How To Understand How You Think about Men and Women
You might think that you see men and women the same way.
I am here to tell you that you do not and why that is.
I will show you evidence of:
Why courts sentence women and men differently
Why men are looked upon as perpetrators
Why women are looked upon as victims
Why relationships work the way they do
Why media portray men as less worthy than women
Unfortunately many don't want to hear this because it goes against their human biases or mental model of their world.
The brain hates to change because it wants to survive
As neuroscientist Rachelle Summers so eloquently explains.
The first piece of information you hear will form your mental model, and it's called Priming.
You filter out and put less emphasis on all other information.
The brain is conserving energy and trying to survive.
You can't reason your way out of a dangerous situation; instead, you act.
But if you want to be a more honest and just person you need to relax to gain access to your right human brain hemisphere to start questioning your primed information.
Anyone can do this and see the world more clearly.
It's also known as deprogramming.
But now I'm going to antagonize you by stating the facts so that you can start the process of deprogramming yourself.
"No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.
Don't shoot the messenger."
– Sophocles
Your childhood primed you
You need to understand that the earliest information you got primed with happened during childhood.
Your mother was the soft tenderness that made you survive.
Your mother:
Nurtured and fed you.
Cared for you when you were sick and helpless.
Made sure you weren't cold or too hot.
Comforted you when you were sad.
At the same time, your father taught you rough-and-tumble play so that you would understand that anything bigger than you and a man can hurt you or worse.
He was also the one teaching you delayed gratification during bedtime when you had to brush your teeth before storytime.
But with your mother, you could negotiate and sleep later than with your father.
You never looked at your father and saw him as a victim; now did you?
But if he ever raised his voice towards your nurturing mother you saw your mother as a victim.
This pattern of how we see men and women is very clear in society and can lead to undesired consequences.
Gender Bias in Media Coverage of Sexual Assault Victims
Sophie Koopman showed in her thesis that the media reinforces this by reporting that men are less often victims of sexual violence.
The media is reinforcing the information you were primed with as a child.
But please remember that the journalist writing the news also have these biases from their childhood.
The harm hypothesis
Your childhood priming even goes into science and influences the researchers who find facts about humans.
The scientific researchers who wrote the paper "The harm hypothesis: How perceived harm to women shapes reactions to research on sex differences" had this to say.
Consistent with past research, participants reacted less positively to the male-favouring difference, especially for male-led research. Consistent with the harm hypothesis, the effect was stronger after highlighting the potential drawbacks of sex-differences research than after highlighting the potential benefits. Our findings suggest that perceptions of harm to women underpin the aversion to male-favouring findings.
Imagine how the facts are squed in 10 years when people only believe what female scientists find and ignore what male scientists find.
Unfortunately, it extends further into politics and censoring the truth.
Censorship in our educational system
Cory J. Clark together with fellow researchers found the following when conducting research on how liberals and conservatives favor censoring the truth in the United States, the UK, and Hungary.
Liberals censor accurate, truthful, and negative facts about
Women
Black people
Muslim
Unfortunately, it goes even further which Elizabeth Wilson knew back in the 70s.
Women who censor
Elizabeth Wilson who was active in the women’s movement back in the 1970s and 80s had this to say about women.
“This was only one example of the way in which an accusation of racism or ‘Islamophobia’ could be used to delegitimize the opinions of (white western) women who spoke out against fundamentalist practices.”
Conclusion
Don't be the one who starts to think this is hating on women.
Most mothers are what your mother was for you when you were an infant and growing up.
That does not mean they can't be individuals who censor truthful information or spread misinformation.
It has to do with conscientiousness and neuroticism in their personality.
You see women are about 0.5 standard deviations higher in the mean value than men.
This means that more women than men are organized and also disgust-sensitive to viruses, bacteria, male beards (yes you heard me), filthy shoes, clothes on the floor, chewing, and general disorganization.
Women are also 0.5 standard deviations higher in the mean value than men in neuroticism.
This means women are more likely to seek control (correlation 0.3) over others when in pain like when they feel:
Anxiety
Angry including indirect aggression
Vulnerable
Depressed
Sad
Scared
Self-Conscious
All these behavior has a relationship to the very personality of the individual behaving this way including some men.
But remember that this is perfectly normal behavior in society today and you should expect it rather than deny it.
Listen to “5 Forbidden Truths Psychologists Refuse To Talk About - Dr Cory Clark”