Consistently Observed Phenomena Reflect Reality
XX & Why Males’ Invisible Mask of Toughness is Getting in the way of Putting On a Real Mask
Table of Contents (click to Fast Travel)
· XX & Why
· Jane Hinton
· Poetical Science — Ada Lovelace
· Sidenotes (private; just for me; some missing citations; please ignore)
∘ Bisexual Visual Identity
∘ Prejudice Towards Dyads (Not Individuals)
Of Masks & Men
Hersilia in this painting portrays the female power to mediate, to broker reconciliation, to halt men from doing something stupid.
Isabella, in this image from New Moon, portrays the female power to mediate, to broker reconciliation, to halt male werewolves & vampires from doing something stupid.
Shiva, in this screenshot with #GamerGirl (me), portrays the female power to mediate, to broker reconciliation, to halt male avatars from doing something stupid.
Lauren Leander, in this #ABCNews photo, portrays the female power to mediate, to broker reconciliation, to halt male anti-maskers from exacerbating a historic global pandemic.
Maskual Harassment
“Said he would have tipped me better if I didn’t have a mask on”
Maskual Harassment, a term coined by One Fair Wage, defines the phenomenon of women service workers being asked to take off their masks before being tipped.
Research in the field of evolutionary psychology & gender socialization have found contextually similar results. For instance, Miller et al. (2007) found that lap dancers who weren’t on birth control received an estrous bonus during ovulation ($335 U.S. dollars per 5 hour shift during the high fertility phase) compared to the tip$ men gave them the rest of the month ($260 per shift during the luteal phase, and $185 per shift during menstruation), whereas lap dancers on hormonal contraception earned virtually the same in tip$ throughout the month.
Why does birth control affect the tip$ men give lap dancers?
Straight/bisexual men rate women as more attractive during their high fertility/ ovulatory phase compared to the rest of the month (Havlíček et al., 2006; Kuukasiarvi et al., 2004; Singh & Bronstad, 2001; Facial Attractiveness — Roberts et al., 2004; lower waist-to-hip ratio — Kirchengast & Gartner, 2002), . Birth control significantly suppresses the evolutionary changes that take place during ovulation that are associated with increasing bisexual/heterosexual men’s interest in ovulating women. Basically, our default settings continue to ensure that we won’t be going extinct anytime soon.
(Note: many countries are below their replacement rate)
In short, contraception reduces the synchronization of these default settings & thus reduces the earnings that women on birth control receive from male patrons.
Hypotheses: (A) Gay male patrons wouldn’t give non-contraceptive lap dancers larger tips during ovulation compared to the rest of the month.
(B) Gay male patrons would show no contraception-related difference in the $$$ amount of tips they would give lap dancers.
(C) Lesbians & bisexual women would show results similar to straight/bisexual men.
Miller, G., Tybur, J. M., & Jordan, B. D. (2007). Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus?☆. Evolution and human behavior, 28(6), 375–381.
83% Report that tips have decreased since COVID-19.
66% Report that tips have decreased since COVID-19 by at least 50% or more.
65% On a weekly basis has received a decreased tip from a customer in response to enforcing COVID-19 safety protocols.
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88% Knows someone who has contracted COVID-19.
42% Of those who know someone infected, percent who knows someone who has died from COVID-19 or COVID-19 Complications.
44% Employees who report that one or more employees at their restaurant has contracted COVID-19.
Virtual #GenderWageGap
The #utilitarian benefits of performing gender, sexuality, race, religion, etc are virtually tangible when it comes to exchanges. That includes the strategically masking aspects of one’s corporeal self that may lead to a suboptimal outcome (Hartmann et al., 2010).*
Indeed, Lehdonvirta et al. (2014) found that the gender wealth gap in #MMORPG videogame “virtual economies is orders of magnitude greater than in any [real life] national economy” (p. 251).
For some incomprehensible reason, the sidequests & daily jobs that we enjoy doing as women avatars (e.g., reuniting separated npcs, hide and seek with kiddos, removing a curse that’s ruining someone’s flowers, etc) pay us less money than the sidequests/jobs that men avatars enjoy doing (mostly just the same old combat stuff).
And why are female avatars the ones mostly doing the gardening at the guildhouse? It’d be nice if games on Playstation 5 were coded to give us some financial reward for that currently uncompensated labor.
XX & Why
Here are the previously mentioned studies documenting an XX Advantage against COVID (months are reported instead of year, because obviously): Antonio Guimarães et al., September;
Berlin et al., May;
Chakravarty et al., July;
Chengzhen Dai et al., October;
Conti et al., April;
Di Stadio et al., April;
Ding et al., July;
Jeremy Gold et al., April;
Jin et al., April;
Kabarriti et al., September;
Nascimento et al., March;
Price-Haywood et al., June;
Richardson et al., April;
Sara Cromer et al., September;
Scully et al., June;
Silvia Munoz-Price et al., September;
Takahashi et al., June;
Tian Gu et al., October;
Wang et al., 2020;
Wenham et al., March;
Yehia et al., August;
Zhao et al., 2020;
Zijian et al., 2020.
Jane Hinton
Jane Hinton was the scientist who made it possible for us to culture bacteria and test for antibiotic resistance. She was also one of the first African American women to gain the degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine
Jane Hinton co-developed the Mueller-Hinton Agar alongside John Howard Mueller, making it possible for us to culture bacteria and test for antibiotic resistance. Find out more about her story: https://lnkd.in/deyHRVD
Poetical Science — Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace “anticipated the implications of modern computing one hundred years before they were realised.”
“[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine…Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.
…once you had a machine for manipulating numbers, if those numbers represented other things, letters, musical notes, then the machine could manipulate symbols of which number was one instance…
…that is the fundamental transition from calculation to computation… if we are looking and sifting history for that transition, then that transition was made explicitly by Ada in that 1843 paper.”” (source X is listed below).
Further context from Meghan Barrett:
“ Perhaps it was Lovelace’s willingness to blend science, imagination, and poetry that led to her amazing foresight about the capabilities of the first ‘calculating engine’ — she predicted it could eventually be used to create music, graphics and more. Her ability to see the possibility of art through the math and science was unheard of at a time when people didn’t even see the most basic scientific uses of the calculating engine (a machine that would set the stage for the modern computer).
…poetry and science writing generally tend to employ different methods to get at these same core questions, perhaps with detrimental results by narrowing our focus and understanding to only one type of understanding. Lovelace bridged the objectivism-subjectivism gap that plagues science and poetry, respectively, in their communication attempts. Lovelace’s dedication to bringing science and poetry together didn’t hurt her ability to comprehend or communicate; rather it gave her increased understanding of the world by giving her a more complete picture of the world.”
Sidenotes (private; just for me; some missing citations; please ignore)
Prejudice Towards Dyads (Not Individuals)
Interracial couples with a Black spouse encounter more discrimination (Root, 2001). Need national data of LG couple & Interracial couple comparisons (including interminority).
- Whites married to Hispanic or Asian minorities experience less racism than Whites married to Blacks (Yancey & Yancey, 2007).
- Couples with Black partners tended to have the highest ratings of perceived discrimination (Midy, 2018)
Couples that included an African American were perceived as less compatible than were those that included an Asian American. Americans who are White it more difficult to imagine themselves married to an American who is Black than to an American who is Asian. “Asian & Black men who married interracially were perceived as “selling out” —
abandoning their race rather than embracing race as a valued characteristic in themselves and others. Specifically, these men were perceived as having a weaker racial identity, as being less comfortable with same-race others, and as being less competent professionally.”
Americans who are Asian & gay are perceived as more similar to Americans who are White & ‘any orientation’ (Semrow et al., 2020).
The Sex of Punctuation
Exclamation points is just a part of my overall performance as GamerGirl, but one with decades of research indicating that women use more exclamation points & exclamatory prose than males:
- Carol Scates (1981): women used more exclamation points
- Rubin & Greene (1992): women used more exclamation AND CAPITALIZATION
- Herring (1994): Women used more supportive discourse online; including more thanks/gratitude with exclamatory punctuation
- Winn & Rubin (2001): women used more nonessentials and excitability markers than men’’
- Colley & Todd (2002): women use “multiple exclamation points” more than men !!!!
- Waseleski (2006): women used more exclamation points; used for different reasons, not solely excitability
- Aybar (2019)
On Black Females: Lee, 2014
- “…an interviewee delivered her experience of representing herself with a Black-looking avatar as follows:
… Surprisingly, a girl that I vaguely knew was there and immediately approached me… ‘’What happened?’’
She went on, ‘’You look like a freak!’’I was cautious and went on to ask why. She explained that being black on #Whyville looks just wrong. I was appalled! I couldn’t believe that this happened on my first day, my first hour of being a black Whyvillian (Kafai et al., 2010, p. 51)”
Identical Twins CAN Differ
If we accept one of the basic principles of the scientific method — that consistently observed phenomena reflect reality — then: Identical twins CAN differ sometimes.
For instance, monozygotic twins where one is lesbian & the other straight show different digit ratios. Specifically, the lesbian twins have digit ratios that are more masculine than their straight sisters.
However, this pattern has only been found in:
- Japan (Hiraishi et al., 2012)
- Europe (Watts et al., 2018)
- United States (Hall and Love, 2003)
- Butch lesbians have more masculine ratios than femme lesbians (Brown et al., 2002).
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Overall point
- if you gathered 100 women with a low 2D:4D digit ratio (ring finger longer than index finger) & 100 women with a high ratio (fingers are roughly equal), there would be more lesbians in the first group than in the second group.
Given the relevance of testosterone (specifically prenatal androgen exposure) in regards to this ratio, it should be easy to conclude that physiological differences in hormones are relevant biomarkers in female sexual orientation.
Even among straight women, those with a lower 2D:4D ratio are more likely to be tomboys (Atkinson et al., 2017).
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Several lines of research have found the lower 2D:4D ratio to be associated with female athletes at various levels:
- youth level (Handball) (that’s a game; not a sport) (Baker et al., 2013)
- high school varsity level (Giffin et al., 2012)
- NCAA level (college tennis) (Hsu et al., 2015)
- national level (Pokrywka et al., 2005)
- Olympic level (Eklund et al., 2020)
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Research has also investigated outcomes associated with testosterone levels among female athletes:
- faster skiing times (Manning et al., 2002),
- better endurance running performance (Manning et al., 2007)
- better national fencing rank (Voracek et al., 2010).
- faster rowing times (Hull et al., 2015),
- stronger on bench press (Eklund et al., 2020)
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WNBA & Sexuality
And a recent study (in revision) looked at athletes’ sexual orientation:
- non-heterosexual women’s superiority in the WNBA (Willis et al., revise-and-resubmit)
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#GamerGuy: What if it’s just because they’re biting their nails or something? I think you’re missing that confound.
#GamerGirl: …🤦♀️ We rarely have perfect measures of anything. Is that a reason not to ever measure something? To suggest that hormone differences have nothing to do with female sexuality at this point would be like suggesting that 20 year olds (on average) are shorter than 2 year old toddlers (on average). Even clocks don’t have perfect construct validity.
Distressed Damsels
We’re socialized to assume that males are supposed to play hero. It’s in cartoons, sitcoms movies, videogames, & music… in every artistic medium that girls & boys consume throughout their childhood. It continues into adulthood in social media, expectations of attire & appearance labor, emotional labor, cognitive labor, gendered policy differences (see paternity leave debate), gender reveals, professional sports (8 of the 12 WNBA Head coaches are men… I’m sure that reinforces something), the big & tall sections which suspiciously seem to exist only in the men’s section… you get the idea. These socialization scripts are multimodal throughout life, and the more modalities in which something is transmitted the stronger the signal.
Even those of us who prefer deconstructive, egalitarian, & futuristic (hopefully) narratives are still reminded of the tired knight slays the dragon & saves the damsel in distress trope — if for no other reason than to present it for the purposes of dismantling it.
As a result, we become adults who are more likely to expect Mario to rescue Zelda from Bowser than for Zelda to rescue Mario from Bowser… just substitute ‘rescue her from Bowser’ for ‘rescue her from a flat tire on the 405 North’ and you get the idea.
Importantly, both women AND men are receiving these messages. Indeed, it wasn’t just women admonishing Harry Styles for wearing dresses → many men joined in. The ‘Man Box’ of our gender socialization narratives is also why Kevin Love’s ESPN special on Mental Health was praised as incredibly brave. It’s only brave because we’ve socialized males towards emotional agnosticism. Thus, men may come to expect this behavior in themselves as much as women may expect it of them.
Thankfully these norms have tangibly decreased in my millennial (GenY) generation, and all indications are that the iGen (GenZ) will show a similar trend towards more egalitarian norms.
Alas, until the social evolution of men & normative sea change towards mindful masculinity that I & my soul sister Elizabeth Plank dream of takes place, we must consider the epidemiological consequences of our current atavistic gender norms.
“Almost three quarters (71%) of romantic relationships that started online were reported as being closer and stronger compared to relationships that began face-to-face and were likely to still be together two years later, the intimacy levels developed at a faster rate than in a face-to-face setting, and the quality of interactions online was more predictive of liking compared to face-to-face interactions in which liking was determined by more superficial factors (Kelsey C. Chappetta, Joan M. Barth).”
Interparty Marriage → People are increasingly rejecting relationships with spouses and friends who are politically opposed, stating that the “widening divide… is not driven by increasing warmth toward own party, but rather due to rising animosity toward opponents, a phenomenon known as negative partisanship“ (Wilson et al., 2020).