Written evidence from Steven Paul Moxon [MIS0057]
Science review shows not misogyny but philogyny (and misandry) is the reality
My submission addresses your first (and last) question. Misogyny has zero prevalence. It's the unfairness of philogyny and misandry that needs strategies to address.
See 'job title' for an 'about me'.
As previously outlined (Moxon, 2018), no published science paper shows the existence of misogyny; that is, generic profound hostility or negative attitude towards females. The only review of gender attitudes is by Dunham, Baron & Banaji (2016), in a culmination of their earlier collaborations, and includes fresh studies. Looking at both explicit and implicit measures, and across all age groups, they find for boys/men “no negative association with female whatsoever” (p5). With age, boys make a “dramatic” change from mild same-sex positivity to high opposite-sex positivity on implicit measures, and towards neutrality on explicit measures. The contrast with girls/women is striking. All age groups are “robustly pro-female” -- strongly positive towards females but strongly negative towards males – and the more so with age.
With no correlation between implicit and explicit measures, these apparently tap into independent psychological constructs, as would be expected from the contrasting cognitive facilities required. Whether in respect of automatic/default or considered responses, the findings here indicate misogyny is a fiction, with misandry real.
Earlier congruent work and its later replication
Earlier research shows that, on explicit measures, by adulthood males as well as females have more positive attitudes towards females than towards males (Eagly & Mladinic, 1989; Eagly, Mladinic & Otto, 1991). Both sexes are more positive towards women than men; in both attitude and emotional content. No covert negative sentiments towards women are apparent. Analysis to uncover hidden ambivalence finds neither cognitive or affective (emotional) reactions.
Eagly et al's findings were replicated by Haddock & Zanna (1994), and Aidman & Carroll (2003) who uncovered a strong female automatic preference for female attributes, and no significant gender bias in males. Similarly, Carpenter (2001), and also Skowronski & Lawrence (2001), who, on implicit measures, found non-significantly pro-female or at worst neutral attitude. No pro-male attitude was uncovered without switching to a different implicit measure, and then only a slightly pro-male attitude was evoked: making both the male and female targets soldiers created a demand characteristic confounding results; yet still no negative attitude to females.
Not male but female homophily
Work on automatic in-group preference (or homophily, the implicit preference for others of the same category to be considered fellow group members) reveals this is strong for women, whereas men have no preference at all for their own over the opposite sex (Nosek & Banaji, 2002; Richeson & Ambady, 2001). This is quantified by Rudman & Goodwin (2004) as a fivefold sex differential in same-sex preference; by a purer measure of implicit attitude eliminating confounding with gender stereotypes. A similar sex differential emerges with explicit measures. Rudmin & Goodwin conclude of women that “they alone possess a cognitive mechanism that promotes own group preference” (p506). Men have no cognitive mechanism to preferentially consider other males as co-members of their group; neither to exclude or to diminish females in considering them as fellow group members. Women show automatic same-sex bias even in respect of close friends (Ban-Anan et al, 2025).
A man – unlike a woman – sees men and women alike as fellow members of any symbolic grouping to which he himself belongs (Maddux & Brewer, 2005). Similar was found by David-Barrett at al (2015). Maddux & Brewer discover women have their own idiosyncratic individual grouping pattern cutting across symbolic organisational boundaries. This is well-known from studies of social structure/dynamics: personal network built on an exclusionary principle; a few close bonds to the exclusion of everyone else. A core two-/threesome from which a chain(s) of association extends to individuals outside the symbolic groupings with which males readily identify. This profound sex dichotomy also has been found by Szell & Thurner (2013) and Lindenlaub & Prummer (2013). That key is an exclusionary attitude by females is confirmed by Benenson et al (2013) and Goodwin (2002).
Even manufacturing special conditions to try to prompt misogyny fails to do so. Having replicated Rudman & Goodwin’s findings (2009), Ishii & Numazakihad (2015) investigated males presumed under threat (to their sense of self worth) when gender was made salient, but rather than negative association with women there was only absence of positive association. Kasumovic & Kuznekoff (2015) refined this to just lower status males, but their findings Brown & Cotton (2015) point out are invalid through inappropriate statistical analysis.
Supposed hostile and benevolent sexism
Having failed to find misogyny, researchers have tried to conflate it with sexism. But sexism can be inadvertent, non-malicious; even benign. Negative – dubbed hostile (Glicke & Fiske, 1996) – sexism is bedevilled by deeply flawed operational definitions. The most recent sexism inventory, by Tougas et al (2015), is criticised by Tostain (2016) as hopelessly flawed in items being actually an expression of support for women, acknowledgement of the partnership between the sexes, gratitude towards or aggrandisement of women, or acknowledging sex differences; sometimes being overtly pro-female, anti-male real sexism.
The standard measure of sexism, an explicit one, is that by Glick & Fiste (1996). Their items are self-evidently anything but a list of attitudes clearly denoting hostility, even inadvertently; being open to various interpretation. Most, if not all, are not inaccurate generalisations from common personal experience; views that a majority of both sexes would share. Some are just legitimate criticism of ideological feminism, supportive of women.
The notion of ‘benevolent sexism’ was hypothesised by Glick & Fiske (1996, 1997), and the same criticism as of their hostile sexism items applies here but magnified. Benevolent sexism is envisaged by Glick & Fiske (1997) as being alongside hostile sexism within a general category, ambivalent sexism.
Stereotype threat is an empty concept
Ambivalent sexism supposedly harms women by evoking sex stereotypes, interpreted by women as what is/not expected of them, with ensuing self-inhibition to avoid anticipated punishment of performing non-traditional roles. Akin to the concept of internalised misogyny (a non-parsimonious, implausible, non-evidenced construct), this supposed harm is encapsulated in the term stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995). But there is no negative impact of presenting a stereotype; instead a positive outcome is produced (Kray, Thompson & Galinsky, 2001). Likewise entirely contrary to prediction are findings by Fryer, Levitt & List (2008) and Geraldes, Riedl & Strobel (2011). A review by Stoet & Geary (2012) found no evidence whatsoever for the phenomenon; instead major methodological flaws, especially absence of a control group, and inappropriate data adjustments. Jussim et al (2016) concluded that even if stereotype threat were a factor, it’s tiny; irrelevant. In the wake of Stoet & Geary, further replication attempts all failed: Wei (2012), Ganley et al (2013), Stafford (2016) and Finnigan & Corker (2016). Many other failures remain unpublished through publication bias (Flore & Witcherts, 2015) – non-replication is uninteresting to journals.
A more recent (2016) review by Tostain is comprehensively damning: the impact of presenting stereotypes is one among multiple factors, and anyway in itself very small:
“stereotypes do not necessarily have the power that is often attributed to them. Firstly, the perception and the judgements of individuals are not necessarily altered by gender stereotypes. And in addition, measures of gender stereotyping are not necessarily neutral, and can direct one towards a vision that artificially accentuates the presence and weight of stereotypes. Finally, the predictive value (in terms of links with discriminatory behaviours) of tests for the evaluation of stereotypes, particularly gender stereotypes, remains subject to debate”.
The fundamental problem Tostain sees as “misunderstanding the fact that individuals can make reference to stereotypes according to different levels of judgement and different perspectives”, when everything is geared “implicitly to adopt a univocal causal schema … born of a vision of masculine domination”; the upshot being that “individuals are constantly faced with heterogeneous dynamics, some of which can be opposed to these stereotypes”. A negative impact of stereotype threat is very doubtful, and stereotypes can have positive impact in the very same terms.
The reviews and failed replications leave the notion of stereotype threat an imagined, not real phenomenon. As with misogyny, what is believed requires the invention of a phenomenon (through tendentious interpretation of what is observed in staged scenarios far from real life), retrospectively justifying the belief.
Reasoning is circular
Fundamental problems are evident in definitions. Whereas the 'hostile' form is defined by Glick & Fiske (1997) as “dominative paternalism, derogatory beliefs, and heterosexual hostility”; the ’benevolent’ variant is “protective paternalism, idealization of women, and desire for intimate relations” -- inter-sexual interaction deemed sexist: an entirely circular reasoning. Sexism in this ambivalent wider conceptualisation is deemed to produce traditional gender roles; but any/everything about these is deemed sexism. The claim in effect is that they're one and the same: that sexism is its own aetiology -- a non-explanation that cannot be scientific hypothesis. The perfect circularity leaves no hypothesis to test.
It's an exercise in unfalsifiability: science's cardinal sin. Given it cannot, even in principle, be disproven, it's by definition non-scientific. The notion of sexism has been elided with that of misogyny to mean the same: ubiquitous male hostility to females. Whereas the supposed phenomenon of misogyny is shown to be entirely lacking in evidence, sexism has been developed as a construct to escape this through becoming stretched to encompass any data, instead of data being used to test an hypothesis. Sexism is thereby rendered an ideological, quasi-religious belief.
The real sexism is unseen: misandry
Misogyny is a figment of ideological imagination, the charge of it being itself the very antipathy towards the other sex it purports to call out. Accusation of misogyny is itself a manifestation of hostile sexism, in the form of misandry: the real phenomenon requiring study – likely deep-rooted, given the discoveries in the failed quest to establish the existence of misogyny.
Research into sexist bias shows this actual sexism is not seen for what it is: not just women’s anti-male sexism (Rudman & Fetteroff, 2014; Goh, Rad & Hall, 2017), but also their anti-female sexism (Baron, Burgess & Kao, 1991); this being the perception of both males and other females. Hence the surprise greeting the Demos findings (2016) that the bulk of 'misogynistic' abuse on Twitter actually is by women. Goh, Rad & Hall replicated what Rudman and Fetterolf had found: women being biased to (mis-)perceive hostile sexism from men when it isn’t there; conversely not seeing men’s benevolent sexism when it is. By contrast, men under-estimate women’s hostile sexism and over-estimate women’s benevolent sexism.
Notwithstanding these biases, research reveals not only female hostile sexism, but that it's at the same level as that attributed to men (Cárdenas et al, 2010; León-Ramírez & Ferrando Piera, 2013); the only sex difference being in respect of benevolent sexism, which is more evident in men, according to León-Ramírez & Ferrando. That is, women, unlike men, tended to exhibit their sexism in a hostile rather than a benevolent manner.
Misandry is acknowledged in a large multi-national study by a team led by the principal contemporary researcher of sexism, Peter Glick (Glick et al, 2004): that there are “hostile as well as benevolent attitudes toward men“.
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