Summary: Part two of a two part post. The consequences of confusing gender assumptions for established fact can result in drastic neglect that… in turn reinforce those gender assumptions.

Continuing in the theme of bad gender assumptions affecting research...

In comments about yesterday’s post about women as pumas, cougars, and cheetahs (oh my), Zeborah raised the concern that the description of “cheetah” behavior involves a woman the authors call “Dana” having sex with men too drunk to reject their advances is pretty much the description of a broad class of date rape. (See, for instance, how the story reads after translation through Regender.com.)

To which Tlt added a highly relevant question

Assuming that “Dana” isn’t a made-up composite of behaviors that Morgan disapproves of, she is, indeed a rapist. Only…wait….men are supposed to be happy to have had sex they didn’t/couldn’t consent to because sex is so exquisitely rare and under normal circumstances must be so dearly bought that they should just be glad to get ANY....right?

What a beautiful summary of the problem of confusing what we assume with dead certainty (about men in this case) based on stereotype with what we… don’t know very well at all based on hard data.

Hypothesis: Echidne mentions a study saying 25% of all married men report cheating while 15% of all married women do. There’s actually quite a bit of variation in percentages depending on studies but in almost all the variation in men who cheat vs. women who cheat is relatively close. I propose that most of the reported differences are the results of two errors, one procedural and one perceptual.

Procedurally I suspect it’s difficult to construct survey questions that accurately overcome pressure on men to overreport, and corresponding pressure on women to underreport. Secondly, though, based on Tlt’s point, some of the difference in actual affairs can be accounted for by men acting based on their own perceptions that they’re supposed to_ act, and women not acting when based on perceptions they’re not supposed to act.

With the result that the differences are even smaller than reported, and would be even smaller if people somehow (magically?) responded less to perceived social pressure. Discuss Research.

(Note: Sometimes I get gigged for appearing to claim people’s choices are somehow independent from social influence. I’m perfectly aware how improbably that would be. I am however, also aware that if the social assumptions and resulting narratives were altered then the pressure on people to act on them would sort of by-definition be relieved. Submitting to social pressure might be inevitable. Altering sources of social pressure, on the other hand, is entirely possible.)