Something as simple as holding a purse
An article at Scientific American claims that new research suggests that men are less green aka environmentally conscientious than women because they think green=girly.
Some researchers have suggested that personality differences, such as women’s prioritization of altruism, may help to explain this gender gap in green behavior.
Our own research suggests an additional possibility: men may shun eco-friendly behavior because of what it conveys about their masculinity. It’s not that men don’t care about the environment. But they also tend to want to feel macho, and they worry that eco-friendly behaviors might brand them as feminine.
Oh noes.
We showed that there is a psychological link between eco-friendliness and perceptions of femininity. Due to this “green-feminine stereotype,” both men and women judged eco-friendly products, behaviors, and consumers as more feminine than their non-green counterparts. In one experiment, participants of both sexes described an individual who brought a reusable canvas bag to the grocery store as more feminine than someone who used a plastic bag—regardless of whether the shopper was a male or female. In another experiment, participants perceived themselves to be more feminine after recalling a time when they did something good versus bad for the environment.
Well that’s stark. So apparently we all see basic decency as female and its opposite as male. If that’s true, how fucking tragic for men. Just doing “something good” is for pussies.
I find myself hoping the research is badly flawed.
Ironically, although men are often considered to be less sensitive than women, they seem to be particularly sensitive when it comes to perceptions of their gender identity. In fact, a previous study suggests that men find it to be more difficult than women to choose between masculine and feminine versions of everyday food and household items and will usually change their preferences to be more manly when allowed time to think about their decisions. Something as simple as holding a purse, ordering a colorful drink, or talking in a high voice can lead to social harm, so men tend to keep a sharp eye out for any of these potential snares.
Humans are so pathetic.
H/t Josh.
I know! Let’s reinforce these harmful stereotypes by insisting that “gender identity” trumps biological sex and if your personality isn’t “manly” you’re not really a man! That’ll show how nonbinary and liberated our thinking about gender has become.
I’ll put a nickel down on the following bet: The study required people to decide between labeling things “masculine” or “feminine” without an option for “this is stupid.” This encouraged participants who would have picked “this is stupid” to search for an acceptable answer, and as a result to instead respond based upon their assumptions about what culture at large believes. This magnified small discrepancies into larger results, and imputed them to the participants as their own views whether or not they actually were.
Well, the concept of anxious or vulnerable masculinity isn’t exactly new. I’ve seen several writers describe patriarchal machismo as an ethos in which a man must eternally keep proving his manliness and said manliness is defined as “not-woman”. Any slight deviation towards the category of woman jeopardises the man’s status as a “real man” and is therefore to be avoided. How much this set up affects an individual man is of course another matter, but the phenomena has been commented on previously.
Also a different matter is how individual things become coded as feminine or masculine, I suspect that’s a much more complicated question.
Yep, and arguably that’s one of the very rare ways in which women have more freedom: androgyny or gender non-conformity no longer freak out most people when women do it, but men – that’s trickier. This fact looms large in all the quarrels over “gender identity” and all that.
“Something as simple as holding a purse, ordering a colorful drink, or talking in a high voice can lead to social harm”
Huh? What social harm? Do the other guys swarm and kick you or something? Point and laugh? No, seriously, I can’t even imagine what they mean. Can anyone here explain?
quixote: Well, for one thing, you’ll get mocked in commercials. No, seriously–Dr. Pepper ran a whole series of commercials about how their new diet soda wasn’t for girls, and it included all those stereotypes. It’s rife in beer commercials, too. and it would be nice to believe that men are somehow unaffected by such absurd messaging, but it’s the same sort of programming that occurs in the pink-ing of “girl’s toys”.These messages get coded deeply. It’s a subtle, and often cruel process.
Boys (especially teens and pre-teens) who express an appreciation of things that are viewed as feminine will be targeted by their peers as ‘fags’. At best, this can lead to social isolation; at more extreme ends, it can manifest as physical assaults (often dressed up as hazing rituals).
Here’s an example of Freemage’s point: a whiskey ad. Because whiskey is for Manly Men only.
Rebecca Watson did a video about this: http://skepchick.org/2017/12/toxic-masculinity-destroying-planet/
‘Do the other guys swarm and kick you or something?’
Yes, they do. At least male children and teenagers do (no idea what adult men do). Some time ago I mentioned here how astonished I was at the reaction of a male colleague when I offered to lend him my umbrella (I wouldn’t have labelled it ‘feminine’ myself, but it wasn’t black)–he literally shied away from it. When I thought about it later I realised that kind of reaction could only have been a result of remembered physical harm.
Really interesting point that the party line ‘men just aren’t aware of social cues’ (so how can you expect them not to harass you) is so clearly proved false.
I think it’s more that “caring” is seen as un-manly. Being cynical and not giving a shit is manly. But genuinely caring about anything – the environment, other people, your job – is for suckers. Or pussies.
Note that you can work very hard at your job, but only to show that you’re better than everyone else, or to earn lots of money (also to show that you’re better than everyone else). You can’t care about the work for its own sake.
If you care about how you look, you still have to appear like you don’t care how you look. You either have to be slightly scruffy and/or dishevelled, or you have to make style look so effortless that you could look good by accident, without even trying.
Sometimes I think we need to introduce the slogan: Real men are not afraid to look girly.
That whiskey ad (Holms @ 7) is interesting. It’s kind of more satirical about masculine anxiety than seriously promulgating it. Or, perhaps, it’s doing both at once, as advertising often does.
It’s both. The real cultural “masculine ideal” is to be so clearly manly that you can wear a pink shirt or carry a purse without anyone blinking because your masculine dignity or whatever is so strong that not even a purse would cause anyone to question you. See Dwayne Johnson for reference. He can wear a pink shirt or a tutu or whatever and it’s fine because his masculinity is unassailable. The culturally ideal move for a guy asked to hold a purse or buy tampons or whatever is to simply do so with a bearing that makes it clear that nothing funny or embarrassing is happening- obviously you are doing these things on behalf of a woman or female child, because you are a gentleman.
It’s a weird bit of cultural judo. The embarrassing (because people will make fun of you and say it’s your purse or whatever) transforms into a point of masculine superiority (because you have so much more masculine dignity than anyone who would play childish games by teasing you in that manner, with a subtext of “the fact that I’m holding a girly purse proves my masculinity by evidencing that I have attracted and obtained a women).
Masculinity is dumb and a lot of work and particularly annoying because being above it (not caring) looks exactly like being really into it (pretending you’re too cool to care). And by the time you figure out you shouldn’t care you’ve probably internalized a bunch of stuff. I don’t dress like the whisky guys but you would definitely find that aesthetic in my wardrobe and chosen accessories (real leather, real wool, dark colors, etc). Do I like that because I like it or because I was programmed to like it? Oops! That’s not a valid distinction.
^ Pow.
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