4 ms·

Maybe we're all judged excessively compared to some imaginary meritocratic utopia, but the in this world women are judged by their looks much more than men are.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zaroth 12y ago
Compared to an imaginary meritocratic utopia? Hardly. Here in the real world ugly men are judged quite harshly, right alongside ugly women. Fat, bald, puny, nerdy, zit-faced, short, weakling, dork, creep, loser... humans are strongly attracted and hardwired to follow the beautiful and shun the ugly. It's beyond naive to think women only judge men based on their brains and men only judge women based on their figure. My point is that at some point the crusaders on both sides of this should step back and realize that most of us actually have dealt discrimination and harassment to some degree, and I think the best solutions actually don't involve putting women up on pedestals or men in gags and blindfolds. I think your belief that women are judged more superficially than men is driven more from mass media than scientific fact.
- richmarr 12y ago
  > I think your belief that women are judged more superficially than men is driven more from mass media than scientific fact. Uh-huh. If you want to start talking about scientific evidence, where's yours?
  - zaroth 12y ago
    The phrase "what is beautiful is good", a.k.a. "lookism", was coined by Dion, Bercheid, and Walster in 1972. Of course there are also many studies since both supporting and refuting the theory. A excerpt from a meta-analysis of the topic by Eagly, Ashore, Marhijani, Longo from 1991; Whether physical attractiveness is more important to per- ceivers of one sex than the other is not entirely clear. In view of Feingold's (1990a) meta-analysis showing that men place greater value on physical attractiveness than women do, especially when romantic attraction is considered, it is possible to argue that physical attractiveness could be a more powerful dimen- sion in men's than women's implicit theories of personality. However, the research we review on the physical attractiveness stereotype was not carried out in the context of romantic rela- tionships. Moreover, the question addressed in research on the physical attractiveness stereotype pertains to the meaning in- ferred from attractiveness cues, not the importance of attractive- ness. Men and women may differ in the importance they ac- cord to attractiveness even though they infer similar meaning (e.g., social competence) from attractiveness cues. Particularly in view of evidence that the content of gender stereotypes differs little for male and female subjects (e.g., Deaux & Lewis, 1983,1984; Eagly & Steffen, 1984), we suspect that the physical attractiveness stereotype is widely shared in American culture and is therefore little affected by variation in subject character- istics, including subject sex. For lighter reading, "Blink" (Gladwell) is salient but not exactly scientific.
    - richmarr 12y ago
      All that says is that Feingold 1990a wasn't conclusive. You're trying to prove a positive with a potentially false negative. You're smart enough to know that's a mistake. Yes, men are judged on their appearance. Yes, 10% of anorexics are men (disproportionately gay men) and all of those people feel real pain. Nobody should dismiss that. Nor should anyone dismiss the fact that the remaining 90% of anorexics are women. Is that because women are somehow weaker than men? No, it isn't.
      - zaroth 12y ago
        I think the seminal 1972 paper was "conclusive", I quoted the meta-analysis specifically because I appreciate that there are also open questions and room for further study. I'm not trying to prove something (my original statement was ambiguous enough I think to defy proof). Rather I'm trying to nudge the discussion a bit toward a path which I personally think will be more successful overall. The extensive back-and-forth downthread between me and @camgunz I think illustrates the difficulty in having these conversations. Till this very story I've always avoided these discussions for fear of being unfairly characterized, or cast as somehow supporting harassment (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171403) My whole point is I don't want to dismiss anyone, least of all 50% of the population! I am curious about better ways to recruit a much larger percentage of the population in actively working against harassment. Part of recruitment is making everyone think there's something they personally could gain from participating. E.g. this isn't about making the world a better place for women, this is about making the world a better place, period. Part of it is also dampening some of the overreach (like the idea you can't pay an honest complement to a female coworker). Everyone should strongly condemn harassment, but I think many people also have a vehement reaction to anything that smells like prior restraint of personal freedoms, and unfortunately sometimes zealous attempts to "protect" women can feel, indeed are, too much of the later. I think it's really important to mediate against this, and some strategies I've adopted; make sure we're not casting this as men vs women, to cut out the man bashing (because most men are awesome husbands, fathers, and coworkers), and perhaps the hardest, trust men enough to not feel like we have to restrain them, but rather recruit them to help battle harassment. Such a complex and delicate topic, so rife for misunderstanding and personal attacks.... I'm probably going to check out of this particular story now. Maybe one day I will work up the courage to blog on it.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

zaroth 12y ago

Compared to an imaginary meritocratic utopia? Hardly. Here in the real world ugly men are judged quite harshly, right alongside ugly women. Fat, bald, puny, nerdy, zit-faced, short, weakling, dork, creep, loser... humans are strongly attracted and hardwired to follow the beautiful and shun the ugly. It's beyond naive to think women only judge men based on their brains and men only judge women based on their figure. My point is that at some point the crusaders on both sides of this should step back and realize that most of us actually have dealt discrimination and harassment to some degree, and I think the best solutions actually don't involve putting women up on pedestals or men in gags and blindfolds. I think your belief that women are judged more superficially than men is driven more from mass media than scientific fact.

richmarr 12y ago
> I think your belief that women are judged more superficially than men is driven more from mass media than scientific fact. Uh-huh. If you want to start talking about scientific evidence, where's yours?
- zaroth 12y ago
  The phrase "what is beautiful is good", a.k.a. "lookism", was coined by Dion, Bercheid, and Walster in 1972. Of course there are also many studies since both supporting and refuting the theory. A excerpt from a meta-analysis of the topic by Eagly, Ashore, Marhijani, Longo from 1991; Whether physical attractiveness is more important to per- ceivers of one sex than the other is not entirely clear. In view of Feingold's (1990a) meta-analysis showing that men place greater value on physical attractiveness than women do, especially when romantic attraction is considered, it is possible to argue that physical attractiveness could be a more powerful dimen- sion in men's than women's implicit theories of personality. However, the research we review on the physical attractiveness stereotype was not carried out in the context of romantic rela- tionships. Moreover, the question addressed in research on the physical attractiveness stereotype pertains to the meaning in- ferred from attractiveness cues, not the importance of attractive- ness. Men and women may differ in the importance they ac- cord to attractiveness even though they infer similar meaning (e.g., social competence) from attractiveness cues. Particularly in view of evidence that the content of gender stereotypes differs little for male and female subjects (e.g., Deaux & Lewis, 1983,1984; Eagly & Steffen, 1984), we suspect that the physical attractiveness stereotype is widely shared in American culture and is therefore little affected by variation in subject character- istics, including subject sex. For lighter reading, "Blink" (Gladwell) is salient but not exactly scientific.
  - richmarr 12y ago
    All that says is that Feingold 1990a wasn't conclusive. You're trying to prove a positive with a potentially false negative. You're smart enough to know that's a mistake. Yes, men are judged on their appearance. Yes, 10% of anorexics are men (disproportionately gay men) and all of those people feel real pain. Nobody should dismiss that. Nor should anyone dismiss the fact that the remaining 90% of anorexics are women. Is that because women are somehow weaker than men? No, it isn't.
    - zaroth 12y ago
      I think the seminal 1972 paper was "conclusive", I quoted the meta-analysis specifically because I appreciate that there are also open questions and room for further study. I'm not trying to prove something (my original statement was ambiguous enough I think to defy proof). Rather I'm trying to nudge the discussion a bit toward a path which I personally think will be more successful overall. The extensive back-and-forth downthread between me and @camgunz I think illustrates the difficulty in having these conversations. Till this very story I've always avoided these discussions for fear of being unfairly characterized, or cast as somehow supporting harassment (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171403) My whole point is I don't want to dismiss anyone, least of all 50% of the population! I am curious about better ways to recruit a much larger percentage of the population in actively working against harassment. Part of recruitment is making everyone think there's something they personally could gain from participating. E.g. this isn't about making the world a better place for women, this is about making the world a better place, period. Part of it is also dampening some of the overreach (like the idea you can't pay an honest complement to a female coworker). Everyone should strongly condemn harassment, but I think many people also have a vehement reaction to anything that smells like prior restraint of personal freedoms, and unfortunately sometimes zealous attempts to "protect" women can feel, indeed are, too much of the later. I think it's really important to mediate against this, and some strategies I've adopted; make sure we're not casting this as men vs women, to cut out the man bashing (because most men are awesome husbands, fathers, and coworkers), and perhaps the hardest, trust men enough to not feel like we have to restrain them, but rather recruit them to help battle harassment. Such a complex and delicate topic, so rife for misunderstanding and personal attacks.... I'm probably going to check out of this particular story now. Maybe one day I will work up the courage to blog on it.