Are men who identify as a feminist less likely to sexually objectify women?: a cross-sectional study of heterosexual men

ABSTRACT

Previous research on men has elucidated several correlates of sexually objectifying behaviours towards women. Given increased attention to women’s issues and feminism within the USA, it seems important to not overlook men who identify as feminists and how this identification relates to sexual objectification. Consequently, this cross-sectional study investigated whether feminist identity was associated with sexual objectification (i.e. gazing, commentary), and acceptance of sexual objectification in a sample of 233 heterosexual adult men (M_age= 38.07; SD = 11.94) recruited through MTurk. While including other established correlates of sexual objectification (e.g. pornography use, sexism), hierarchical multiple regression analyses evidenced that feminist identity was negatively associated with acceptance of sexual objectification and sexually objectifying gaze. These findings are the first to demonstrate that identifying with feminism is negatively associated with sexual objectification and perhaps uncovers an important focus for interventions to prevent sexual objectification.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual objectification
• pornography
• sexism
• feminist identity
• feminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Institutional Review Board through Kenyon College approval was acquired on 3/8/2018 for this study (IRB# 20180033).

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the authors, upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The study referenced here included both men and women, and four other scales were also administered. This manuscript represents a stand-alone study. No other study or manuscript has been composed based on the larger study (or other data) to date, and the measures utilized in this study have not been included or analysed in any other study using this data.

2 We acknowledge that the term “mediation” in a strict sense is most appropriate to use within true experimental studies. Therefore, where possible, we use and prefer the term “indirect effect”.

3 Six different single-mediator models were also tested and results showed no significant differences in findings (i.e. the significance nor sign of any regression coefficient was different).

4 We agree with others (e.g., Hayes, 2018; Rucker et al., 2011) who highlight major concerns with traditional ideas of “complete” versus “partial mediation”. We nonetheless, provide the label to conform to common phraseology.

5 We do not report paths a1 and b1 here because they are the exact same as reported in the prior analysis (see Table 5, Model 1).