Women's Issues

[F]rom my observations, being a woman into games who also makes content often puts you in a lose-lose situation, because you're bound to get shit thrown your way no matter who you are [--]

The Evolution of Bitchiness

Women engage in indirect aggression and slut-shaming, even in clinical research studies. Why?

One day in Ontario, 86 straight women were paired off into groups of two—either with a friend or a stranger—and taken to a lab at Mc Master University. There, a researcher told them they were about to take part in a study about female friendships. But they were soon interrupted by one of two women.

Half the participants were interrupted by a thin, blond, attractive woman with her hair in a bun, dressed in a plain blue t-shirt and khaki pants, whom the researchers called “the conservative confederate."

The other half found themselves in the company of the “sexy confederate,” the same woman, instead wearing a low-cut blouse, a short black skirt, boots, and her hair sexily un-bunned.

Tracy Vaillancourt, a psychology professor at the University of Ottawa, and a Ph D student, Aanchal Sharma, then gauged the women’s reactions as the confederates, both sexy and not, left the room. The metric they used? A “bitchiness" scale, of course.

“Why bitchiness?” I asked Vaillancourt, wondering why she chose to use such a loaded word.

“Bitchiness is the term that people use,” she explained. “If I ask someone to describe what this is, they'd say it’s ‘bitchy.’”

The women doing the rating were roughly the same age as the participants, 20 to 25, and watched for signs like eye-rolling, looking the confederate up or down, or laughing sarcastically. In one case, a participant said the sexy confederate was dressed to have sex with the professor. One didn’t wait for the sexy woman to leave the room before exclaiming, “What the fuck is that?!”

“That was a 10 out of 10 as far as bitchiness,” Vaillancourt told me.

What Vaillancourt and Sharma found, according to a study published recently in the journal Aggressive Behavior, was, essentially, that the sexy confederate was not going to be making sorority friends anytime soon. The women were far more likely to be bitchy to the sexy confederate, with the large effect size of 2, and their bitchy reactions were more pronounced when the participants were with friends, rather than strangers.

Vaillancourt had always been interested in bullying and popularity, but to her, this showed that women tend to haze each other simply for looking promiscuous.

The clinical term for the womens’ bitchiness is “indirect aggression"— essentially, aggression we don’t want to get caught for.

“You tend to do it such that you won't be detected,” she explained. “Or you make an excuse for your behavior, like, ‘I was only joking.’ Direct aggression is just what it is: physical or verbal aggression.”

Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Jean Twenge have also theorized that women, not men, are largely the ones who suppress each others’ sexualities, in part through this sort of indirect aggression.

“The evidence favors the view that women have worked to stifle each other’s sexuality because sex is a limited resource that women use to negotiate with men, and scarcity gives women an advantage,” they wrote.

Some might argue that it’s only natural for the women in the lab to treat the provocatively-dressed woman poorly. After all, this was a university setting, and in comes an intruder whose, “boobs were about to pop out,” as one participant put it. How untoward!

So Vaillancourt performed another experiment in which she simply showed study participants one of three images: Two featured the conservatively dressed woman and the sexy woman, dressed as described previously. Another showed the sexy woman with her body and face digitally altered so as to appear heavier.

She then asked a different group of women whether they’d want to be friends with the woman in the photo, to introduce her to their boyfriend (if they had one), or to let her spend time with their boyfriend alone.

The participants tended to answer “no” to all three questions for both the heavy and thin sexy women. They were nearly three times more likely, for example, to introduce the conservatively dressed woman to their boyfriend than the thin sexy woman.

To Vaillancourt, this showed that women, “are threatened by, disapprove of, and punish women who appear and/or act promiscuous,” regardless of their weight.

Vaillancourt’s is a small study, but it is one of the first to demonstrate slut-shaming in an experimental context. But women don’t come off very well in past research on indirect aggression, either.

Other studies have shown that undergraduate college women are more likely to gossip about someone rumored to have undermined their own reputation. Women are more likely to form social alliances and then manage threats from outsiders through social exclusion, rather than, say, beating each other up. Girls are more likely to ostracize a newcomer or befriend someone for revenge.

In his research in the 1990s, University of Texas psychologist David Buss found that women were more likely than men to “derogate,” or insult, their mating rivals in two ways, as he described to me in an email:

First, the “slut” factor: “spreading gossip that the rival woman is 'easy,' has slept with many partners, and is basically, in my terms, pursuing a short-term mating strategy.”

Second, on physical appearance: “Saying the woman is ugly, has fat thighs, and an astonishing variety of other vicious things about a rival's physical appearance and mode of dress, such as wearing revealing clothing, plunging necklines, or short skirts.”

In his book, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, Buss argues that women do this because, evolutionarily, women who are willing to have casual sex undermine the goals of women who want long-term relationships. "Slutty" women hint to men that it’s okay not to commit because there will always be someone available to give away the milk for free, as it were. Their peers' “derogation” is thus intended to damage the reputation of these free-wheeling females.

It’s worth noting that women (and men) don’t always consciously shame their rivals in the course of their dating efforts. A 2010 study in the journal Personal Relationships found that there was little difference between the sexes in terms of strategies used to woo a mate. And older women generally aren’t as indirectly aggressive when it comes to romantic situations as those in their 20s are.

“I wouldn't be bothered by someone dressed like that,” Vaillancourt said, referring to the more alluringly clad woman. “But if I was 20, I might be bothered by that.”

Slut-shaming is a love-story cornerstone. Hester Prynne had her scarlett A. Anna Karenina tumbled from her perch in society after an affair with a cavalry officer. In an equally important cultural work, 1999’s She’s All That, popular girl Taylor humiliates former ugly duckling Laney at a party after the latter undergoes a miraculous beautification through the removal of her glasses and ponytail. (This is, one will note, perhaps the most apt artistic representation of Vaillancourt’s experiment possible.)

Many of the recent headlines around the research on female indirect aggression purport that women have “evolved” to be this way. But some scholars of indirect aggression argue that just because the slut-shaming Vaillancourt discovered is one of the oldest tricks in the book, doesn’t mean it’s evolutionary or "hard-wired."

“Why are these women doing this? I think there are many ways we could explain that,” Agustin Fuentes, chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, told me. “In our society, if you're given the choice between these images, you're going to say, ‘I don't want my guy next to a girl with a short skirt.’ But that's not because, evolutionarily speaking, your guy is more likely to cheat on you with the short-skirt girl.”

He argues that though this and other studies show how important physical appearance is to the way women respond to each other, there’s too much cultural baggage at play to say it all comes from our primate ancestors. The short-skirt-boots combo, for example, is already a “meaning-laden image,” he said.

In her own recent research, Anne Campbell, a psychologist at Durham University in the U.K., argued that young women tend to use indirect aggression to a greater extent than young men, in part because that’s the most socially acceptable way for women to compete.

But even Campbell stresses that it’s hard to tell whether this phenomenon is evolutionarily or culturally driven.

And it's not like men don’t attack each other when competing for scarce resources, too.

If you are conventionally attractive you get objectified and are always liable to be the subject of gatekeeping or people doubting your "gamer cred" simply because of the idea that such a woman obviously would never touch a nerd hobby, despite gaming becoming more and more mainstream.

Gretchen Carlson's $20 million sexual harassment settlement against 21st Century Fox and the company's unusual public apology to the former Fox News Channel anchor bring an end to her very public battle with Roger Ailes, once one of the most powerful men in media and now the ousted head of Fox News who resigned only weeks after Carlson's team filed suit. But a lingering question remains: Will Carlson's hefty settlement encourage more women to come forward and report sexual harassment in the workplace?

There are reasons to say maybe it will. Women who are facing sexual harassment at work may feel empowered by Carlson, who stood up to her harassment and won a real and prompt resolution, said Emily Martin, vice president of workplace justice for the National Women's Law Center.

"It's certainly the case that just because (Gretchen Carlson) did it doesn't mean that everybody will be able to get the $20 million settlement and their apology next week, but the value, I think, of what happened in the past few months is, I think, that it is always helpful when you are struggling in your own life to have some role models, to have some examples of someone who was able to mitigate this successfully, who was able to find a solution, and who blazed a path in some way," Martin said. Martin said she believes Carlson's case is a "comparably big moment" in terms of raising sexual harassment awareness as the Anita Hill hearings were in 1991. Hill accused then-Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassing her.

There have certainly been sexual harassment allegations that have captured the public's attention since Hill came forward, but for the most part, until Carlson, the accuser has always been someone people don't know, said Martin. "I can't think of a clear analogue where it's not just that the person being accused is a public figure but the person who is saying 'I was harassed' is a public figure, who people feel they have a relationship with, who people feel like they trust," she said.

Immediately after the Hill hearings and changes in the law to allow jury trials and monetary damages for employment discrimination cases, there was an increase in the number of women who filed sexual harassment complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "One of the things that's different about this story from Anita Hill's ... is this is a story with a positive legal result," said Martin. "Part of what this story is is that the law worked, that she made a legal complaint, she brought a lawsuit and look at all the things that happened as a result," said Martin. "I think that's a powerful story."

Being the first to come forward is never easy, said Lisa Maatz, vice president of government relations and advocacy for the American Association of University Women. It wasn't easy for Betty Dukes, a store greeter who filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart in 2001 claiming sex discrimination. It wasn't easy for Carlson, who could not have known how many other women would have come forward and how quickly Ailes would be out of his job. "Do I think that there will be more folks coming forward" after Carlson? Maatz said. "I don't know that for sure but I do know this: I think that when women do come forward, they will have more support from other women who have been in the same spot.

"What this has shown is that if there's a courageous first who is willing to come forward, that those folks who came up behind her and said, 'Yes, me too, 'Yes, me too, 'Yes, me too,' that there was a benefit," she said. "It helped everybody." The very public nature of the settlement, the settlement amount and 21st Century Fox's apology to Carlson for the "fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all colleagues deserve" also could encourage more women to speak up. In many high-profile sexual harassment cases, when women win a settlement, a gag order is often imposed, preventing them from disclosing that a settlement has been reached, the amount of the settlement and any other details of what they experienced.

"So many women who have won suits against their companies signed nondisclosure agreements and that's thwarted many other women who might complain," said Emmy Award-winning television journalist and New York Times best-selling author Diane Smith, president of Diane Smith Media. "They are not aware that others have had success in taking action." The fact that the sexual harassment took place at such a prominent and well-known company as Fox News and that the accused perpetrator was the most powerful person at the company can also play a role in encouraging women to come forward. some women said. "I think it's a game-changer because it shows that this kind of bias and discrimination is alive and well and in fact is being cared and fed at the highest echelons of business in this country," said Maatz.

Janeane Davis, a business consultant for the blog Janeane's World, said the settlement will make more women come forward because it shows sexual harassment is a real problem and occurs in big businesses even run by "important people." "It will make people realize that if it is happening in respected companies, people should believe it when women at smaller companies say sexual harassment is happening to them'," said Davis, a mom of four.

Carlson's case still shows how hard it is to come forward when you are the victim of sexual harassment, said Katharine Zaleski, co-founder and president of Powerto Fly.com, an online platform linking up women in tech with job opportunities. "The size of the settlement makes clear that she had a slam dunk case and yet her veracity was questioned publicly numerous times — and even when other women came forward," she said.

Sexual harassment is "embarrassing" and often people question what the woman did in order to be treated in such a manner, said Laura Beyer, a mom of two who said she was sexually harassed in the military and in corporate America. "Many believe she must have dressed in a certain way or must have behaved in a promiscuous manner. Rarely is the man blamed due to the fact that no one, not his wife, family, children, want to believe that he would behave in such a disgusting and vile manner," said Beyer. Women fear retaliation. They fear being labeled a "troublemaker." They fear losing their jobs. And that won't change, even after Carlson's massive victory, some women said.

"The average woman does not have the power and visibility of Gretchen Carlson. Most women do not come forward because they fear retribution and that will not change," said Lori Day, an educational psychologist and the author of "Her Next Chapter." "Even though Carlson did face scrutiny and criticism, she had the backing of other women at Fox who'd experienced the same thing, and as a media personality, she brought negative press down upon Ailes, which ultimately worked in her favor." She added, "It is all so beyond the daily experiences of average women that I don't think it will move the needle at all."

Carlson's settlement doesn't look as "monumental" when you consider that her "abuser," Roger Ailes, received $40 million "just to leave," said children's television host Miss Lori, who said she was sexually harassed by a professor while in college. She reported the harassment and her division head removed her from his classes. However, she had to be enrolled in comparable classes at a different university. "The echoes of the harassment reverberated on as I was ostracized by my classmates," said the social media strategist and Babble.com contributor. "I was seen as a troublemaker who refused to go along to get along with a beloved teacher. ... I was victimized by my teacher's actions and then victimized again by my own reporting of the abuse."

Yes, the Gretchen Carlson suit will have "reverberating ramifications" in the business world, she said. Yes, it might get a few more women to step up to the mic and expose their harassing employers, she said. Yes, we are making progress and that's a good thing. "But the bottom line, it won't ever really get better until the war on women is defeated," she said, saying what's needed is a complete end to any objectification of women by men and boys. "And that's going to take more than dollars. It's going to require a lot of sense."

When Delilah began working as an escort last year, she chose to blur her face in the photos she posts on her website and Twitter profile. The Ottawa, Ontario, college student made the decision in order to keep her sex work from her conservative Muslim family and so she can transition smoothly and without stigma into a different career when she graduates.

But hiding her face has its drawbacks. “I would certainly get a lot more clients. And no one would be in for a shock when they saw me,” says the 23-year-old, explaining that her baby face and chubby cheeks can surprise new customers. “I wish we lived in a world where I could show my face.”

The decision to reveal or obscure their faces online is just one of the many complicated issues sex workers navigate as they seek to balance profits and competition, their plans for the future and potential attention from law enforcement. Several escorts told Newsweek they show their faces in hopes of stripping the shame from sex work. They also believe their “coming out” publicly will quicken the push toward decriminalization of sex work, which the media and Amnesty International have focused attention on this year.

Hilary Holiday, a Minneapolis escort, says she covered her face in photos when she began sex work in the early 2000s. Then, about six years ago, jealous competitors began posting in online escort forums that she must be hiding her face because she was hideous, so Holiday posted photos to prove them wrong. “My income like doubled when I showed my face, so I kind of got addicted to showing,” she tells Newsweek, claiming that her annual earnings spiked from $150,000 to $300,000. (She doesn’t see smokers or men under 35.)

Holiday, 48, warns new sex workers that covering their face in online photos doesn’t guarantee their protection or privacy. “You’re probably eventually going to get outed, so you should really be comfortable with it,” she says.

Holiday posts photos with her face uncovered both for the money and because she’s proud of what she does. “Everybody knows I do this with integrity. My kids have gone on nice trips, we have a hot tub in the yard. I’m a good provider.”

Speaking of kids, sex work can put an escort at a disadvantage in a custody fight, especially when an angry ex-partner uses it to argue the sex worker is an unfit parent. “As soon as there’s a dispute with an unscrupulous partner, the partner just says, ‘Your Honor, my ex is a sex worker!’ And what do you think happens?” says Seattle escort and sex work advocate Maggie Mc Neill, 49. She adds that her decision to show her face was made easier by the fact that she doesn’t have children and doesn’t plan on a future career that could “potentially be bombed” by her long history of sex work.

Mc Neill, who blogs as “the Honest Courtesan,” says new escorts weigh multiple factors when deciding how open to be with their image online. “I tell young girls you might want to really consider whether you want to show your face or not,” Mc Neill says. “You may get married, you may have children. Even if your family of birth is cool with it, how do you know your in-laws will be cool with it?”

Escorts still risk arrest. (Most of the escorts who spoke with Newsweek use a “work name” that’s different from their legal name.) Decriminalization has been a major topic of debate this year, with New York magazine running a cover story, “Is Prostitution Just Another Job?,” in March. The New York Times Magazine did the same in May with “Should Prostitution Be a Crime?”

Later in May, Amnesty International published its policy on protecting sex workers from abuse, which recommended the decriminalization of consensual sex work. “This is based on evidence that these laws often make sex workers less safe and provide impunity for abusers, with sex workers often too scared of being penalized to report crime to the police,” the organization said.

Choosing whether to reveal one’s face online is a bigger concern for well-off escorts who charge $400 an hour and have their own websites and Twitter profiles, while poor and marginalized prostitutes have other, more pressing worries, like being raped or earning enough money to pay their rent.

An escort’s decision to post his or her face online can make it easier for law enforcement to investigate and prosecute the worker, sex workers told Newsweek. “Having your face on Twitter could be an opportunity for police to reach out to you and entrap you,” says Philadelphia escort and advocate Mike Crawford, who calls himself a “full-time queer, part-time cashsexual” on his Twitter profile. “If you have the same image on your Facebook page and on your ads, an investigator could quickly use Google search to match them up.” (When Holiday was arrested on prostitution charges in 2013, reports said police matched photos on her escort website with her driver’s license.)

Still, Crawford says his decision to show his face is an important part of his work as an advocate for sex workers and decriminalization. He and other advocates believe sex worker rights are at the point where gay rights were in the 1950s, where coming out can jeopardize a person legally as well as his or her work and family ties.

“I’ve had sex workers apologize to me for not being out. And I’m like, ‘Oh honey, don’t apologize to me!’” says Mc Neill. “You have a life. I made my decision. If I were 30, I might not make the decision to show my face.”

An Open Letter to Institutions of Higher Education:

Fresh out of his all-too-brief incarceration, former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner has offered to lecture college students against “drinking and promiscuity.” Now the most hated swimmer in American history—more reviled than even the mendacious, embarrassing Ryan Lochte—Turner hopes to redeem himself with speaking tours.

It’s difficult to imagine any educational institution would allow on campus this convicted sex offender, who defended himself by faulting others and using alcohol as an excuse for his actions. But should Turner endeavor to launch a tour, he must not be permitted to speak about the dangers of alcohol under the circumstances he intends.

No doubt excessive alcohol is a public health risk. So, however, is sexual assault, which cannot be explained away by blaming alcohol. Any campus appearance must be conditioned on his taking full responsibility for his actions, apologizing to the victim, and condemning sexual assault. No honesty, no restitution: No public appearances for Brock Turner. This former Stanford student violently altered his victim’s life and ruined his own dreams.

Turner can only hope to reduce public animosity toward him if he makes an unqualified public confession in order to join the national conversation on sexual assault. He should also invite others, such as Brian Banks, to openly discuss the long, unequal treatment of sexual assault on campus.

Turner will always be a convicted sex offender, but he has the opportunity to unequivocally reject his previous excuses and devote himself to advocacy work against sexual assault.