"The women of Bikini Kill let guitarist Billy Karren be in their feminist punk band, but only if he's willing to just "do some shit." Being a feminist dude is like that. We may ask you to "do some shit" for the band, but you don't get to be Kathleen Hannah."--@heatherurehere


Thursday, October 18, 2007

Feminism Helps Men: Better Relationships

Y'all probably saw this over at Feministing, but in case you didn't: Looks like there's a new study out that reinforces my intuition that feminism helps me, at least, have better 'romantic' relationships:
They found that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women. Men with feminist partners also reported both more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction. According to these results, feminism does not predict poor romantic relationships but is actually the opposite.

The authors also tested the validity of feminist stereotypical beliefs amongst their two samples, based on the hypothesis that if feminist stereotypes are accurate, feminist women should be more likely to report themselves as being single, lesbian, or sexually unattractive than non-feminist women.

Their study reported that feminist women were more likely to be in a heterosexual romantic relationship than non-feminist women. The authors conclude that feminist stereotypes appear to be inaccurate, and therefore their unfavorable implications for relationships are also likely to be unfounded.


It's unfortunate, though perhaps not surprising, that the study focused on self-identified hetero's. It's also unfortunate that I can't seem to find the study itself online (if anybody can, I'd greatly appreciate a link). But it's a happy thing that somebody is even doing research on this stuff...and it doesn't hurt that the results seem promising to those of us who count ourselves as feminists, or feminist allies.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's Julie Phelan's website. Science organizations can't give out our pre-press copies but she can send you a PDF of her paper to read further if you explain you want to do an article on it.

Her email is there also.

http://www.jephelan.com/cv.html

Sex Roles is available online but it's paid subscription.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/6163700x51t5r169/?p=283322cc30fa49c8a0ca43a804923b66&pi=3

Jeff Pollet said...

Thanks Hank! I had visited Julie Phelan's website looking for the study, but didn't think to email her to ask to see it...I'm not familiar enough with scientific etiquette to know whether or not doing such a thing is appropriate or not. With your encouragement, I will.

Thanks again.