A study published this month in the journal Sex Roles reveals that some of the sexism women face — from catcalling and sexual harassment to sexual objectification and violence — makes women generally more fearful and anxious. The researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas and Georgia State University found a substantive “link between physical safety concerns and psychological distress” . . .
When I spoke to Dr. Laurel B Watson, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and one of the researchers in the study, she told me that one of the hurdles in studying the impact that sexism has on women’s mental health is that women have normalized this fear and anxiety so completely. . . .
This fear and anxiety that women experience isn’t simply anecdotal: women are 70% more likely than men to experience depression and we’re twice as likely to have an anxiety disorder, something Watson,who has a degree in counseling psychology, says is “absolutely” related to living with misogyny.
“Over time, existing in a state of hypervigilance has a negative impact, and leads to a higher level of psychological distress,” she explained. . . .
You can read the whole thing, because (a) you have an expensive computer in front of you, (b) you’re sufficiently well-educated to be able to read at college-level and (c) you have nothing better to do with your time than to read a Jessica Valenti column, which tells you that (d) you’re living in a prosperous industrialized society. Congratulations!
Gratitude for one’s good fortune, however, is not what feminism is all about. Feminism is about endless misery and dissatisfaction and — lest we forget — blaming the oppressive patriarchy.
Would it surprise anyone to discover that Professor Watson’s undergraduate degree was in psychology, “with a concentration in women’s studies”? Perhaps you will also be surprised to learn that Professor Watson once worked as a counselor at an Atlanta abortion clinic, the Feminist Women’s Health Center. And I’m sure you will then be shocked to learn that Professor Watson’s publications include “Gay-Straight Alliance Advisors: Negotiating Multiple Ecological Systems When Advocating for LGBTQ” (Journal of LGBT Youth, 2010) and “Experiences of Objectification and Sexual Risk Behaviors Among Sexual Minority Men” (Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 2014)? But here, let’s just look at the “Major Research Interests” listed on Professor Watson’s curriculum vitae:
Research interests include: women’s and gender-related themes, sexual objectification experiences, interpersonal violence and trauma, social justice and advocacy, LGBTQIQ-related themes, body image/disordered eating, race and ethnicity-related themes, feminist identity development, feminist pedagogy and epistemology.
Where does research end and advocacy begin, Professor Watson? And does it not occur to you that your own privileged position within the Feminist-Industrial Complex of academia — where you’re paid to produce research for such publications as the Journal of LGBT Youth — is evidence contradicting your basic premise, i.e., that American society is a wall-to-wall nightmare of sexist, racist, homophobic oppression so intensely traumatic as to induce psychiatric disorders?
Only within the comfort of the Higher Education Bubble, is it possible for Laura B. Watson, Ph.D., to assert that American woman are “existing in a state of hypervigilance” that “leads to a higher level of psychological distress,” and to have this bizarre assertion taken seriously.
You know what might cause “psychological distress,” Professor Watson? Murder. According to the FBI, the city of Detroit had the highest homicide rate (45 per 100,000 residents) in the country in 2013, edging out New Orleans (41 per 100,000 residents) as the most dangerous city in America. Checking the data provided on victims, we find that 78% of murder victims (9,523) were male, compared to 22% (2,707) who were female. Furthermore, 44% of murder victims (5,352) were black males, although black people are only 13% of the U.S. population, so that black males (less than 7% of the population) were overrepresented among murder victims by a factor of more than 6-to-1.
Males are at greatest risk of violent death, especially black males, yet here we have Professor Watson telling us that women are living in a condition “psychological distress”? Here we have Jessica Valenti using Professor Watson’s research to tell us that “everyday expressions of misogyny could be seriously impacting [women’s] mental health”? And here we have Professor Watson herself bolstering her assertions with a convenient anecdote:
For example, she said “I went for a jog recently, and I saw a guy in a van — and if I jogged past him, he could have opened the door and snatched me,” Watson told me. “I had an immediate response to move to the other side of the van or to change my direction, I didn’t think twice about it.”
“It’s normalized, but it has such an effect on your life — women constrain their behaviors every day.”
OMG! Men drive vans! Women are in “a state of hypervigilance”!
While I would not wish to underestimate the risk of psychology professors face of being snatched off the streets of Kansas City — violent crime there is bad enough to make it No. 10 on the list of the FBI’s 2013 most dangerous cities — when one looks at the overall picture, Dr. Watson’s “hypervigilance” would seem to reflect an irrational fear. And the word for irrational fear is phobia. To say that the ways “women constrain their behaviors” to avoid risk is “normalized” is simply to say that most women exercise common sense, e.g., staying as far as possible from dangerous places like Kansas City.
Despite the menace that male van drivers pose to jogging psychology professors, common sense tells us that avoiding danger requires us to make a rational estimate of risks we face. While people are sometimes victimized in ways that they could not reasonably be expected to predict — Mohamed Atta piloting a commercial airliner into the World Trade Center — most of the risks we face can be rationally estimated, if we pay attention to actual facts, rather than letting ourselves be distracted by media hype and academic propaganda.
Is “living with misogyny” making women crazy, as Jessica Valenti would have us believe? Or is it possible that crazy women are afflicted with irrational fears that academics like Professor Watson interpret through the warped lens of feminism that sees “misogyny” everywhere? Having been teased along for more than a thousand words, now you’re ready to read the abstract of Professor Watson’s research:
Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) asserted that sexual objectification experiences are likely related to women’s physical safety anxiety; however, to date, very few studies have examined this relationship. Using a sample of 228 U.S. undergraduate women (n?=?133 Black/African American; n?=?95 White) from a Southeastern university, this study explored the relationships among sexual objectification experiences, physical safety concerns (i.e., perceived risk of crime, fear of crime, and fear of rape), and overall psychological distress. Findings revealed that Black/African American women reported more sexual objectification experiences and fear of crime than White women. Results of a measured variable path analysis suggested that perceived risk of crime fully mediated the relationships between sexual objectification experiences and fear of crime for both groups of women. Moreover, perceived risk of crime fully mediated the relationship between sexual objectification experiences and psychological distress for Black/African American women, but not White women. For White women only, fear of rape partially mediated the relationship between perceived risk of crime and fear of crime, and perceived risk of crime fully mediated the relationship between sexual objectification experiences and fear of rape. Taken together, the results suggest that a sociocultural context that objectifies women and their bodies is related to their sense of safety and security in the world.
While I don’t have a Ph.D. in psychology and hesitate to make any general statements based merely on this brief description without having examined the actual data in Professor Watson’s study, it seems to me she has found that white female college students have a heightened fear of rape compared to black women. Note that her research involves only women’s subjective perception, rather than their actual risk. The question that Professor Watson doesn’t seem concerned to answer is whether these white students — who, in fact, report experiencing less “sexual objectification” than do black women — are irrational in their perceptions and, if so, what are the causes of their disproportionate fear of rape? Once we have compared actual risk to perceived risk, we are left to ask what is the “sociocultural context” that could explain these differences in women’s “sense of safety”?
It might be helpful if, rather than relying on survey questions about “objectification” to explain these differences, we instead had some hard socioeconomic data about the survey respondents (e.g., parents’ marital status, household income, urban, suburban or rural community, etc.) to be able to correlate with the survey response data. It is a truism of social science that you can’t measure what you don’t study, and Professor Watson’s research is focused on “sexual objectification experiences” to the exclusion of every other possible factor. Were it within my power to direct psychological research on such matters, I would suggest this: Solicit detailed socioeconomic background information from the survey participants, aggregate their subjective reports of “objectification,” perceived risk, etc., on a 1-to-10 scale, and compare the top quintile (20%) to the bottom quintile. What factors in the socioeconomic data correlate with either high or low response on the subjective reports? What factors are most strongly correlated with the experience of “objectification” and fear of rape?
Absent that kind of information, we have only Professor Watson’s limited analysis, which doesn’t explain what she hasn’t bothered to study. While I’m not a Ph.D., my hunch is that socioeconomic factors explain far more about these phenomena than Jessica Valenti would have her readers believe. Never trust feminist ideologues with social science research. However, speaking of Kansas City and female fears of crime:
Three Kansas City teenagers have been charged in the murder of a 14-year-old girl at a water park.
They’re accused of brutally beating and then taking turns shooting Alexis Kane, an eighth-grader at Smith-Hale Middle School in the Hickman Mills School District.
Alexis’ body was found outside The Bay Waterpark, 7101 Longview Rd., in south Kansas City on Jan. 11, not far from her school. . . .
Court reports and surveillance video show that Alexis got into a car with two of the suspects at a 7-Eleven on Blue Ridge Boulevard.
Her friends said she had arranged to meet with “Malik” whom she had been communicating with on Facebook.
The victim’s friends told Alexis not to get into the vehicle and began to follow the vehicle with her inside, court records state.
After losing sight of her, Alexis’ friends asked her to turn on her cell phone’s location service in order to be located.
The teen suspects went to a Grandview apartment and then left, heading towards The Bay Waterpark.
Surveillance video from the waterpark showed one of the teens hit Alexis in the face with a handgun. Then, the two others passed the gun to one another to shoot her multiple times.
No report on whether the victim experienced “psychological distress” because of a “state of hypervigilance” that was “related to living with misogyny.” Meanwhile, in Nigeria:
Hundreds of Boko Haram gunmen on Sunday launched a predawn attack on the Nigerian city of Maiduguri and were locked in a fierce battle with government troops on the outskirts of the city, according to the military, residents and citizen vigilantes.
The militants launched a simultaneous attack on the town of Monguno and were apparently successful in taking control of the town and its military barracks, a Nigerian military officer in Maiduguri told CNN.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes and at least 10,000 have been killed over the course of the Islamists’ insurgency, now stretching into its sixth year.
This is worse than Kansas City — even worse than Detroit! — yet Jessica Valenti can’t be bothered to notice such things, because somewhere a college girl is being objectified by a sexist.
Our esteemed host wrote:
Which calls for a song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAAKPJEq1Ew
Whine, whine, whine, nag, nag, nag, nag, nag. That’s all we hear from feminists these days. That’s why nobody is taking their message seriously. Especially men. They have learned to tune them out the same way they’ve learned to tune one their nagging wives.
The problem is simple: the previous generation of feminists won for women the rational goals of feminism: the right to vote, the right to own and inherit property, and the right to compete for any college admissions or employment for which they are qualified. All that remains is the irrational, and unless she trumpets the irrational, Mrs Andrew Golis has nothing to say, and that’s the end of her gig with The Guardian.
Priceless!
What you see here, is the marginalization of academe–specifically in the humanities and social sciences– which is no longer about true scholarship or teaching, but is about tenure. Tenure requires that one publish. The requirement that one publishes necessitates and spawns all manner of so-called academic journals, whose existence is predicated solely upon their ability to provide a venue for specious “research.”
N.B. the outcome of this study was preordained. There was no attempt to control across the population of men and women of all races and in all locations, or even within one specific location, as the “Southeastern University” probably has students from all over.
Further, my guess is those participating in the survey were self-selected. Any person who’s ever taken an undergraduate Psych class got extra credit for being a subject in some graduate student or professor’s experiments.
No, this publication was meant to generate buzz, which in turn could be used to justify a tenured promotion for the authors.
What made Jessica Valenti a nut job…well when it comes to nuts isn’t that always the Patriarchy? Good chance that member of the “Patriarchy” was a Democrat.
Only a Kentucky grad would’ve filed that away for later use, whereas we Mizzou grads try to recall Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius.
Sigh.
; )
If Women are in “a state of hypervigilance” why do they keep getting drunk at college frat parties?
On a parallel with Jessica V’s concerns, I’ve visited several facilities for the care of schizophreniacs, and notice that men considerably outnumber women, perhaps by two to one. Is this a result of matriarchal harassment?
[…] Feminism and First-World Problems: ‘Hypervigilance’ as Irrational Phobia […]
We UK grads don’t need to file stuff away: eidetic memory! Know the song, and look it up on YouTube!
But, of course, we studied Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius at Kentucky as well, though I found St Augustine and Søren Kierkegaard more stimulating. Nevertheless, philosophy wasn’t really my primary interest. Tall, thin redheads who didn’t wear bras were my primary interest!
The thumbs up is for the first sentence, one which manages, in just 18 words, to destroy Mrs Golis’ entire argument.
Why? Because Mrs Golis is one of the current crop of feminists who tell us how colleges need to take special precautions to protect the innocent young coeds from sexual assault, and harping about the victimization of those very-much-equal women who think that they can match a guy massing 50% more than they do drink-for-drink, and are shocked, stunned, and surprised to find out that they have become intoxicated beyond control, consciousness and memory.
Alcohol destroys hypervigilance, but the hypervigilant know that, and would very much moderate the intake of alcohol, if not eschew it altogether. That Mrs Golis worries about the sweet young things incapacitating themselves and being assaulted tells you that she does not believe that women have been made hypervigilant.
Oh, and just in case anyone reading this went to college in Missouri, “eschew” means to deliberately avoid using or abstain from something.
Do you suppose that if the Noble Lie of Plato’s Myth of the Metals was being perpetuated in academia today we would be getting equally preposterous material from people like Valenti?
Just re-work the Noble Lie to incorporate Feminist terms, the similarities are disturbing. Both The Republic and feminism are systems for selling falsehood and sowing discord for the purpose of a social control agenda. Nothing new under the sun I guess
Yep. And I wonder why I still see good-looking women jogging alone through wooded areas while wearing earbuds in college towns.
Never mind that’s been the number one way they end up being raped by a stranger in college towns.
Never mind all the feminist publications have articles telling them not to do that.
Never mind the cops tell them not to do that.
Even I wouldn’t jog with ear buds blocking my hearing. Situational Awareness is basic survival 101.
“Try” being the operative word.
I had two professors in college that I can almost remember their lectures word for word. We had recordings of course.
I think one’s name was Carlin. The other was Rick, Richard, something or other. Oh, and of course our Humanities department, which was multicultural. Mr. Marin and Mr. Chong.
You just don’t forget the classics.
I accept that women are the frequent objects of unwanted attention, from guys leering at them to things much, much worse. They are, to a large extent, taught to be passive in the face of all this (“Stick your finger down your throat…”). Small wonder as they are generally smaller and weaker than we are.
But I don’t see that it follows that a woman should live in fear any more than a person who enjoys swimming in the sea should live in fear of being eaten by a shark. Yes, it CAN happen… but there are ways to minimize the risk. It seems to me that “feminists”, rather than harping on why women should be afraid, would do better teaching them how to cope with it. But suggest that a woman, for example, get a concealed carry permit, and SJW’s go crazy. It’s almost like they WANT women to be helpless.
Oh, wait…
I further suggest that this much-lamented “internalization” is nothing more than sensible women who, like the swimmer who puts enjoyment of a swim over fear of sharks, simply get on with their lives.
Finally, it occurs to me that the “feminists” want it both ways (surprise, surprise): they want to make out that they are as tough and capable and strong as men yet at the same time portray themselves as helpless victims, little furry bunnies alone in a jungle full of hungry tigers. Well, which is it?
Permit me to point out that not ALL women are depressed, anorexic, suffering from anxiety disorders, etc. How about we commission a study of psychologically HEALTHY women, figure out their secret, and use that information to teach all these emotionally distraught basket cases how to deal with their problems?
But no, such an approach to mental health wouldn’t advance the feminist agenda, so we can’t try that.
“Tall, thin redheads …”
Or short thin redheads.
Or medium-sized redheads.
Pretty much any redheads.
Damn, why’d you have to get me thinking about redheads again?
NUTS!
When you speak of the social “sciences” you should always put quotes around “sciences.”
The right to vote was anything but rational. Just look at government spending after they got the vote, along with the multiplication of various social pathologies with which are currently plagued.
Whine, whine, whine.
My wife seems to have none of these womyn’s issues; but there again she has submitted to the hetero-normative patriarchy.
One day far, far away a man put a knife to my throat from behind and snatched my camera from my hands. He probably intended on taking all my equipment so I grabbed his wrist and kicked him off of me. He took off running with my camera. I had to find someone to watch my stuff cuz I can’t run with a camera bag. By the time I caught up with him some guys playing soccer I’d yelled to had knocked him down a block away. The police came and asked me if I wanted to be treated for the cut on my throat but I’d have missed the Champion’s League doubleheader. I went to my apt. and did just that. The next day I took two kitchen knives and went to the beach looking for the guy in case the police had simply let him go. Instead I met some really cool guys who were playing a pick-up soccer game and got really high smoking some weed with them.
This is how men live, so Valenti and all her PTSD sob-sisters who post pics of sandwiches they made can bite me. I never even sent one email back home about the incident. Just another day to a man.
PS: feminists eff off.
The vast majority of government officials doing the spending are, and have always been, men. And the current Occupant is a spendthrift who doesn’t bother to consult anyone; male or female; worthless politician or voter. I have an idea on how to handle that situation, but it would require a few million people with torches, pitchforks. . .and, maybe a few other things, lol.
IIRC, Cheech is actually of Persian heritage…
In news related to crazy feminists, five SJWs were banned from editing any wikipedia articles relating to feminism or to GamerGate, due to them waging an edit war:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/23/wikipedia-bans-editors-from-gender-related-articles-amid-gamergate-controversy
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I was also wondering how many people subscribe to the Journal of LGBT Youth, and what their educational backgound might be? I’m guessing that this publication was created by and for tenure-seeking individuals willing to debase themselves sufficiently by being published in that rag at all. It’s like tabloid journalism, only not as entertaining. It’s the Weekly World News of psychology magazines, I’m guessing.
Dave’s not here, man.
I went to college in Florida, which is probably a lot like going to college in Missouri.
I thought “eschew” meant “mastication”, which is something you do with one hand.
I’m a psychologically healthy woman, and I’ll share the secret right now. Ready? Here it is: “Get over yourself, special snowflake.”
Journal of LGBT Youth… Lemme guess: It’s largely photographs!
Your PS works.
If the same thing had happened to me, I would have started to cry, and called out for a big, strong man who could run fast to go get my camera back. And I’d have gotten takers. When they got back, I would have flashed a flirty smile, thanked them profusely, and admired their muscles and overall manliness. And I would have gotten their addresses so I could bake them pies.
This would’ve worked, too, but the sob-sisters just aren’t grasping the ingenuity of that whole gender-role thing.
Now that you mention it, maybe NAMBLA publishes it.
Oh, would you two just get a room?
One hand? Piker!
The Lord’s truth: redheads come in only two types, drop dead gorgeous or butt-ugly.
Howsomever, I’m 6’2″ and I like tall girls. I actually dated a girl two inches taller than I am, but, alas! I was much more interested in her than she was in me.
Turn off the Lifetime Movie Channel.
True story.
I worked as a switchboard operator at a department store when I was a teenager back in the day. Every night, right at 8:00, I got a call from some creep, breathing hard, who said, “Guess what I’m holding in my hand?” So I would transfer the call to hardware, for lack of a better response. (And, in fact, the previous operator, who I replaced on the job, warned me about this guy. That’s how long this had been going on.)
After a couple of weeks, I was pretty sick of it, so at 8:00 when he called with his usual dialog, I said, “If you can hold it in one hand, I’m not interested.”
There was a long pause, then he hung up on me, and never called again.
Cause you know that donation of one’s soul is the highest cause in existence for a man.
Sounds like EBL will have to do a redheads Rule 5 for our host.
Just for
StaceyStacy:http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads22/453847196_5_hdjD1376261395.jpg
Morgan Smith Goodwin: the reason I always pay attention to Wendy’s commercials:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c2/af/4c/c2af4c71632c439d1a9cff0f1b1f72f0.jpg
The guy who assaulted me ended up crying in the back of a squad car. The cops had to warn me off about threatening him. He’s lucky I never saw the next day. You never know what the cops are going to do with guys like that. Sometimes they’re found in that city with a sign around their necks saying “I am a thief.” They could’ve floated him in the bay for all I cared.
You know, if you’re going to be tough enough to actually put a knife to a giy’s throat and draw blood, you’d think you’d be tough enough not to cry like a little girl when caught.
I wonder if this guy ever submitted anything: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/man-who-oversaw-ontarios-new-sex-curriculum-pleads-guilty-to-child-sex-char
I’d heard about this… Not really very surprising, is it? After Harry Hay, Terry Bean, Kevin Jennings, or Larry Brinkin, etc., etc., one starts to see a pattern but the gay lobby just keeps getting bolder and more brazen every day!
Well that explains the tutu.
Somewhat related article via Drudge.
“Eschew?”
Gesundheit.
From the article: “Education Minister Liz Sandals has confirmed that Catholic schools will be required to teach the curriculum to Catholic children unaltered.”
That right there is a load of b.s.