How do we see women?

ExMuzzy · 2021-10-06T15:32:15+00:00

I feel like this is what I was taught as a kid growing up in school, watching tv and reading books. The thing is it never sat right with me.

You can see the “women are wonderful” effect in any relationship related sub, deadbedroom, AITA etc. Even when a woman has committed a serious crime, she’s a victim to some sort of abuse so people feel sympathy for her. A mans past is never mentioned.

Even when men are murdered it isn’t plastered over the front page of the news. A lot of people I know think women face more danger of being attacked because judging by the media, that’s how it seems to be.

TheTinMenBlog · 2021-10-06T15:15:41+00:00

The narrative we are often told is that the world hates women, and that society is deeply misogynistic.

It makes for a cool t shirt, and will win you lots of retweets and social currency – but sadly, wealths of psychological and sociological literature runs counter to this.

So much so that there’s literally a cognitive bias called the “women are wonderful” effect, that suggests we see women as inherently good, as innocent, innocuous, virtuous and saintly beings, who can do no wrong and are perfectly splendid.

And if they do, do wrong – autonomy is further removed – as they didn’t mean it, they had no choice, and it’s not their fault.

[1] https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12463

[2] https://www.scribd.com/document/274926319/Women-Are-Wonderful-Effect

[3] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/374707?casa_token=h2UQXSQQ2A4AAAAA%3AmBmtJs-BzcErMPyKoiDoqwyjzLYieT2sSpl4wpP5jO4a-vgX-xo1sz-jKBe1LPVNTB7gimDoUMc&

[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22288097/

[5] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002

[6] https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/nimmir-2019-0015

[7] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1350/pojo.2009.82.1.466

Images by kamila-maciejewska, christian-holzinger and aiony-haust from Unsplash

BrokeMacMountain · 2021-10-06T20:35:06+00:00

another fantastic and informative post. thank you

RockmanXX · 2021-10-07T02:44:47+00:00

Feminism has retrofitted Gender Roles with tweaks to better suit the needs of Women and in the process, it has made it a Paradox. For ex:Men are expected to be chivalrous to Women but Women aren't expected to show appreciation for it. Men aren't allowed to talk about this paradox, because the monopoly over Gender Issues rests at the hands of people that don't have a shred of goodwill towards Men. If what Men say about their lived experiences doesn't fit into the Feminist narrative, its considered irrelevant.

RW finds it easy to win against IDPOL because RW is the Tribalistic side with the least amount of internal contradictions. Idpol is the Tribalistic side with a mass of contradictions, idpol oscillates from conservative&liberal values. It juggles oriental&humanist approaches to non-western cultures, depending on the gender&religion.

IMHO the problem here is that Men are systemically denied the right to victim-hood. Trying to educate people on facts about Male Suffering is like trying to educate the Farm Crew on the intelligence&emotions of Pigs. Masculinity categorically denies Men Victimhood, a victim is not Masculine. Therefore, men have to be willing to forgo Masculinity(AKA their identity) to become a Victim, even then Society only reinforces Masculinity by telling men to bootstrap themselves out of impossible odds.

BluesForBoltzmann · 2021-10-06T16:58:27+00:00

u/throwra_coolname209 made a good point about the trickiness of this "women are wonderful" idea and refutation.

My sense of it is that society has a latent view of women as more "child-like" than men and that this view comes with a number of positive and negative connotations.

The positive side leads people to being more sympathetic towards women than towards men in situations where the two genders confront one another, but the negative side leads people to viewing women as generally less competent than men (see this study for example). Both of these connotations seem to concern agency and the tacit sense that men have more agency than women and thus that women should be protected while men should fend for themself.

I think it is interesting to see women's advocacy groups selectively combat this view. There is good talk and action concerning opposing the sense that women are less competent, but there seems to be less talk and action concerning the reciprocal idea that women need to be protected and catered to. Likely the latter conflicts with the former, because if people in general did not believe that women needed to be catered to then they would likely ignore their grievances much like men's grievances are ignored.

Really tricky indeed.

Edit: Linking study

Edit 2: See discussion with u/SchalaZeal01 for nuances about the general perception of competency.

hehimCA · 2021-10-06T21:23:17+00:00

Great. By the way at corporate diversity training in the US you often have to take this implicit bias training. But guess what? They don’t include this proven anti-male bias due to “patriarchy.”

throwra_coolname209 · 2021-10-06T16:33:26+00:00

Definitely a tricky subject to bring up. I'd definitely agree that there's a ton of misogyny out there that women undoubtedly still face and women aren't exactly treated like they are wonderful in many situations. We (society) still easily write off women as gold diggers, attention seekers, call them bitchy/bossy when they are assertive, stuff like that.

At the same time, I don't think the average woman truly understands how often they are given the benefit of the doubt. That's really where I feel like the women are wonderful effect falls into place. We are very willing to ask why a woman's actions may have occurred and we don't do the same questioning of men, instead largely assuming they do everything out of ill intent or negligence. That quickly becomes a broken record of the male experience and I feel it's often glossed over by people that assume men and women are treated the same in this regard.

BloomingBrains · 2021-10-11T10:13:45+00:00

There are times I even catch myself thinking this way. It’s not something you can just reason away by knowing it exists, but something you have to be constantly vigilant against. That’s what is so pernicious about the WAW effect. It’s deeply entwined with a man’s emotional need to have women be part of his life, and cultivated over millions of years.

Syndocloud · 2021-10-07T08:10:45+00:00

we need to rename this effect asap this is just my opinion but i feel like the phrase wont go far because.

A: its too literal

B:it's literalness doesn't help people understand it

c: its too on the nose and people will get iffy

we should rename it to the sugar and spice effect from the poem what are little boys made of. where girls are described as being made of sugar, spice and everything nice

this can really help get the message across of what we are talking about. We aren't loser males online screaming about women being seen as wonderful because they're secretly evil or something we are just like feminists looking deeply at the assumptions our society makes even in subtle ways and seeing the much larger harm that causes

Steyrox · 2021-10-09T20:47:08+00:00

This is very relatable unfortunately.

Grahftheseeker · 2021-10-15T09:28:19+00:00

As people just like the rest of us good bad mad sad we're all human

Title	How do we see women?
Author	TheTinMenBlog
Upvotes	308
Comments	54
Date	October 6, 2021 3:11 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/q2mgzo/how_do_we_see_women/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/how-do-we-see-women.1077050 https://theredarchive.com/post/1077050

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