment because having stumbled upon it accidentally by actually doing it. A friend's date for her behavior for things I thought reflect poorly on her as a person and then seen how gradually the women around the table started leaving with facial expresses varying between discomfort and disgust. I was curious and later tried it with several other groups, and each time it works, and I found it both fascinating and disturbing that it does.

So you're conducting your own little psyche experiments, on unwitting groups of people in a social setting, with no set parameters or control and think you've cracked the code of female behaviour.

I wonder if you would have had the same association with an alternative response to the square/model poster - quoting a study where hetrosexual women and men where given images of the opposite gender and while different men gave more or less the same rating to women, women gave vastly different ratings to the various men (and then ranting on the implication).

And therein lies the difference. In fact, I'd be very interested in reading that study and finding out more about the methodology employed - I find that kind of thing very interesting. I'd also be interested in (and have read many) studies about the psychology of attraction, group dynamics and social hierarchies.

What I don't find interesting, is men treating the women they encounter in their everyday life as labrats or specimens. It is grotesquely dishonest and manipulative to use someone in that fashion. It reminds me very strongly of the attitude many pick-up artists / wingmen exhibit when they talk about women and the various social understandings and interactive tools and strategies to employ when engaging with them.

I'd find it just as revolting if one of the dwellar women suggested all us gals should perform ad hoc psychological experiments on the men in our lives.