It's interesting how thoroughly ingrained sexist concepts are in the language. Even a verb that's fairly active like 'resist' assumes a power relation in which they are in a worse position.
I'd like to see this done by country or year or language or genre.
Heh. You have no idea. English doesn't even have proper genders. You're on easy mode.
If I say: "Your manager is good.", it's neutral. You can't figure out if I'm talking about a man or a woman without something additional.
In Romanian, and I guess in most Latin languages, no such luck. Except for a handful of neologisms, everything clearly mentions the gender, for better of for worse.
The direct translation in Romanian: "Managerul tău e bun" is masculine (both the noun and the adjective make that obvious).
The whole neutral gender movement in English sounds kind of funny for us... we could try to do it Romanian but it would be like lobotomizing the language.
A Bulgarian colleague of mine said that even surnames are gendered - her surname is Nakova, her father's is Nakov. It plays merry hell with admin software from anglo nations which assume surnames aren't gendered, apparently.
Once again, US culture cherry-picks data and declares that any statistical discrepancy is caused by oppression or sexism. Other hypotheses are taboo and dismissed. You, as well as the author, jump to the morally accepted conclusion without looking at the real world.
I believe in gender equality. But it is worth thinking about other hypotheses even if you don't accept them, that is, the implications of biology in human behaviour.
An interesting question is: does it just reflect reality, or does it shape reality? There are cultures with different ideas about genders - ideas taught to people. So a random book, movie, story, etc you discover in modern west has a higher chance of describing a man murdering a resisting woman. If you see that trope repeated enough times - are you affected in any way? Is there a statistically relevant impact on society as a whole?
I'd say that if there is, then yes, content which keeps the idea alive is sexist to an extent. (Unless you're writing non-fiction) And the existence of the adtech, and ideas like brand awareness, and catchy jingles, and recent fake news is a decent example that society is relatively easy to influence just by constant repeating and enforcing of information.
It's probably still sexist. I think you would probably agree that literature spoke the same way about black people a couple hundred years ago. Cultures can be sexist or racist even if everyone subscribes to the same discriminatory standards.
However, I think the interesting point is that this is the culmination of 100,000 plot descriptions. At that point, it's not a reflection of bias in an author, it's a culturally accepted position on the roles of genders. (whether right or wrong)
...or I guess it could be a bunch of biased wikipedia editors :D
If you took 100,000 historical books describing the periods of US slavery, you'd have a strong correlation between "black" and "slave", but concluding that the books are therefore racist would be extremely illogical.
You have a valid point of logic. The only problem is that in reality, many many of those books actually were racist. Slavery and racism were in fact culturally acceptable in the United States for a period of time, it is not at all a stretch to hypothesize that the writing of the time reflected that fact. One might even argue that to assume otherwise would be extremely illogical.
Ok, but the conflation is still wrong. A tract by John Brown about the evils of slavery would conflate the two without racism, while a racist screed by a Southern manner owner might use "servitude" or some other euphemism. The question isn't whether racism was common (yes, obviously) it's whether a specific language correlation reflects a racist author or work about a racist society.
More broadly, this is a case of "right for the wrong reason". Many books mentioning slavery will be racist because many books of all sorts were racist, but we're asking whether this is informative or just a base rate fallacy.
Conflation of what? The conflation was @tomp's straw man example, @zebrafish and @artursapek didn't conflate anything nor presume that word frequencies equal racism.
It's true that correlation is not causation. It's true that books that use the words 'black' and 'slave' doesn't say anything about whether they're racist. Nobody in this thread was saying otherwise.
It's also true that the history we actually have is one filled with real racism and writing about real racism. It is not one that had a majority of John Brown writing about the evils of slavery. This isn't speculation, we have a historical record and this has already been demonstrated.
Bigger picture, @artursapek asked an interesting question, is a body of literature sexist if it accurately reflects society? Men do commit more crimes, is it sexist for there to be more writing about men committing crimes than women?
@zebrafish answered with an interesting answer -- we might consider it somewhat sexist because our society is still somewhat sexist. If the degree of sexism in literature and in society are the same, then is the literature sexist on it's own? Maybe it is.
Both are hypotheses, and in my book it's perfectly fine to ponder hypotheses. Neither one said something I would presume to call "wrong".
Brave New World describes an inferior negroid class whose female zygotes furiously accept sperm zygotes with great vigor.
Its not just about slavery, and I'm not sure how this analysis would even begin to comprehensively find these currently unfavorable descriptions of people.
The alpha and beta classes were not living in a dystopia. Seemed quite nice. Freedom to pursue intellectual endeavors, freedom to have sex with whomever you wanted with no consequence, a life of privilege.
Brave New World is widely considered a dystopia, but it is an introspection and satire on existing societies, which for many people actually are dystopias. This is a separation from stories that focus on the post-apocalyptic aspects primarily to create the genre of "scifi dystopia". Therefore, viewing Brave New World as an introspection only leaves the parts of the society that I like as the part to evaluate to see an ideal segment of society, colloquially called a utopia:
- I want to be at the top of the pyramid society
- I want there to be no consequences for promiscuity
- I want a calming mind altering drug that has no side effects
- I want peace and stability to focus on my intellectual tasks
What would that mean? That men commit more aggressive crimes or that the users of the language perceive it that way? Also, what would then be seen as a crime or as violence?
The point I am trying to make is that there is probably a cultural factor in this as well. (How the culture perceives things to be.)
To my knowledge, gender is thought of as a complex of at least two aspects: those differences between what is thought of as masculine and feminine, and the roles assigned to genders. In these cases, gender pertains to the ideas of gender identity and further gender expression. In other cases, gender is also thought of as including or being inextricably related to biological sex.
Gender isn't "made up" in the same way that words aren't "made up"; it is an aspect of society, but unlike words, gender is with some relation to observable physical biological expression, usually termed as 'sex'. But the concept of gender as I have seen it used is certainly depending on society, rather than physical sex.
Variations within sex (such as intersex) is another question and is unrelated to gender, as far as I know.
The problem with "gender" as a concept is that they hijacked existing words ("man" and "woman") that were previously used for "sex". This can be clearly seen by trying to define these words without reference to sex - you can't except by defining them recursively ("men are people who identify as men"), in which case, I think a better choice would be to invent new words for this new concept.
There's biologically driven behavioral differences between male and female due to genetics. These differences are on a spectrum that varies between individuals but they are clearly visible in aggregate. A lot of recent political rhetoric bulldozes over the obvious differences between male and female to the detriment of our species. For example, the push to have the same physical standards for male and female in the army and elsewhere will inevitably drive the standards down. Males are mentally and physically tougher by design. And before anyone calls me sexist, they also die younger. Everything is a trade-off.
I believe that denying these differences is sexist, as it results in laws that affect males and females unequally. Should sentences for violent crimes be shorter for men because higher testosterone levels make them more biologically prone to violence? This is dangerous political territory bordering on eugenics but an interesting question nonetheless.
But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that isn't an absolute. Men's efficacy at aggression is greater, when it happens, and that is what gets reported.
I would say most of the research in this area is in abusive relationships. Where only heterosexual abuse from man to woman is noticed and acted on, which greatly distorts reality and cultural expectations.
Many men are physically abused by women, and this is underreported.
Gay and lesbian relationships also produce a power dynamic, which has also gone underreported, as they were already either marginalized, or collectively too busy trying to make all LGBT relationships seem completely benign so that their neighbors wouldn't marginalize them.
Do I have enough quantitative evidence to disprove your "by far" statement? No, but thats not the point. There is something about HUMANS that we should enlighten ourselves about.
will a human being pumped with testosterone and upper body strength be violent? a human being with a Y chromosome? thats currently what culture suspects given the reported information available in crime statistics.
I'm telling you that such reductionism isn't an absolute, as there is enough evidence from marginalized people and power dynamics to warrant altering the cultural assumptions. The culture alone (and the stories written in these cultures) is what perpetuates a lack of further insight into this.
Well, we're talking about gender here, not sex, and given that there are two genders [commonly represented in literature], it stands to reason that they would have different tendencies of behavior, or else there would be no difference between the genders, and the concept would not exist.
Right, of course. Since we live in a universe devoid of power relationships, it stands to reason that two groups described differently are in fact different, since no one has an interest in describing people other than accurately. Like how the Jews used to be all scheming and evil, but really cleaned up their act in the past few decades.
Right, of course, since we live in an universe devoid of genetic differences, it stands to reason that two groups described differently are in fact different.
Genetic differences are FACTS. If you do not account for facts, you're operating in the twilight zone.
It would indeed be hard to argue that there are not genetic differences between people of different sexes.
It does not, however, follow that all perceived differences in behavior between gender groups are genetic at root. It would be rather dishonest of me to say "men in the US like trucks, therefore liking trucks is embedded in the male geneome" without considering that there could be a societal aspect to that behavior.
Genetic differences may be facts, but blindly assigning genetic causation to perceived behavior without completely ruling out other possible influencing factors is just bad science.
Hey, the Twilight Zone was always my favorite show. It's a place between mystery and imagination, a place where the laws of reality are bent, a place where people arbitrarily start thinking you said genes don't exist.
Genetic differences are facts, but if you think that our understanding of what they imply about society is factual, you simply don't understand science.
Like how the Jews used to be all scheming and evil, but really cleaned up their act in the past few decades.
Seems like the Muslims have taken up the Evil Baton.
That said, what if the Jews had been the outgroup that has no obligations to the ingroup and vice versa? In the Middle Ages there were prohibitions on taking interest and charity was encouraged, which meant credit was unavailable, but relatives had potential to be bottomless barrels. We are still seeing this with athletes from an impoverished background. One can see why a group with no such restrictions would be useful, even successful.
I think in East Africa the Indians occupied a similar position in society, and when Idi Amin emulated the Catholic Majesties and expelled the Indians the outcome was equally disastrous.
Much of this reflects reality. Murder in general is committed more by men. Most reported battery and assault (beat) is committed by men. Murder by poisoning is almost exclusively committed by women. First responders or soldiers who are "saving" people trend male, etc.
When you're looking at 100k fiction works, many of them are going to be romance, mystery and other dramatic type stories that reinforce these concepts.
People in literature don't have a biological sex, they only have a socially-constructed gender, and so naturally they will have the characteristics of that gender ... in fact, the sum of behaviour characteristics of the genders in our stories is the social construction of gender
(I started this post off as tongue-in-cheek, but now I realise it's probably true)
I'd like to see this done by country or year or language or genre.