Wait. Are You Telling Me That Sexist Men Have No Empathy For Women?

Via Pandagon, there was a poorly written story in the British Daily Mail that comes with the confusing title, "Scientist reveals what men REALLY think of when they look at a girlie calendar" which of course sounds like they mean all men. But, if you actually read more details of the study, you discover that they are referring to a specific group of men. Men who hate women.

Fiske also tested the men for levels of sexism and found a surprising effect. Those who scored high on this test, "...the hostile sexists were likely to deactivate the part of the brain that thinks about other people's intentions. The lack of activiation of this social cognition area is really odd, because it hardly ever happens. It's a very reliable effect, that the medial prefrontal cortex comes online when people think about other people, see pictures of them, imagine other people."

The reason this is an important disctinction is that the author of the news piece on the study just conflated the group "men" with the group who actually demonstrated the concerning behavior in the study-"sexist men." When we say that sexist men objectify women, that usually deserves a no duh response.

Another issue I have with this study is that because it is poorly written about and poorly explained (by both the Daily Mail and Dr. Fiske) there is, within the subsequent comment thread, a perfect demonstration of how misreading the research can be used to bolster the fantasies of evoloutionary psychologists.

Based on Dr. Fiske's comment:

Asked if women were likely to view half-dressed men in the same way, she said that women tended to rate age and bank balance over looks.

came this gem:

This, to me, only goes to prove the biological differences between men and women. Men look for "good looking" women to further their line as an evolutionary process, more men are likely to want to impregnate a "good looking" woman. Women on the other hand look for men that can provide the necessary next building materials. These days those materials are experience and money.
I believe Charles Darwin did work in this line. (emphasis mine)

Please. The research didn’t say or show this. In fact, there is loads of evidence to support the notion that women, due to their status in our society, are heavily dependent on men economically. And here is where evo psychs are so damaging: they attribute differences in female and male responses/beliefs/behaviors to biology (or neural science) and disappear the mountains and mountains of evidence of cultural influence on differences between genders. Good gawd. It’s almost as if they wish to JUSTIFY their sexist beliefs. Could it be that simple? Yes, it could. Evolutionary psychology is a field with the same distinction as Intelligent Design. They are wishful thinkers who like sciency sounding truthiness but who have no understanding of how true science works or how to think outside their own sexist wishful thinking. Just as an aside, I am totally curious how they determined the group “hostile sexists” b/c it is really unusual for them to self identify. Most men in that category are blissfully unaware, and often damn certain they love women, so they couldn’t possibly be sexist.