Re: Gender importance (was Future Relationships)

Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Fri, 23 Apr 1999 16:22:26 -0700 (PDT)

> On the other hand, when it struck me - about an hour later - that
> categories like "self-reliant" were being categorized as "male" while
> "placatory" was supposed to be "female", I screamed and threw my monitor
> across the room, having realized the breath-taking magnitude of the
> casual stereotyping. Thus I have no intention whatsoever of saying what
> my scores were.

Of course it's stereotyping. Of course it's prejudiced. That's the point of it: to measure how a person evaluates emself with respect to cultural roles/expectations which are prejudice by definition. This isn't about measuring some fundamental attribute of who you are, it's about measuring some attributes of how you relate to the prejudiced culture in which you find yourself.

This test could be used as a tool to fight those stereotypes just as it might be used to reinforce them. Whatever numbers result from passing that particular set of words through your mind do indeed measure something--what it is can be debated. Denying the numbers is not debate, just stubbornness.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC