Skeptical Sexism

In this post I want to join the debate regarding sexism in the skeptical (and nerd) communities.  This has been an ongoing debate within these communities and for good reason.  There really is a problem with sexism and the debate keeps getting made worse by poor arguments and misreadings of other people's arguments (here's looking at you Dawkins).  I think these problems could be largely eliminated if people would try to remove emotion from their responses (which puts people on the defensive) and if the framing of the issues took on a more neutral stance.

What I want to do in this post is address the problems I have, as a male, with the presentation of arguments against sexism.  While I may agree with most arguments put forward on the side fighting sexism I often find myself initially turned away by the presentation.  I can understand why men are defensive to these arguments, because when I read them my first inclination is to feel attacked and go on the defensive.  You might argue that I am being sensitive and you are right.  But, I think its important to remember that if you are trying to convince a specific audience, then you should address your point to that audience...


If I am trying to show a believer in poltergeists that the coffee cup falling off the table is better explained by other phenomena and I start off saying those who believe in poltergeists are idiots, well then I probably won't make much progress.  But if I step back and frame the issue in a way that the believer understands (such as asking how do you know it was a ghost and not an alien, gnomes, or elves) then I am likely to make more progress.

I want to address a number of ways sexism is framed that I think are unproductive and could be better done, but because of the extent of each topic I will limit myself to one of the following topics per day

1.  Privilege: stop using the word privilege, you might be using the word correctly but it is likely to turn a lot of men away.
2.  Marketing:  Marketing targeted at men isn't sexist, its just marketing, but it may have sexist effects.
3.  Rude & Inappropriate Behavior: I totally agree, there is way too much rude & inappropriate behavior by men toward women, but just because it is rude or inappropriate doesn't mean its sexist.
4.  Gender Stereotypes Aren't Always Bad: I hate to say it, but even though you might think gender stereotypes are bad, doesn't mean everyone agrees or that they are.

Do Lad Mags really talk like rapists?

The university of Surrey has recently reported that it is publishing a research paper in the British Journal of Psychology dealing with whether study participants could tell the difference between statements made by convicted rapists and those made by men's magazines.  There was one giant glaring problem I immediately saw with this study allowing for giant bias--the researchers were the ones choosing the quotes and thus could choose what quotes participants were reading.  Why is this problematic you may ask.  The reason is that if you select the proper quotes from two sources you can make any two groups look alike.  So long as you keep the quotes short and obscure enough it will be hard to determine who made a statement.  Of course, I have not seen the research because it has not been released yet, so I qualify my following arguments with the fact that the research may adequately address my complaints.

So, what did the study find... it turns out participants couldn't accurately guess which statements were made by rapists and which were made by men's magazines.  Now, without any further ado I will address the large potential problems I see with this research and the press release by University of Surrey and why I think this conclusion is misleading.  I will address 3 main problems I see: 1) guilt by association fallacy, 2) misleading selection of quotes, 3) cherry picking quotes.