[evolveme]

ABC has a show called What Would You Do, which is premised in the research of social psychology and which tests people's real world biases like racism and sexism. Maybe you've seen it. Often if you ask someone whether they'd help a woman in distress (i.e., being publicly abused by her boyfriend) no matter who she is, most people will tell you that they would. But the reality is that in scenarios where the woman is demurely dressed, some people do help, and in scenarios where the woman is more provocatively dressed, nearly no one offers to help. It's in their bias.

Same is true in scenarios where people witness white boys committing an act of vandalism (few people intervene) as opposed to when they witness black kids committing an act of vandalism (LOTS of folks call 911). Still, they *say* that it didn't matter whether the boys were black or white, they would have done the same thing. But in reality, people didn't actually do the same thing.

So when people tell me that they make no judgment between a male or masculine person who swears or uses vulgarity and a feminine person who does, when our culture tells us that feminine people are supposed to behave demurely and to be good, I disagree. I think that our true biases are other. In spite of what we think we feel, I just don't buy what we're saying we feel.