The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[DanaC]

Maybe I misunderstood your post Trace, but it did seem to be lumping women together as some kind of homogenous whole, entirely separated from the male of the species, who are invited to test and analyse 'women' in that scenario.

[it]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Maybe I misunderstood your post Trace, but it did seem to be lumping women together as some kind of homogenous whole, entirely separated from the male of the species, who are invited to test and analyse 'women' in that scenario.

I can sort of see how there might be a notion that experiments/tests are something you do on other species, but I am not convinced that was ever the case... my preferred reading for awhile has been psychology where almost all studies are on groups of people, so I guess I don't quite have that association.
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). Would that have the same implication of treating genders as different species simply because it was accounted for and lumping them up together into statistics? Is the act of examining generalized differences an immediate taboo that must not be looked upon for the wraith of the amazon goddess will smite us all?

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.

Personally I have no doubt that if this was conducted on a large enough population there would be exceptions and it wouldn't be a 100%, and yet I have very little inclination to throw the baby out of the bathwater, or to deny it on the basis of ideological reasoning.

[it]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

You have (sexist, and revealing more than a little anger) assumptions and expectations about how it will go.

I have 'assumptions' on how it went:

Originally Posted by traceur

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.

One of my two gender-based assumption is generally that for the most part it would continue to repeat itself along gender lines the same way it has so far, while hopefully producing some exceptions along the way. I could be wrong, and would actually like to be wrong.

The other - and the one I view as the cause - is that most men don't naturally judge women on their internal merits, which is why I don't think women are used to being judged by men on their internal merits. Note that the ones who responded by calling it "behaving like women" were sundae and Dana. I stumbled on it by doing it myself the first time around, and I am pretty sure it's not a cause for me to change my gender identity.

As far as been preachy to other guys... Absolutely. Do you disagree that guys should judge women on their internal merit? Who she is as a person? I don't know about you, but when women speak about their relationships, current, past or future, I constantly hear "him treating her right" as a ruler to measure it up by, whether it's herself or her friends. Which is a fantastic thing - one I learned to adopt myself (alongside handbags - seriously pockets are horribly limited). What I never heard is the equivalent said to me as a guy, and have never heard it said to other guys, ever. It may seem obvious, but it surprisingly not. Even guys who do judge women on internal merits more instinctively - including myself - will do so more on the basis of what impresses them, not how good of a human being they are in treating others. So much so that the idea of doing it myself seemed out right alien until it became a solution to a problem. That is worth getting angry over - I don't think that making sure your potential partner is a decent person and looking out for your own emotional well being in thinking how they would treat you should be "behaving like women".