Chinese college students’ gender self-esteem and trans prejudice

Most studies of trans prejudice, or prejudice against transgender people, have been conducted in Western countries. The current study explored trans prejudice in a sample of 124 heterosexual college students from the People's Republic of China. We also examined the relationship between gender self-esteem—the importance of gender to one's self-identity—and trans prejudice. Results indicated that men reported more trans prejudice than women. Both women and men reported more violence toward, teasing of, and discomfort with trans women compared with trans men. Gender self-esteem was not a significant predictor of trans prejudice for men or women. These results suggest that some of the predictors of trans prejudice in Chinese people may be similar to predictors found in Western samples. However, differences may be due to cultural factors such as membership in a collectivistic versus an individualistic society.     

Liberalism and the Privatised Family: The Legacy of Rousseau

This article argues that the intellectual legacy of Rousseau is at the root of the failure of 20th century egalitarian theorists such as Rawls and Dworkin to engage intellectually with feminist theorists working within the liberal tradition. Through an extended critique of Rousseau’s delineation of the relationship between liberal citizenship and the private family, it argues that the failure of such liberal theorists to take gender hierarchy seriously is a consequence of their attempt to place the private family outside the sphere not only of politics, but also of justice.     

Gender Role Stereotyping of Parents in Children’s Picture Books: The Invisible Father

Previous studies reveal the reinforcement of gender stereotypes by picture books children read during the formative years. In these books, boys tend to be portrayed as active leaders, and girls as passive followers. Women and girls are under-represented. Men often exhibit career skills, and women perform traditional tasks in the home. Even when careers are nontraditional, personality characteristics and other qualities and behaviors are often stereotypical. Previous researchers emphasized the narrowly defined roles of women and children in picture books. In this study, we focused on the representation of mothers and fathers, and examined whether men are stereotyped as relatively absent or inept parents. A content analysis of the gender roles exhibited in 200 prominent childrens picture books demonstrated that fathers are largely under-represented, and, when they do appear, they are withdrawn and ineffectual parents. Further research could establish whether seriously deficient models of fatherhood in childrens literature affect the incidence of present, caring fathers in society.     

The Effects of Commercials on Children’s Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toy Use

Sixty-two first and second grade students (28 boys, 34 girls) were exposed to one of three commercial videotapes in which either all-boys (traditional condition) or all-girls (nontraditional) were playing with a toy. Participants in the control condition were exposed to nontoy commercials. After exposure to one of the conditions participants performed a toy sort where they were asked if six toys, including the two manipulated toys, were for boys, girls, or both boys and girls. Participants in the nontraditional condition were more likely to report that the manipulated toys were for both boys and girls than were participants in the traditional condition, who were more likely to report that the manipulated toys were for boys. This effect was stronger for boys than for girls.     

Towards a new philosophy of education: Extending the conversational metaphor for thinking

Recently, feminists like Jane Roland-Martin, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, and others have advocated a conversational metaphor for thinking and rationality, and our image of the rational person. Elizabeth Young-Bruehl refers to thinking as a constant interconnecting of representations of experiences and an extension of how we hear ourselves and others. There are numerous disadvantages to thinking about thinking as a conversation.We think there are difficulties in accepting the current formulation of the conversational metaphor without question. First, there is danger that we will lose important dialectical connections like that between the self and society. Second, the conversational metaphor alone cannot fully express the way conversations are constructed. We will want to take up the notion of narrative as a metaphor for thinking advocated by Susan Bordo, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jerome Bruner, and others, including Mary Belenky and her colleagues.Eventually, we want to champion narrative and the dramatic narrative of culture as a metaphor for thinking that involves such expressions as sights, insights, silences, as well as sounds, moments of mood and poetic moments. The dramatic narrative provides the structural possibilities needed to criticize certain kinds of conversations, in order to talk about the relations of public and private, self and society and most importantly, about the drama of our lives within and without.The dramatic narrative for thinking helps dispel the dangerous dualisms of mind and body that not even conversation or narration alone can banish, and allows us to frame questions about education that do not require us to separate mind from body. The dramatic narrative metaphor for thinking lets us show who we are, act out what we think, and reconstruct rationality to reflect what many women, and some men, do.     

Aggressive behavioral characteristics,hormones, and sexual orientation in men and women

Aggressive behavioral characteristics were assessed in groups of men and women by a self-report instrument, the Aggression Inventory, in which adult males reported more physical and verbal aggression than did females. Furthermore, males had higher scores on measures of impulsiveness and lack of frustration tolerance than did females, while women were more likely to avoid confrontation. In a second study, groups of male and female homosexuals and heterosexuals completed this Aggression Inventory after having blood samples taken to assay resting levels of testosterone (T) and estradiol (E). Groups of subjects within each gender were closely matched in terms of age, education, and vocational interests. Women were matched for the same time in their menstrual cycle (early follicular phase). Among men, homosexuals were indistinguishable from heterosexuals on all measures of aggression. Lesbians did not differ from heterosexual women on any aggression subscale except physical aggression, in which the homosexual women had lower scores. T and E were positively correlated with several indices of aggressive behavioral characteristics in men but were negatively correlated with those same measures in women.     

外显和内隐攻击性表现方式的性别差异实验研究

本研究同时运用问卷法和内隐联想测验(IAT)来研究我国大学生的攻击性。结果发现:1.整体外显攻击性不存在性别差异,但在身体攻击因素上男性显著高于女性。2.内隐攻击性在表现方式上存在性别差异,男性与身体攻击联系更紧密;女性与言语攻击联系更紧密。3.外显攻击性和内隐攻击性间的关系不能简单地根据相关系数来判断。     

What’s in a (Role) Name? Formal and Conceptual Aspects of Comprehending Personal Nouns

Two eye-tracking studies assessed effects of grammatical and conceptual gender cues in generic role name processing in German. Participants read passages about a social or occupational group introduced by way of a generic role name (e.g., Soldaten/soldiers, Künstler/artists). Later in the passage the gender of this group was specified by the anaphoric expression diese Männer/these men or diese Frauen/these women. Testing masculine generic role names of male, female or neutral conceptual gender (Exp. 1) showed that a gender mismatch between the role name’s conceptual gender and the anaphor significantly slowed reading immediately before and after the anaphoric noun. A mismatch between the antecedent’s grammatical gender and the anaphor slowed down the reading of the anaphoric noun itself. Testing grammatically gender-unmarked role names (Exp. 2) revealed a general male bias in participants’ understanding, irrespective of grammatical or conceptual gender. The experiments extend previous findings on gender effects to non-referential role names and generic contexts. Theoretical aspects of gender and plural reference as well as gender information in mental models are discussed.