Gender Studies Resource Links

  If toxic masculinity refers to the extreme, harmful extension of traditional masculine traits (like self-reliance turning into emotional isolation, or strength turning into dominance and physical aggression), then toxic femininity can be understood as the extreme extension of traditional feminine traits. When traits traditionally valued in women—such as empathy, communal focus, nurturing, and maintaining social harmony—are taken to an unhealthy, rigid, or weaponised extreme, they can become deeply toxic to oneself and others. Here are the primary traditional feminine norms that, when overextended, become toxic: 1. Conflict Avoidance → Relational Aggression The Normal Trait: Emphasising social harmony, consensus, and avoiding direct, explosive confrontation to keep a group stable. The Toxic Extension: Relational aggression and social ostracization. Because direct confrontation is discouraged, conflict goes underground. This manifests as gos...

On the trajectory of discrimination: A meta-analysis and forecasting survey capturing 44 years of field experiments on gender and hiring decisions link Abstract A preregistered meta-analysis, including 244 effect sizes from 85 field audits and 361,645 individual job applications, tested for gender bias in hiring practices in female-stereotypical and gender-balanced as well as male-stereotypical jobs from 1976 to 2020. A “red team” of independent experts was recruited to increase the rigor and robustness of our meta-analytic approach. A forecasting survey further examined whether laypeople (n = 499 nationally representative adults) and scientists (n = 312) could predict the results.  Forecasters correctly anticipated reductions in discrimination against female candidates over time. However, both scientists and laypeople overestimated the continuation of bias against female candidates. Instead, selection bias in favor of male over female candidates was eliminated and, if anything, sl...

 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2080681/ " Initial investigations into the mechanistic basis of aggression focused on the role of testosterone (T) and a variety of studies on non-human animals found that elevated T levels promote aggression. However, many correlational studies have not detected a significant association between aggression and peripheral T levels. One reason for this inconsistency may be due to differential metabolism of T within the brain, in particular, the conversion of T to estrogen by aromatase. Thus, differences in aromatase enzyme activity, estrogen receptor expression, and related cofactors may have important effects on how steroids affect aggressive behavior. "

  https://www.science.org/content/article/does-testosterone-have-bad-rap# " Testosterone has a reputation for causing violent and antisocial behavior. But that's a bad rap, according to a new study. Women given the hormone acted more fairly in an economic game than did those given a placebo. Interestingly, however, women in the placebo group were more antisocial if they thought they had received testosterone, indicating that our negative attitudes toward the hormone have a powerful sway on behavior. " "... the results changed depending on what the women believed they had received. Based on questionnaires, the researchers divided the volunteers into women who thought they had received testosterone and those who thought they had received placebo. Those who got the hormone but thought they got a placebo were the most fair; in more than 60% of their offers, they proposed a 50-50 split of the francs. Women who got the placebo but thought they got testosterone were the m...

The essential thesis of the book seems to be about emphasising "feelings" over "fairness" (consider MeToo's lack of objective requirement for any kind of judicial process) and the consequences of doing so. She aligns this broadly with "Woke culture". Helen Andrews on Triggernometry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfbilhs5dt4 Helen Andrews on Interesting Times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkTglJuqq8U Responses (all posted here without any digestion for further investigation): OfBoysAndMen:  https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/the-real-feminization-problem Zubaida Bai https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-arent-problem-why-great-feminization-argument-gets-zubaida-bai-ixbuc/

 Boys’ Underachievement in the UK Education System :  Paper link Summary: Boys’ under performance impacts not only their life expectancy but also several health outcomes (suicide, drugs related issues, rough sleeping etc.) and employability. This outcomes can be attributed to many factors: males are more likely to have ADHD or ASD (and these males are seen more negatively than their female counterparts), they are more likely to be in contact with the justice system and when they do they are treated more severely. This more severe treatment of boys persists at school when teachers grade boys or punish misbehaving boys. Finally, our culture has a negative view of boys and masculinity that is unwarranted and can impact boys’ well-being. ‘Systemic bias against boys’? Unexplained differences in Teacher Assessed Grades between boys and girls in this year’s A level results https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2021/08/23/systemic-bias-against-boys-unexplained-differences-in-teacher-assessed-grades-...

  Abstract A review is made of feminist explanations for spousal homicide, and a failure to investigate intrapsychic processes is noted. Recent work on suicide is cited as showing insight into cognitive processes involved in spousal homicide, for example, as an escape from pain (called “psychache”).  Certain personality features, such as insecure attachment and borderline personality, are reviewed as especially vulnerable to psychache. For unknown reasons, males seem more susceptible to destructive behavior upon relationship dissolution. The main target of this destructive behavior is the self, followed by spousal homicide. "In a study of 6,321 partner homicides, only 6.5% of female victims experienced domestic violence in the preceding month" "5% of male victims in opposite-sex pairings were perpetrators of violence in the month preceding the homicide" "Perpetrators of murder-suicide had profiles consistent with suicidal people but not with murderers" Mur...

  Abstract A review of 20 articles (with a collective  N  of 16,463) was conducted assessing reasons given by perpetrators for their commission of intimate partner violence (IPV). College, community, and batterer intervention program samples were used. Five studies used Follingstad's (1991) Motivation and Effects Questionnaire to assess reported motivations. This had an advantage in standardizing the definitions of motives, which varied widely in other studies. Perpetrators of IPV, whether male or female, do not describe their motives in gender-political terms. Instead, they describe them in psychological terms, such as anger, frustration, or gaining attention. The most frequently endorsed reasons were anger (68% by women, 47% by men) and gaining attention (53% by women, 55% by men). Self-defense was the least endorsed (7th of seven motives). The implications of this finding for the gender paradigm are discussed. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330771094_In_Their...

https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/items/205ad682-63e6-484a-825c-7b11a7b2ba14 The low benevolent sexism male target was judged to be higher on hostile sexism, less supportive of female professionals, less good of father and husband, and more likely to perpetrate domestic violence. Abstract Although there is a reliably positive association between hostile (HS) and benevolent sexism (BS), lay perceptions of this association have not been directly tested. I predicted that people perceive an illusory negative association between men’s HS and BS attitudes because lay theories expect men to have univalent attitudes toward women. In Study 1, I manipulated the target’s gender and responses on a subscale of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (high HS, low HS, high BS, or low BS). The low BS male target (compared to high BS male target) was judged to be higher on HS, less supportive of female professionals, less good of father and husband, and more likely to perpetrate domestic violence. Ratings of the l...

 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16768651/ Cross-cultural differences in physical aggression between partners: a social-role analysis Abstract In developed western nations, both sexes commit acts of physical aggression against their partners. Data from 16 nations showed that this pattern did not generalize to all nations. The magnitude and direction of the sex difference was highly correlated with national-level variations in gender empowerment and individualism-collectivism. As gender equality and individualism increased, the sex difference in partner violence moved in the direction of lesser female victimization and greater male victimization. A second analysis of 52 nations showed that 3 indexes of women's victimization were also inversely correlated with gender equality and individualism. Sexist attitudes and relative approval of wife beating were also associated with women's victimization rates, but general levels of violent crime were not. The findings are discussed in te...

  Brain Sex in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity (also contains many references to differentiation in brains between sexes) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8955456/ Is there something unique about the transgender brain? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-something-unique-about-the-transgender-brain/ Neurotransmitter size sex dimorphism, Sapolsky ( The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is a brain region that shows sex differences and has been found to be relevant in the study of transgender individuals. Specifically, research suggests that the size and neuron count in the central subdivision of the BNST (BSTc) in male-to-female (MtF) transsexuals is more similar to that of cisgender women. This finding has been interpreted as evidence that gender identity may be related to brain development influenced by prenatal sex ). Phantom penile sensation on penis removal does not occur in trans women, but does ...

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/ "  There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable. It would be tough to argue that the monkeys’ parents bought them sex-typed toys or that simian society encourages its male offspring to play more with trucks. A much more recent study established that boys and girls 9 to 17 months old — an age when children show few if any signs of recognizing either their own or other children’s sex — nonetheless show marked differences in their preference for stereotypically male versus stereotypically female toys."

Pub Med Central   The empirical basis for hypothesising that gonadal hormones influence gender identity and sexual orientation is based on animal experiments involving manipulations of hormones during prenatal and early neonatal development. It is accepted dogma that testes develop from the embryonic gonad under the influence of a cascade of genes that begins with the expression of the sex-determining gene  SRY  on the Y chromosome. 4 , 5  Before this time, the embryonic gonad is “indifferent”, meaning that it has the potential to develop into either a testis or an ovary. Likewise, the early embryo has 2 systems of ducts associated with urogenital differentiation, Wolffian and Müllerian ducts, which are capable of developing into the male and female tubular reproductive tracts, respectively. Once the testes develop, they begin producing 2 hormones, testosterone and anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH). In rats, this occurs around day 16–17 of gestation, whereas, in humans, i...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/articles/201711/the-truth-about-sex-differences

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2787019?seq=1 "This research examines gender as status, and gender and control (which share the meaning of dominance) as identities by analyzing negative and positive behavior of married couples whose task is to resolve disagreements in their marriage.  On the basis of recent extensions of expectation states theory dealing with emotion-based behavior, we hypothesize that husbands will be more likely than wives to use negative behavior in conversation. On the basis of identity theory and the meanings of emotion-based behavior, we also hypothesize that those with a more masculine and more dominant control identity will be moe likely to use negative behavior in interaction, and that those with a more feminine and less dominant control identity will be more likely to use positive behavior.  We test these predictions on a representative sample of newly married couples, using videotaped conversations. Although the results are consistent with predic...

"Coercive control was associated with IPV, and this relationship was similar for men and women across the three samples. In fact, coercive control was predominantly reciprocal in nature, with women and men reporting both receiving and perpetrating controlling behaviors." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21780535

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-men/201911/domestic-violence-against-men-no-laughing-matter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmWQye77F70

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360 and men prefer to hire women who take parental leave while women don't "Results revealed a 2:1 preference for women by faculty of both genders across both math-intensive and non–math-intensive fields, with the single exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference"

Questioning the DV/IPV narrative