This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
There could definitely be some relation, the Women are Wonderful effect itself is a pretty substantiated finding after all (source 1, source 2 for proof) and it's plausible that it has an effect.
And I would agree that the mindset you've outlined ("well, he must have done something to deserve it") is very common.
Yeah I wouldn't say there's much merit to the stereotype at all. It's actually very possible to flip the argument in the other direction and state that since people are generally averse to hurting women in the first place, if they do so, there probably must be some reason why (note that I do not endorse the adoption of this attitude whatsoever, this is just an argument to show how easily this logic can be flipped on its head).
Regardless of whether behaviours that are protective of women are instinctual or sociocultural (as previously stated I lean heavily towards the former having at least some impact), the unwillingness to hurt women can't just be chalked up to being an artefact of socially desirable responding, since it is also verifiable in experimental, real-world contexts.
The article "Moral Chivalry: Gender and Harm Sensitivity Predict Costly Altruism" details a few small studies concerning the topic. Study 2 is probably the most interesting of the studies to me, because it moves out of the realm of the hypothetical and into an actual experimental situation where participants actually believed people were being hurt. They gave participants 20 dollars, and told them that at the end of the experiment the money they still had would be multiplied by ten-fold. However, they'd have to go through 20 trials where a person would be shocked, and during each trial they could opt to give up an amount of money in order to reduce the shock the target received. They were broadcasted videos of either a male target (Condition 1) or female target (Condition 2) responding to the shock, and the results were:
"During the PvG task, deciders interacting with a female target kept significantly less money and thus gave significantly lower shocks (n = 34; £8.76/£20, SD ± 5.0) than deciders interacting with a male target, n = 23; £12.54/£20, SD ± 3.9; independent samples t-test: t(55) = −3.16, p = .003, Cohen’s d = .82; Figure 2B. This replicates the findings from Studies 1A and 1B in the real domain and under a different class of moral challenge, illustrating that harm endorsement is attenuated for female targets." Note also that the videos broadcasted were prerated by an independent group to be matched across condition, such that both male and female targets elicited similar body and facial pain expressions.
Male robbers downright express a reluctance to target women. "Overall, the men in our sample tended not to target women, or, if they did, they did not admit it. Overwhelmingly, the cases discussed here involved men robbing men or men robbing male/female couples; in the latter case, the robbers focused their discussions on gaining the males 'compliance, not the females'. ... Mark described robbing two females under the influence of an alcohol/valium cocktail. In the interview, he expressed considerable shame for his actions: 'I robbed a girl as well so it makes it so much worse … I was heartbroken … I gutted her … I don’t do shit like that.’ The other male, Thomas, who robbed a lone female, also said that he was ashamed of having robbed a woman. In fact, he went out of his way to suggest that such activities were not typical of his modus operandi: ‘I never done anything like that before, that’s not really me …. I feel terrible that I robbed that woman so I don’t want to talk about it really … I am so ashamed of myself.’"
"A number of other men in our sample offered up explanations for why one should never rob women. In outlining how he chose targets, Mark2 interjected: 'You must be thinking I have no morals. I wouldn’t go out and rob an old person. I would look for a bloke …. It wouldn’t be right to be robbing women and little kids or anything like that.’ When asked if he had ever robbed a woman, John2 replied: 'Yeah, but not violently … generally I don’t want contact with women because I don’t like to be violent with them … I never hit a woman in my life. ’Then he expressed empathy with the potential female victim: ‘It’s just that if it was my mother or sister … it is all right to nick their bag, but not alright to hit them [women].’ Similar philosophies have been described by male street offenders in United States-based studies (e.g. Mullins 2006 ; Wright and Decker 1997)."
Additionally, this study surveyed a sample of 208 Israeli couples examining their tendencies to escalate aggression in eight hypothetical situations where they were provoked. What they found was: Men’s intended escalation to female partner aggression was lower than women’s escalation to male partner aggression. Men’s escalation to male stranger provocation was higher than women’s escalation to female stranger provocation. Men’s escalation to female stranger provocation was lower than women’s escalation to male stranger provocation.
In other words, men, if anything, are actually less willing to escalate aggression with women than women are with men. The results here are congruent with much domestic violence research where results of gender symmetry and often greater female perpetration are the norm in properly-conducted research.
More options
Context Copy link