I can attest to that! I remember a friend telling me that we feminists have better relationships because we love more and interact with our partners based on both the political, as well as the personal, equality.

It's beautiful, actually - this story made me smile and am going to send it to the feminist I am currently falling for. :0)

And I swear to God, if it weren't for feminism, some of us would never be sexually/emotionally satisfied!

Marc

I bet feminists make better parents, and have better lives too.

Seeing as the label feminist is still fairly subjective, I'm curious what criteria the study used to distinguish the feminists from the non-feminists.

The linked article says they used a self-report scale. They also used a self-report scale for orientation, relationship status and attractiveness to test stereotypes. As to the first two, self-report seems straightforward. For attractiveness it tests something different: not whether feminists are attractive in comparison to the general population, but whether they see themselves as attractive. The latter may actually be more important and I would argue that the latter can cause the former in some cases. However, I would love to see a well-designed study that tested for actual attractiveness: blind scoring by both men and women, based on no-makeup/no airbrushing pictures of feminist men and women taken under identical studio lighting conditions. It seems to me that, at least for the subgroup of college feminists, one could get representative samples and control groups without too much trouble. (I don't harbor any doubt about the result, BTW.)

I'm glad the study came from Rutgers, it's just proves our awesomness. W00t!

Represent. I wonder if the IRW or any of the other Women's Leadership Institutes had a hand in this study. Either way, it's lovely to have empirical evidence debunking the slanderous assumptions against women.

Douglass has bragging rights.

er. I meant feminists, not women.

Thomas, you actually think attractiveness is based on objective scientifically provable standards? What about social conditioning for what a given culture considers to be attractive? And additionally, what about internal qualities that contribute to a person's attractiveness?

I don't remember if it was Rosemary Reuther or Rita Gross who said that there will never be real intimacy between men and women unless patriarchal structures are done away with, but truer words were never spoken.

Jessica, where did you get that shirt? It's so awesome.

omg, this made my day!!!

the part about feminist women being more likely to be in a relationship than non-feminist women does seem off-topic, though - as does the statement that stereotypically feminists are more likely to report themselves as unattractive... last time i checked, feminists follow marissa's logic - which would make them more self-affirming (less prone to the hateful lies of patriarchal standards).

i much prefer PFM's explanation for the study's results - it's not that feminists aren't ugly and aren't all lesbians and don't all hate sex, and therefore have better relationships than we ever expected. it's that the true aspects of feminism reinforce great relationships.

so much for dying alone with the cat. oh, well. I'm sure the cat will understand.

thomas, sorry but i don't see how that would be relevant or helpful at all.

in my opinion, part of feminism is about moving away from narrow societally imposed concepts of physical attractiveness in the first place. also, even with such indoctrination, individual tastes on what is attractive vary widely.

what exactly would be the point of such a study?

Did the study ask if just the women self-reported as feminists, or the men too?

This is basically what "The Feminine Mystique" said to me so many years ago, and I'm so happy to see it verified- that if a young woman focuses on developing into a whole, well-rounded person instead of making husband-chasing her life's ambition, that she will in fact become a well-rounded, confident person who's better equipped to develop a meaningful relationship with a partner.

Yay!

I'm snowed under grading papers so not posting, but just a quick hit.

The authors have a similar study too this one about romantic relationships and beliefs about feminism:

Rudman, L. A., & Fairchild, K. (2007). The F Word: Is feminism incompatible with beauty and romance? Psychology of Women Quarterly, 31, 125-136.

ABSTRACT: Three studies examined the predictive utility of heterosexual relationship concerns vis-à-vis support for feminism. Study 1 showed that beauty is perceived to be at odds with feminism, for both genders. The stereotype that feminists are unattractive was robust, but fully accounted for by romance-related attributions. Moreover, more attractive female participants (using self-ratings) showed decreased feminist orientations, compared with less attractive counterparts. Study 2 compared romantic conflict with the lesbian feminist stereotype and found more support for romantic conflict as a negative predictor of support for feminism and women's civil rights. Study 3 showed that beliefs about an incompatibility between feminism and sexual harmony negatively predicted support for feminism and women's civil rights. In concert, the findings indicate that a marriage between research on romantic relationships and the factors underlying sexism is overdue for understanding gender inequities.

this is a really interesting study, and it is nice to see the academy debunk the "feminists r ballbusterz and dyke lesbos" bullshit.
however, it kinda seemed like they were bending over backward to show how feminist women are actually straighter than non-feminist women! by emphasizing a number of times how feminist women tend to be in better hetro relationships, do you think they were betraying a heteronormative agenda?
additionally, it seemed like they only studied how the female partner's feminism affected the relationship? what happened to all my feminist manz out there? what up, rutgers? you don't love us anymore?

Riley, I certainly take your point. It is more important on the whole to move past a culture that values women for appearance than it is to even debate how feminists compare to the general population in appearance. (And Marissa: no, not objective in the least; all that can be measured is the collective subjective response, just like one can measure collective subjective reactions to film or music.)

I do think that the "feminists are ugly" myth is an effective tool against feminist organizing, as Jessica points out in FFF. With that in mind, I'd rather go with "that's irrelevant and not even true" than just "that's irrelevant." But I do see how there's a tension between deemphasizing the question and answering it.

this is a really interesting study, and it is nice to see the academy debunk the "feminists r ballbusterz and dyke lesbos" bullshit.
however, it kinda seemed like they were bending over backward to show how feminist women are actually straighter than non-feminist women! by emphasizing a number of times how feminist women tend to be in better hetro relationships, do you think they were betraying a heteronormative agenda?
additionally, it seemed like they only studied how the female partner's feminism affected the relationship? what happened to all my feminist manz out there? what up, rutgers? you don't love us anymore?

ALEXMWALLACE:
"Seeing as the label feminist is still fairly subjective, I'm curious what criteria the study used to distinguish the feminists from the non-feminists."

This is cut and pasted from the journal article:

Self and Partner’s Feminism: Participants responded to two
items using 6-point scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree)
to 6 (strongly agree). The items were, “I am a feminist� and
“My partner is a feminist.� To measure attitudes, they also
reported (on four separate scales) how warmly they and their
partners felt toward feminists and career women on
thermometer measures ranging from 1 (very cold) to 10
(very warm).

*These questions were answered by both men and women.

My girlfriend and I both read Feministing compulsively. I don't really have a good point of comparison, since I have trouble imagining I'd be attracted to a non-feminist women, but it does make a nice conversation starter ("Did you see that video Feministing put up on Girls Prep?" "I know! I just loved the girl who wanted to be a vampire when she grew up!")

This shocks me entirely none.

Of course, as a general misanthrope, I would like to point out feminists and non-feminists are entirely capable of screwing up relationships. :-)

More seriously, I don't know if I could go back to dating a woman who didn't identify as a feminist.

Moreover, more attractive female participants (using self-ratings) showed decreased feminist orientations, compared with less attractive counterparts.

Interesting. From what I've seen with my female friends, there is a cause-effect relationship there. The cause is attractiveness; the effect is a non-feminist orientation. (I think that feminism is the norm - after all, mentally healthy people believe themselves to be equals of other people in society.) It seems as if women who receive oodles of male attention are reluctant to give that up or be perceived as contrarian.

oenophile, i'd like to see a study of some sort that did explore whether women who get a lot of male attention were more or less likely to identify as feminists, controlling for the myriad other factors of course.

speaking anecdotally, i haven't noticed a prevalence of "attractive girls are less likely to be feminists than unattractive girls" myself. the differences in the proportion of women who identify as feminists, in my experience, has varied much more on regional, clas s and cultural lines. further, it's rather insulting to imply that attractive women would choose male objectification over genuine respect. why would you think that attractive women are somehow more easily duped into confusing the two and not identifying as feminists because they realize that as the objects of male desire, they are generally NOT taken seriously?

OENOPHILE " It seems as if women who receive oodles of male attention are reluctant to give that up or be perceived as contrarian."

I think you could derive conflicting hypotheses regarding the link between feminism and attractiveness.

Hypothesis A: Attractive women are less likely to become feminists.
Rationale: Attractive women receive many benefits from the current system (e.g., access to high status mates, positive attention, more job opportunities) and therefore have less incentive to challenge the current system.

Hypothesis B: Attractive women are more likely to become feminists.
Rationale: Attractive women are highly visible to men and are more likely to be continually sexually harassed and treated as mere sex objects.

As far as I know, there are no studies where judges rate the physical attractiveness of feminists vs. non-feminists. There are a small number of studies on the link between feminism and body image, which finds only a weak link or no link (or at least among the studies I am aware of).

*I'm noticing that the more student essays I read, the more tempting it is to distract myself and post here :-).

"further, it's rather insulting to imply that attractive women would choose male objectification over genuine respect."

The impression I got was something like this:

In a setting in which

1) marriage is more available to "attractive" women than to "unattractive" women

2) being a homemaker for a living is more available to married women than to the unmarried women

3) caring about women having the chance to have non-homemaker livelihoods is more important to feminists than to non-feminists

she who is "unattractive" may be more likely to be feminist (because she's more likely to value her chance to earn a living with non-homemaker work, because she's less likely to become or already be a homemaker, because she's less likely to be married or engaged, because she's "unattractive") than she who is "attractive."

Love it, this is why Douglass, Rutgers, and NJ are awesome

Being in a healthy relationship with mutual respect makes for a better relationship and life? Who'd a thunk?

WTF?

UCLABodyImage, pardon me if I think you need a bit of help. You posted this:
http://feministing.com/archives/007915.html#comment-108452

That included the comment that perceived physical attractiveness correlated with a lower rate of self-identification. I theorised about why this would be true. Suddenly, I'm wrong because... the initial comment was incorrect?

Excuse me, but would you please try to have more mental discipline than a fruitfly on crack? It is not too much to ask that you see your words when they are set off in italic type, recognise them as part of your post, and recognise that the words underneath them probably relate to them. Your "logic" is like this:

UCLA: A study shows that A leads to B.
Oenophile: That could be because (C).
UCLA: You're wrong, because you could just as easily argue A leads to Not C.

It is painful to even think about.

speaking anecdotally, i haven't noticed a prevalence of "attractive girls are less likely to be feminists than unattractive girls" myself.

Riley St. Clair:

Fantastic. Address that to UCLABodyImage, who posted the original study, and you'll have the embryonic beginnings of coherent conversation.

I'd also like to point out how much of attractiveness is manufactured, that is, if you strive for attractiveness and put tons of effort into looking how people think you should look, ie by wearing makeup, dieting, growing your hair long, getting cosmetic surgery etc., you'll stand a better chance of being considered "attractive." And I would imagine that feminists, while still influenced by this bullshit, generally buy into it a lot less than other women and are probably less likely to spend hours trying to perfect their appearance. Which, then, could cause some of us to be perceived as less attractive since we're less likely to bend over backwards attempting to achieve patriarchal approval.

With that said, I do know that most things about a person's looks are simply outside of their control, which is of course why it's bullshit to care whether feminists (or women in general) are hot or not, as if not being hot -- whatever the fuck that means -- somehow invalidates all your ideas. It's like when I was once on one of those many horrible supposedly-liberal web sites/forums and I criticized some "liberal" men who were raking Republican women over the coals for not being hot enough. One of them came back at me by saying, "Gee, somebody sounds a little defensive." He seriously thought suggesting that I'm ugly was a valid refutation of an intellectual argument. Gah.

I just showed this post to my girlfriend, who's a feminist, and she commandeered the computer as she forwarded it to her sisters, mother and aunt (all feminists and aunt is a rutgers grad).

As a guy who's dated on both sides, that study looks right to me.

Fantastic. Address that to UCLABodyImage, who posted the original study, and you'll have the embryonic beginnings of coherent conversation.

Or, better yet, try having some respect for UCLA, Riley and others in this conversation and then the conversation might even move beyond the embryo stage!

OENOPHILE "Excuse me, but would you please try to have more mental discipline than a fruitfly on crack?"

Oenophile, calm down. I have absolutely no idea, in even the slightest way, what in the world you are talking about, or why you are getting upset.

I thought you had an reasonable hypothesis, which was that being more attractive causes you to be less interested in feminism b/c you are benefitting from male attention.

That made me think about the potential downside of that attention. That led to two opposing hypothesis, which I laid out clearly. I made no claims about which one was true. The kind of study you would need to do to test them properly hasn't been done (i.e. using judges rather than self-reported attractiveness).

I really don't have any clue at all why that upset you. Seriously. Not even a smidgen of clue. Like if we were playing the game Clue, I would have like none of the little boxes checked off. Not even the rope or miss scarlet or the library.

So please keep your little cracked out fruitfly friends to yourself. thanks.

PONIESAANDRAINBOWS"And I would imagine that feminists, while still influenced by this bullshit, generally buy into it a lot less than other women and are probably less likely to spend hours trying to perfect their appearance. Which, then, could cause some of us to be perceived as less attractive since we're less likely to bend over backwards attempting to achieve patriarchal approval."

Oooohhh... i like it. I like that a lot. I think that is a study worth doing.

Like if we were playing the game Clue, I would have like none of the little boxes checked off. Not even the rope or miss scarlet or the library.

Wow. I just had a wave of nostalgia for sitting around the cafeteria in fifth grade, playing Clue during lunch. I miss that game. Miss Peacock in the billiard room with a lead pipe.

"Wow. I just had a wave of nostalgia for sitting around the cafeteria in fifth grade, playing Clue during lunch. I miss that game. Miss Peacock in the billiard room with a lead pipe."

Ha!

I have Simpsons Clue.

I say it was Maggie with the Donut in the Quickie Mart.

We need a "Feminism is for Lovers" shirt.

"Wow. I just had a wave of nostalgia for sitting around the cafeteria in fifth grade, playing Clue during lunch. I miss that game. Miss Peacock in the billiard room with a lead pipe."

Try Kill Doctor Lucky. You'll love it. And if you really really love it, there's a deluxe version.

F*cking duh.

In regards to the "attractive women are less likely to be feminists" discussion:

Perhaps some "attractive" women are making an effort to BE attractive by patriarchal standards because they are not feminists? They meet the standards of beauty that society sets and are more likely to think of themselves as more attractive.

Maybe.

That said, I think I'm smokin' and I identify as a feminist.

whoda thunk that actually respecting each other and treating each other as equals would lead to such a happy, fulfilling and healthy (and pleasurable!...if it's even a word) relationship? i am positively shocked!

This is excellent news! This is proof that feminism is the best remedy for any relationship. Thanks, Jessica.

For those who don't know, Jessica is a Rutgers alumna.

I actually went to bed last night thinking about feministing.com and this article - and while I still maintain my original position, there's also something I'd like to bring up.

Being in a relationship as feminists can also be extremely challenging ...

So keely aware of the political inequities, the feminist also tries to ensure that whatever action the feminist takes in the personal realm (love and relationships) is consistent with the political realm.

Thus the feminist (at least this one) questions many things, and because of that, can lead to the inability to fully love.

Is it okay to feel a strong sexual urge for person without first knowing that person's mind?

Is it okay to, at a pick-up joint, feel good about kissing a person, because said person is the one sought after by everyone, but you're the one with that person?

How kinky and adventurous can out bedroom practices be, before they become unequal and against what we stand for?

Is it okay to fall dangerously in love, knowing that we'll probably have to give in to some gender roles as feminists?

May I buy a woman-of-interest flowers, knowing that said actions speak volumes of gender roles and a reflection of chivalry, as well as knowing the plight of flower growers in South America, from where most flowers are shipped?

What about diamonds for a wedding? Blood diamonds?

Whose name shall we take after the wedding?

Is what we're doing a reflection of the patriarchy? How can we, as a couple in public, set the examples of what it means to be equal, without compromising our love?

It seems even as feminists, we still live in a gendered world, one that requires us to take on the exacting tasks of wading through the political and personal.

Sometimes, it can be intimate to explore these things with a partner, sometimes it's just fucking frustrating.

Marc

You raise some good issues, PFM. I don't think that the self-awareness and frequent questioning that comes along with being a feminist in a relationship do anything but make the relationship stronger, though. I'm a woman in a long-term relationship that is heading toward marriage and eventually children, and the discussions my boyfriend and I have about how to marry and raise kids while remaining true to our feminist principles bring us closer together. It's certainly not going to be easy - we expect that we'll end up alienating some members of both of our families by e.g. not having a traditional wedding, by not dressing our future kids in "gendered" clothing, or by our children taking my last name rather than his. But knowing that he and I agree fully on the importance of these things just brings us closer together. And we are some seriously irrationally head-over-heels for each other folks...so it's definitely possible to have both!

A few answers for PFM:

"Is it okay to feel a strong sexual urge for person without first knowing that person's mind?"

Yes. You feel how you feel. What matters is how you behave about it.

"How kinky and adventurous can out bedroom practices be, before they become unequal and against what we stand for?"

As kinky and adventurous as you both feel comfortable with. Why limit your sexual satisfaction because you think someone would lecture you about it if they found out? You're both adults, right? You can tell where play-acting ends and real life begins.

"May I buy a woman-of-interest flowers, knowing that said actions speak volumes of gender roles and a reflection of chivalry, as well as knowing the plight of flower growers in South America, from where most flowers are shipped?

What about diamonds for a wedding? Blood diamonds?"

First of all, not everyone's into flowers and diamonds. I feel a lot happier when someone buys me something they know I like than a "traditional" symbol of status and affection. (My husband once surprised me at work with a coffee bouquet.) But if she does happen to like these things, Google "flowers +sustainable" and "diamonds +recycled" for worker-friendly products.

APB and Shifter - all good points! Combine feminism with love and consciousness raising, and I think we've got a recipe for what the love shared between two people ought to be about. :0)

This also reminds me of a book I once read in a WMST class, called "To Be Real," by Rebecca Walker. It helped a lot - and is still one of my favorite readers!

Marc

The study, done by Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan, also sought to debunk feminist stereotypes. Sounds like my kinda research.

The kind of research that has a conclusion and sets out to prove it? Yeah, nice.

"The kind of research that has a conclusion and sets out to prove it? Yeah, nice."

I was kind of uncomfortable with that wording as well, but I can never tell whether a study is good or not just on the face of it. I know there are people on here who analyze studies for a living. Does this one seem solid?

Is the study itself online? I can't seem to find a link to it...

mina, for some people, that may be true, however the reality is that relatively few women have the option to be full-time homemakers in the first place. that's just not the economic reality for most women, attractive or not.

moving on from that, like i said, i find it insulting to assume that attractive women are more likely to buy into patriarchal notions about the proper status of women and think that the ultimate goal is to land a trophy wife position? are we just dumber than unattractive women? less ambitious? likely to be intellectually and emotionally by lying around eating bon-bons and being told we're hot all day? seriously? i'm not saying no women would prefer to coast by on looks alone, but to imply that this is the norm is demeaning and certainly doesn't do our cause any good.

this also doesn't address my point (that was reiterated by UCLAbodyimage), that attractive women may in fact be even more likely to call out the BS because they have to put up with more objectification.

Isn't it important to remember that these were self-ratings? I mean, this wasn't an objective attractiveness scale, it was rating how women feel about themselves. That's significant. I don't know what it means, but it's significant.

sgzax, that's a whole other can of worms and worth pointing out.

(and there IS no objective attractiveness scale to begin with anyway!)

Thank you for posting this. I love it. My real life experience confirms the study. And as other people have said, now that I have a great feminist partner, I would never go back.

Rileystclair, I agree. I find it just as bad as people who insinuate that feminists are ugly. I happen to be pretty, thanks to my gorgeous mother, and yet I still manage to use my brain and suss out that the way women are treated in the world is terrible. My appearance has nothing to do with my politics. Your outward appearance doesn't stunt your ability to recognize women as people and deserving of the rights implicit in that.

DrkEyedCajn, you must be in your 50s at least. We weren't taught about the "Feminine Mystique" at our schools. And I wish we were taught about what Betty Friedan said in our k-12 schools.

SGZAX "Isn't it important to remember that these were self-ratings? I mean, this wasn't an objective attractiveness scale, it was rating how women feel about themselves. "

RILEY "(and there IS no objective attractiveness scale to begin with anyway!)"

I do think that the "subjective" vs "objective" attractiveness distinction is important. Your own reports about how attractive you think you are (subjective) in some cases may be very different than your "objective attractiveness".

Riley, your point about "objective attractiveness" is a fair one. Perhaps a better label would be:

self-ratings of your attractiveness

versus

ratings of your attractiveness by others.

rileystclair: i find it insulting to assume that attractive women are more likely to buy into patriarchal notions about the proper status of women and think that the ultimate goal is to land a trophy wife position...
...this also doesn't address my point (that was reiterated by UCLAbodyimage), that attractive women may in fact be even more likely to call out the BS because they have to put up with more objectification.

I agree with you on the first point, but I'd be really leary of saying the second.

I'm not sure I see value in trying to come up with a standard by which we judge people's experiences of objectification. Which is to say: I'm not sure that attractive or unattractive people objectively experience more or less objectification than each other. It's possible that they experience different types of objectification, but I don't know that I'd want to say to someone who is constantly criticized and demeaned for not being traditionally pretty that her experiences with being denigrated and humiliated because of her looks is somehow less objectifying than a more conventionally attractive women's experiences with street harassment or what-not.

Jovan, lol! I'm 25 :) I read the Mystique when I was 18 and just starting college. (That might not be "so many years" to some people, but it is to me.) Having been raised by two very conservative parents and sent to Catholic schools, it rocked my worldview. I didn't find it through school at all; just happened to take an interest in feminism. That said, I also wish they'd teach the Mystique in K-12!

I think I may have a somewhat unique perspective, as a woman who as a young teenager was generally regarded as unattractive, and as a young woman is generally regarded as attractive (I feel most of this may have to do with the way I make myself up, some with actual physical ways I changed.)

I would certainly say that I frequently feel objectified these days. (probably not as much as if I had decent sized boobs or something, though) However, I feel a hell of a lot better about myself receiving positive or obnoxious attention along the lines of "hey you're hot" than I ever did receiving negative attention.

That being said, I am still a feminist, and still think feminists do it better. I think perhaps for a particularly attractive woman to become a feminist though, she will have had to go through a slightly different thought process than your average woman.

Oh, and PFM: I'm currently dating a man who seems to be a feminist (not sure whether or not he goes by that label, but he seems to really respect women and says things like "I was talking to my friend the other day, and she says that she feels so comfortable with herself and free to pursue whatever or whoever she wants, and she doesn't care what people think of her like she did 10 years ago, and I think that's just the sexiest thing ever." Anyway more to the point, while we haven't had sex yet I think he's fairly adventurous in bed, and that's totally cool by me, given all the other elements of his person. I think the important thing is really just that communicatin is open and both people feel equally comfortable sharing ideas. And that one person doesn't go ahead w/o making sure the other person's comfortable with it. The one thing I have mixed feelings over is letting him buy me drinks; I guess everyone has vices??