It doesn't look, from the article, like the team of raters actually reviewed the "neutral words" -- I think that Smiler and Gelman may have actually just picked them, but that seems very silly. In the article, they say that they had 22 words used as masculine and feminine from another study, and then they gave them to 12 raters, ranked them most feminine to most masculine, and used the 8 most feminine and 8 most masculine. If they picked the neutral words from the middle, only 2 of their words would have been left out at all
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I find it interesting that they limited the terms to the 8 most feminine/masculine. Any reason they did that? I mean woman -> feminine, and definitely feminine->feminine unless you have a particularly contrary person in the study. I'm not saying they should toss them out, but is there any reason they didn't include all 22? I mean, it's not like 22 is significantly higher than 16...
Sorry, I should probably have noted up front that the reason I included the table was because their "neutral" words felt so very un-neutral to me - specifically "superstitious" and "vegetarian". The table is very confusing. Also, the term "career woman" in itself implies there's something unusual about being both a woman and in a career, and so calling that a "feminine" term seems... well, kind of fucking odd.
As for a brief definition of essentialism, I do want to stick to the definition used by Smiler and Gelman: "categories are stable, fixed at birth, and based on biological factors.
I guess to sum up, Psychological Essentialism (in this context) is the idea that your personality remains largely unchanged through your whole life, and is determined by your genes. Using the labels above, that's like saying that women who produce more testosterone are going to be more career-oriented. Or, like a recent Stuff article said: "According to British psychologist Professor John Manning, the length of your ring finger is a surefire
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Hm. I should point out that the authors are NOT suggesting that any of these categories are stable or essential. As far as I can tell, they're anti-essentialist. These two studies are measuring determinants of essentialist belief -- what causes someone to hold these kinds of beliefs, and what kinds of traits are they likely to believe are stable this way?
I'm kinda confused about what exactly happened in this study (I seem to be confused a lot lately), as to your question...I don't really think that any of those terms are set in stone....a few are borderline... intelligent, outgoing, selfless being the ones that stick out for me as less changing...but even those can change, I think. Not just from stage to stage in life, but even from day-to-day or topic-to-topic.
I used to be a pretty big believer in the gay-as-genetic idea...but as I get older and less fearful of my own feelings...I think that most things are fluid and a combination of biology and experience...destiny and choice. It bothers me more and more if something is only considered okay if we have no choice in the matter.
..I don't really think that any of those terms are set in stone..
I think the main prediction of this study (that masculine men are more likely to hold essentialist beliefs) would be really hard to test on Dblog, since I would be VERY surprised to find either of the following well represented in the readership:
1. Masculine men 2. people with essentialist beliefs.
I think that was largely what this post was trying to say, but based on the amount of explaining I had to do (see comments) I think I said it poorly.
There is basically nothing I'm willing to attribute confidently to biological factors, and I find this an important part of essentializing gender: it typically asserts not just a functional but a *necessary* relationship between physical or biological markers of sex (insert obligatory note about the contested nature of such things here) and non-physical traits. In this way, it draws patently false and extremely problematic correlations, masking them in relatively acceptable language by eliding the step where your sex + cultural conditioning + performance makes your gender
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This is a major flaw of this plan, because of course I think what makes you a woman is self-identification. But I have not yet found a slick way to debunk sex-gender linkage *and* gender-trait linkage simultaneously.
(Also, as a subsidiary problem, if you say to most undergrads "so you're saying having a uterus makes you a woman?" they look blankly at you and say "um, yes." I seriously have no clue how to even start there on a systematic level, although I always try to explain it when it comes up in practice.)
I appreciate the impetus behind thought exercises like that, but it really downplays the complexities of gender by confusing causality. Here's an example of another logically spurious response:
"People of European or Asian descent are more likely to get osteoporosis." "So you're saying that having light skin makes you more likely to get osteoporosis?"
Of course skin color does not affect bones, but there is a correlation between the two because both are affected by race (I do understand that race categories are arbitrary).
Another point the study could have made...are masculine men more likely to feel there is a set definition for traits...like "outgoing"? Waffling on definitions as feminine?
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Being that they were looking for extreme, binary examples, they should have used a smaller percentage of the terms, not a greater one.
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As for a brief definition of essentialism, I do want to stick to the definition used by Smiler and Gelman: "categories are stable, fixed at birth, and based on biological factors.
I guess to sum up, Psychological Essentialism (in this context) is the idea that your personality remains largely unchanged through your whole life, and is determined by your genes. Using the labels above, that's like saying that women who produce more testosterone are going to be more career-oriented. Or, like a recent Stuff article said: "According to British psychologist Professor John Manning, the length of your ring finger is a surefire ( ... )
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intelligent, outgoing, selfless being the ones that stick out for me as less changing...but even those can change, I think. Not just from stage to stage in life, but even from day-to-day or topic-to-topic.
I used to be a pretty big believer in the gay-as-genetic idea...but as I get older and less fearful of my own feelings...I think that most things are fluid and a combination of biology and experience...destiny and choice. It bothers me more and more if something is only considered okay if we have no choice in the matter.
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I think the main prediction of this study (that masculine men are more likely to hold essentialist beliefs) would be really hard to test on Dblog, since I would be VERY surprised to find either of the following well represented in the readership:
1. Masculine men
2. people with essentialist beliefs.
I think that was largely what this post was trying to say, but based on the amount of explaining I had to do (see comments) I think I said it poorly.
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you: "So you're saying having a uterus makes you selfless?"
me: "So you're saying having a uterus makes you a woman?"
;)
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(Also, as a subsidiary problem, if you say to most undergrads "so you're saying having a uterus makes you a woman?" they look blankly at you and say "um, yes." I seriously have no clue how to even start there on a systematic level, although I always try to explain it when it comes up in practice.)
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"People of European or Asian descent are more likely to get osteoporosis."
"So you're saying that having light skin makes you more likely to get osteoporosis?"
Of course skin color does not affect bones, but there is a correlation between the two because both are affected by race (I do understand that race categories are arbitrary).
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Am I a girlie-man?!?!?!?!?!? (trick question)
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