Can Men Promote Feminist Movements Article Review 2

Tarryn Priestly

Nov. 3^rd, 2014

WGST 202

Professor Currans

Blog Topic: The Feminist Movement

Article Review #2

Vernet, Jean Pierre, Jorge Vala, and Fabrizio Butera. "Can Men Promote Feminist Movements?:  Outgroup Influence Sources Reduce Attitude Change toward Feminist Movements." Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 14.5 (2011): 723-33. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.

     In the article “Can Men Promote Feminist Movements?”, Jean Pierre Vernet, Jorge Vala and Fabrizio Butera perform a research experiment to test the stigma against women's rights and the feminist movement as a whole. They test the conception people have about feminism and their association of it with either a negative idea or the ideas that it actually stands for. Through this experiment, Vernet, Vala and Butera are trying to prove that while anyone can promote the feminist movement, it all depends on who is doing the promoting and to whom they are promoting to.

     The authors go on to test their hypotheses of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, the first testing the hypothesis that a less threatening experimenter, in this case a female, “should elicit in female participants greater attitude change in favour of feminist movements when reassociation was presented in less threatening terms (forgetting) than when it was presented in more threatening terms (discrimination), while a male experimenter should elicit equally lower levels of attitude change because of his threatening status” (726). 'Forgetting', in this sense, is to mean that the unknown information given to participants is not known to them because either they or people around them had 'forgotten' to bring it to light. The second experiment tested the hypothesis that the person's mind is to be more easily changed if a person from their ingroup (e.g. a female talking to females) is to present the reassociation of feminist ideals in a non-threatening manner, such as saying how the information presented is commonly forgotten instead of not being known due to discrimination. These two hypotheses were proven true after they had groups of males and females fill in three questionnaires during the experiments, the participants clearly being in favour of women's rights but not feminist movements. When it came time for the experimenters to tell the group about the connection between feminism and women's rights, the participants had a more positive view if an ingroup member were to tell them (a female to a group of females) rather than an outgroup member (a male to a group of females). The outgroup member, as Vernet, Vala and Butera had hypothesised before the experiment had begun, was seen as a threat by the other ingroup members, confirming their thoughts that ingroup members were less likely to trust outgroup members. The same goes for the second variable of the experiments, the reassociation part, where the experimenters told about the reason for disassociation as either being from forgetting or discrimination. Participants were more likely to be positive with a less-threatening word ('forget') than a harsher, threatening word ('discriminate').

     The authors did indeed answer their main question: can men promote feminist movements? And the answer is yes, but due to their findings, only under specific conditions, such as only with male-influenced targets. 'In sum, the reassociation procedure can be used effectively to promote positive attitudes toward feminist movements, but within the framework of intragroup, not intergroup, social-influence communications' (730). Of course the experiment conducted had its limitations of only presenting male-female relations, excluding the possibility of a perceived threat and only focusing on the change of attitude in targets, leaving the possibility to test whether or not there has been a change in behaviour as well. But this experiment is considered a stepping stone for the ability of minorities to have their voices heard.

     When it comes to the feminist movement, people normally think of the prototype of a woman supporting it. But this article shows that the movement doesn't have to be based on one gender, or more specifically doesn't have to be taught from one gender. While issues such as this are best to be heard from the oppressed themselves, it can be beneficial in ways to have the oppressor speak as well (within their limits, of course). When this article is juxtaposed with the first article, 'Debating Trans Inclusion in the Feminist Movement' from Eli R. Green, the big comparison made is people's misconceptions about the feminist movement. These two articles show how people believe in misconceptions such as trans people not belonging in the feminist movement as learnt from Green's article, and the missed message of the feminist movement being for and fighting for women's rights. Although it's clear that Vernet, Vala and Butera did not perform their experiment with the belief that men are excluded from the movement as trans people are, both articles help to educate people on the true idea of what feminism is and promote the ending of its multiple misconceptions. Before reading “Can Men Promote Feminist Movements?”, I had not considered men being involved in, let alone promoting, feminism. I had always seen them to be just on the sidelines, but now with this idea that they can promote the movement, granted under certain conditions to be taken seriously, it takes away the stigma that I'm used to and I'm sure other people are used to as well that feminism is a woman-only movement when really, anyone can take part and especially promote its ideals.