Note: Most of this article will be focused on directly reporting the key findings and motivation of the paper. This will be pulled almost word for word from the actual paper. For readability, I've divided it up into sections. You can skip to the personal analysis if you're not interested in the key findings of the paper. Thanks.

Full Study Here: The Roles of Political Conservatism and Binary Gender Beliefs in Predicting Prejudices Toward Gay Men and People Who Are Transgender

Abstract Here:

Negativity toward gay men and transgender people is pervasive. Past research suggests that authoritarianism predicts biases against transgender people, in part due to an essentialist view of gender. To determine the generalizability of these findings, but with political conservatism as the focal predictor, we re-analyzed Norton and Herek’s (2013) large (n = 2281) nationally representative U.S. dataset. In doing so, we modeled a latent factor indicated by anti-transgender attitudes and prejudice toward gay men to capture prejudice toward gender non-conformists. That is, prejudice against transgender people and gay men on the political right might arise from perceived gender norm violations, which binary gender beliefs could potentially explain. Consistent with social dominance theory, results revealed that those more conservative in ideology were more likely to display prejudice toward gender non-conformists in part due to their greater endorsement of binary gender beliefs. Unexpectedly, and novel to the existing literature, conservatism predicted binary gender beliefs and prejudice toward gender non-conformists more strongly for women than for men. Binary gender beliefs seemingly function as a legitimizing myth to bolster existing hierarchical relations between gender conforming versus gender non-conforming people, particularly among conservative women.

(emphasis mine)

This study takes a bit of a deep dive into the relationship between conservative ideology, social dominance theory, and prejudice against gender non-comforting men. One of its novel findings is that conservative women hold significantly stronger binary gender beliefs and prejudice toward gender non-comforting people.

Why is this Important

According to the study, 78% of the 6450 transgender people surveyed reported experiences of harassment related to their gender presentation and 35% experienced physical assault. 64% of this group have attempted suicide. Both gay men and transgender suffer debilitating depression and discrimination at nearly every level of society with mental health disorders being associated with more frequent discrimination.

Furthermore, it has been theorized that men since men are assumed to have more power over women and appear to be more likely to display prejudice toward outgroups, conservative beliefs would predict prejudices against gender non-conforming men more strongly for conservative men. (this is pulled almost directly from the study)

In short, conservative men have historically and canonically been assumed to be more prejudiced against gender non-conforming individuals.

This study and a couple of studies on a similar subject before it (here, here) demonstrate that this narrative might be false or at least should be called into question.

The Results

These are pulled almost directly from the study.

  • Anti-transgender attitudes and prejudice towards gay men were significantly and strongly correlated for both men and women ( r = .45 for men and r = .57 for women )
  • As shown in Fig. 1, for both genders political conservatism significantly predicted greater binary gender beliefs (a-path), and greater binary gender beliefs significantly predicted greater prejudice toward gender non-conformists (b-path).
  • Moreover, for both genders, conservatism significantly predicted greater prejudice toward gender nonconformists
  • Results from the multiple-groups analysis are shown in Table 2. We found that the positive association between conservatism and binary gender beliefs (i.e., the a-path) was significantly stronger for women than men. (r = .19(.16) for men and r = /.39(.30) - Anti-transgender attitude(Anti-gay men attitudes)). These differences were significant at the p < 0.001 level.
  • Conservatism was also less likely to be correlated with binary gender beliefs for men than for women. (r = .09 for men and r = .25).
  • In contrast, the positive association between binary gender beliefs and prejudice toward gender non-conformists (i.e., the b-path) did not differ in strength between men and women.
  • the direct effect of conservatism on prejudice toward gender non-conformists (i.e., c’-path) was also significantly stronger for women than men.
  • With respect to the indirect effect without covariates included, the 95% BCa confidence interval for the standardized coefficient for men [.01, .06] does not overlap with that for women [.07, .12] (refer to Table 1), consistent with the notion that the indirect effect through binary gender beliefs is significantly stronger for women than men (although with covariates included the 95% BCa confidence interval for men [.01, .07] overlaps with that for women [.05, .09]; refer to Table 1
  • Endorsing a binary view of gender appears to function as a legitimizing myth to justify hierarchical intergroup relations between gender-conforming versus gender non-conforming people. In this way, prejudice and discrimination against non-binary gay men and transgender people are maintained.
  • It is worth noting that, in Norton and Herek (2013), women overall showed more favorable attitudes toward transgender people than did men. This is comparable to research showing that relative to women, men show higher mean levels of homophobia and transphobia
  • the legitimizing myth function of binary gender beliefs—in relation to prejudice toward gender non-conformists—appears to be more critical for conservative women than conservative men.

Personal Analysis

I wasn't entirely looking for this result, but it completely confirms my suspicion about conservative women and the role that they play in upholding traditional gender hegemony, and from my experience as a bi-black man, I think this is particularly relevant in black communities (which a very very conservative).

One of the most uncomfortable things about dating as a bi-black man is coming out to your girlfriend or love interest. It's a moment filled with a lot of anxiety and dread because the reaction that you're likely to get from her is likely shock, disgust, or a combination of the two and then either ghosted or a breakup. It wasn't until I met my current SO that I realized how common and fucked up that trend is. I realized that coming out to men was a lot easier and a lot more comfortable and it took me a while to understand why. I also came out to my dad first before my mom and though both of them are pretty conservative, my mom reacted a lot more poorly to the experience than my dad did.

Given what I've faced, I literally can't imagine how hard it is for a gay black man or a gay trans-person to navigate and deal with prejudice on this level especially from the conservative men and women in their lives.

What do you guys think about the study and how conservatism and conservative women can impact the lives of men?