differenceblog, posts by tag: power dynamics - LiveJournal

Gender roles in heterosexual dating have been extensively studied. For example, Karl Grammer (1990) suggests that males use body language to signal dominance, whereas women's body language indicates both submission and "bodily self-presentation." Grammer (2000) points out ten years later that women seem to be in control of opposite-sex interactions, despite this role-play of submission.

Studies of gender roles in same-sex dating are rarer. Klinkenberg and Rose (1994) studied "dating scripts" for lesbians vs. gays, and found that "talk/laugh/joke" was an item mentioned by almost all participants, with no gender differences. However, the men's scripts mentioned only "self-initiated actions", whereas the several of the women's scripts mentioned "partner-initiated actions (e.g. 'partner picked me up')." Sergios and Cody (1985) found that "social assertiveness" had no effect on how likely a gay man was to request a subsequent date; only "physical attractiveness" influenced how much the subject "liked" their partner in this experiment.

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It is tempting to use gay and lesbian experiences to confirm stereotypes about gendered behavior in dating. This weekend a friend told me about the concept of "lesbian sheep": "if you are a female sheep, what you do to solicit sex is stand still". This has led to "lesbian sheep" being a term to refer to any potentially sexual relationship where both parties wait for the other to act. This term is overwhelmingly used for female-female relationships, but not exclusively so. In my personal (and therefore meaningless) experience, I'd like to say that not all men know how to make the first move either (and I don't just mean me).

The Oxford English Dictionary describes a smile as "a slight and more or less involuntary movement of the countenance expressive of pleasure, amusement, affection, etc., or of amused contempt, disdain, incredulity, or similar emotion." An expression that can represent affection or contempt seems too confusing to have any utility, but many argue that a happy face is universally recognized. James Russell (1994) discusses flaws in this research, but concedes there is probably some association between facial expression and emotion labels.

Men and women seem to differ in their use of smiles. Hall and Friedman (1999) tested the hypothesis that status affects nonverbal communication more than gender, leading to more accommodating behaviours from (lower-status) women (after Nancy Henley, 1977 & 1985). They did not find any support for this hypothesis. In fact, Hall and Friedman found "gender differences became more pronounced when status differences were controlled." Women smiled significantly more than men in interactions with coworkers of both higher and lower status. This is consistent with LaFrance et al's (2003) meta-analysis of 162 reports, which found greater smiling rates in women and girls than men and boys. However, LaFrance et al's analysis is that these gender differences become more pronounced in environments where gender roles are more strictly enforced.

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One of the first pieces of advice I got when I began to transition was to try to stop smiling so much: "men don't smile." However, I think the various interpretations of smile haven't been thoroughly examined. A U.S. News and World Report article on Nancy Pelosi (Borger 11/26/06) seems to describe what I mean: "women recognize that kind of smile: pasted, forced, painful." Women smile not only to represent happiness or contempt, but also to cover anguish. The only similar example I can think of for a man is Tom Delay's mugshot. I know that I begin to grin when I have bad news to deliver, which has been a socially terrible habit for me, and I've been fighting it for years. I'm not happy, but I can't stop smiling.

Gualdagno and Cialdini (2007) examined persuasive techniques on counter-attitudinal topics. While they found that both men and women were more easily swayed by people they believed to be like themselves, men were more likely to be persuaded via e-mail, and women responded better to face-to-face interaction. This effect was especially pronounced when the persuader was considered "unlike" the subject.

Stern and Mullinix (2004) examined the persuasiveness of human vs. computer-generated speech. While they found that women were more persuaded than men in general, and that human speech was more persuasive than computer-generated speech in general, there was no gender-by-modality effect. Audio vs. video presentation seemed to have no effect.

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Who among us hasn't gotten a computer to swear? It seems to be a truism of human nature that if you sit someone down in front of a speech-generating-computer, the first thing they'll do is try to get it to curse, sometimes at length (stupid Speak & Spell, and its curse filters). The swearing computer never fails to amuse, perhaps because the computer has no meaning, no emotional tone behind its words. The removal of emotional tone may explain part of why men are more easily convinced by email, and why women are not. Gualdagno and Cialdini used same-sex confederates in their experiments on persuasion; I would be interested to see whether there was an opposite-sex effect.

In fairness, I should admit that I am fairly easy to persuade, but I could probably be talked out of that.

Studies consistently find that women see more sexual harassment in the workplace than do men (see review by Blumenthal, 1998). Some suggest that this may be due to differences in how sexual harassment is defined by these two groups. However, factors other than observer gender seem to play a role in whether a specific interaction is deemed to be harassment have been studied.

Katz et al (1996) found that the power dynamic in a relationship was a major factor in whether an interaction was deemed harassment. Powell (1986) found that men and women tend to define sexual harassment differently, but that personality masculinity plays a greater role than sex. Marks and Nelson (1993) found that the gender of the harasser played a large role for both male and female viewers. Reese and Lindenberg (2005) found that age also played a large role in how sexual harassment was defined. Ellis et al (1991) found a correlation between personal attractiveness and a discrepancy between actual and perceived sexual harassment.

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I am notoriously blind to harassment of most kinds. I very rarely see any enmity directed towards me as being due to what I may represent; I tend to assume (even if I'm being called by a slur) that the person is just looking for ways to hurt me personally, and not really directing their anger towards everyone of my gender/sexuality/race/etc. However, I'm also very aware of the ways in which I end up being a poster boy. For a lot of people, I am the first [choose label] they've had a conversation with, and I find myself speaking in generalities, trying to represent the diverse experiences of [label] instead of making an honest representation of my own experiences.