"While meaningful intergroup contact can often lead (PDF) members of majority groups to exhibit less prejudice toward members of racial and ethnic minority groups, in the most common real-world domain — gender — this so-called “contact hypothesis” seems to often fail. After all, almost every man in the world has had meaningful relationships and interactions with women — at the very least, with their mothers, sisters, and/or wives. And yet misogyny persists. Why?
The short answer is that “[g]ender prejudice isn’t the same as ethno-racial prejudices, or other types of group prejudices,” as Betsy Levy Paluck, a professor of psychology and public policy at Princeton who studies, among other things, various forms of intolerance, put it (Paluck also created a fascinating anti-bullying intervention Science of Us covered earlier this year). “There are on average qualitatively different intimate relationships between men and women such that ‘contact’ and also prejudice takes a different form.”
“Different” here refers to the idea of “ambivalent sexism.” This concept, first introduced in 1996 by the psychologists Peter Glick of Lawrence University, and Susan Fiske, now at Princeton, posits that there are two types of sexism: hostile sexism and benevolent sexism...
Benevolent sexists endorse a paternalistic view of the world in which women are to be cherished and protected, in part because they aren’t quite equal to men. Oftentimes, seemingly positive sentiments about women are manifestations of benevolent sexism. People who score high on this measure agree with statements like “No matter how accomplished he is, a man is not truly complete as a person unless he has the love of a woman,” “A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man,” and “Men should be willing to sacrifice their own well being in order to provide financially for the women in their lives.” A good example of benevolent sexism? All those GOP tweets following Trump’s Access Hollywood tape about “wives and daughters” (with, to be fair, plenty of progressive ones sprinkled in as well).
Glick explained that the overarching theory here is that benevolent sexism evolved culturally as a way to maintain the gender hierarchy while also allowing men to enjoy close companionship with women, consensual sex, and so on."
Benevolent racism 100% exists as well, among the white liberals who kinda want their kids to have a black friend who will give them some perspectives on the world and life lessons and also a defense against anyone who might call them racist.
No comments:
Post a Comment