simon comments on 2014 Survey Results - Less Wrong

87 Post author: Yvain 05 January 2015 07:36PM

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Comment author: simon 04 January 2015 12:15:32PM 7 points [-]

There isn't necessarily any problem with a small positive correlation between masculinity and femininity. The abstract of what I think is the original paper (I couldn't find an ungated version) says that "The dimensions of masculinity and femininity are empirically and logically independent."

Comment author: gwern 04 January 2015 06:23:55PM 7 points [-]
Comment author: Baisius 08 January 2015 01:54:08AM 1 point [-]

It's not clear that this maps to colloquial use of the terms "feminine" and "masculine" then. I think most would consider them opposite ends of the same spectrum.

Comment author: Nornagest 08 January 2015 02:04:14AM *  3 points [-]

There are aspects of the Western gender roles that are opposed to each other at least to some extent: emotionality vs. stoicism, active vs. passive romantic performance. But there are also aspects that aren't. Blue is not anti-pink. Skill at sewing doesn't forbid skill at fixing cars. These might resolve in people's perceptions to positions on some kind of spectrum of male vs. female presentation, but they won't show up that way on surveys measuring conformity with stereotype.

Indeed, that suggests a possible mechanism for these results. Assume for a moment that people prefer to occupy some particular point on the perception spectrum. But people often like stuff for reasons other than gender coding, so it'll sometimes happen that people will be into stuff with gender coding inconsistent with how they'd prefer to be seen. That creates pressure to take up other stuff with countervailing coding. If people respond to that pressure, the net result is a weak positive correlation between stuff with masculine and feminine coding.