The toxic male gaze cannot be avoided – no matter how much skin women show.
A new study was published in psychoneuroendocrinology Turns out that women who wear conservative clothes are no more safe from some men than men who wear sexy clothes, especially if he has high testosterone.
It is a well-known cultural belief that scantily clad women are less intelligent and more promiscuous than modestly dressed women – thus making them common targets of harassment, according to the study’s authors, who wondered why. Does a man’s testosterone levels have anything to do with this?
“Given these harmful consequences, it is important to understand the mechanisms that lead to the dehumanization of women. “We were interested in contributing to this effort by examining whether physiological factors, such as increased testosterone levels, play a role in the dehumanization of sexualized and non-sexualized women by men,” study author Francesca Luberti of Nipissing University said in a statement. Said. PsyPost,
Previous research has shown that testosterone levels in men are linked to social behavior – for better or worse – including sexual aggression and impulsivity, both of which result from dehumanization of one another. To dehumanize someone, as the study’s authors describe, is to ignore a person’s ability to have human qualities, such as the ability to feel sad, afraid, or behave morally.
Researchers enlisted 20 men aged 18 to 38 with healthy testosterone levels to participate in two experiments, during which the volunteers were given supplemental doses of the hormone or a placebo. Then, they watched a video in which a woman was wearing conservative or provocative clothing but behaving the same way. Ultimately, the men completed a series of actions to demonstrate their impulse towards the dehumanization of women.
The test results showed that men who took extra testosterone were more likely to dehumanize even conservatively dressed women than men who did not take the hormone.
However, testosterone levels had no significant effect on men’s view of a woman in revealing clothing and were likely to dehumanize her regardless of the hormones, which goes against previous notions of society’s negative view of female sexuality. Confirms.
“We were certainly surprised to find that testosterone did not further increase emotion-based dehumanization toward a sexualized woman, as we had predicted, but instead increased emotion-based dehumanization toward a non-sexualized woman,” Luberti said. Promoted.”
“Based on these results, the message is that sexualization leads to emotion-based dehumanization toward a targeted female, but elevated testosterone levels can trigger this type of dehumanization even in the absence of sexualization cues,” she said. Concluded.
Testosterone is just one factor in how men treat women, the researchers reiterated in their statement, calling for more research into the intersection of human physiology and social conditioning.
