Conservative clothing doesn’t stop some men from being harassed

No matter how much skin a woman shows, there’s no escaping the toxic male gaze.

A new study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology suggests that for some men, conservatively dressed women are no safer than women who dress provocatively, especially if they have higher testosterone levels.

It’s a well-known cultural assumption that scantily clad women are less intelligent and more promiscuous than their more modestly clad counterparts, making them common targets for harassment, and the study authors wondered whether men’s testosterone levels had anything to do with this.

“Given these harmful outcomes, it is important to understand the mechanisms that lead to the dehumanization of women. We were interested in doing so by investigating whether physiological factors, such as increased testosterone levels, play a role in men’s dehumanization of sexualized and desexualized women. contribute to this work,” study author Francesca Luberti of Nipissing University said in a statement to PsyPost.

Previous research has shown that testosterone levels in men are linked to social behavior, both good and bad, including sexual aggression and impulsivity, both of which stem from the dehumanization of others. As the study authors describe it, to dehumanize someone is to ignore a person’s capacity for human qualities, such as the ability to feel sad, be afraid, or behave morally.

The researchers recruited 20 men aged 18 to 38 with healthy testosterone levels to participate in two experiments, in which the volunteers were given supplementary doses of the hormone or a placebo. They then watched a video of a woman dressed conservatively or provocatively, but behaving the same way. Finally, the men completed a series of tasks to express their urge to dehumanize women.

Test results showed that men who took extra testosterone were more likely to dehumanize conservatively dressed women than men who did not receive hormone therapy.

However, testosterone levels had no significant effect on men’s perceptions of women’s revealing clothing, and testosterone levels may dehumanize women regardless of hormone, confirming previous assumptions that society has negative views of female sexuality.

“We were indeed surprised to find that testosterone did not further increase emotion-based dehumanization of sexualized women, as we predicted, but instead led to emotion-based dehumanization of non-sexualized women,” Luberti explain.

“Based on these results, it is concluded that sexualization leads to emotion-based dehumanization of targeted women, but that elevated testosterone levels may trigger this type of dehumanization even in the absence of sexualization cues,” ” she concluded.

In a statement, the researchers reiterated that testosterone is just one factor in how men treat women and called for more research into the intersection of human physiology and social conditioning.