Are sex offenders and lads’ mags using the same language?
Far from being harmless or ironic fun, lads’ mags could be legitimising hostile sexist attitudes, according to new research.
Psychologists from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey found that when presented with descriptions of women taken from lads’ mags, and comments about women made by convicted rapists, most people who took part in the study could not distinguish the source of the quotes.
The research due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology also revealed that most men who took part in the study identified themselves more with the language expressed by the convicted rapists.
Psychologists presented men between the ages of 18 and 46 with a range of statements taken from magazines and from convicted rapists in the study, and gave the men different information about the source of the quotes. Men identified more with the comments made by rapists more than the quotes made in lads’ mags, but men identified more with quotes said to have been drawn from lads’ mags more than those said to have been comments by convicted rapists.
The researchers also asked a separate group of women and men aged between 19 and 30 to rank the quotes on how derogatory they were, and to try to identify the source of the quotes. Men and women rated the quotes from lads’ mags as somewhat more derogatory, and could categorize the quotes by source little better than chance.
Dr Miranda Horvath and Dr Peter Hegarty argue that the findings are consistent with the possibility that lads’ mags normalise hostile sexism, by making it seem more acceptable when its source is a popular magazine. Read more
4 Responses
THIS IS BRAND NEW INFORMATION!
Is it just me or is the 5th paragraph a bit hard to get?
I find this very concerning, but unfortunately not surprising.
I hope that the editors of these magazines are shocked by it and start to reconsider the content they include.
I know you didn’t write this article, Melinda, but my goodness it is not terribly well written! I read the paragraph about the outcomes of the study several times before I differentiated the “actual source” (rapist/mag) from the “stated source” in the study.
So, the conclusion to be drawn from that para is that while men would like it to look as though they identify with the lads’ mag quotes (because that is far more socially acceptable) they actually identify more closely with the rapists’ quotes. That, I find scary.
Also, it should be “borne out”, not “born out”.