Have We Learned Nothing?

I was reading one of my favorite smart-ass, salacious blogs yesterday (Jezebel.com), and I was surprised to find info about a new gender study conducted right here in Vermont! Jennifer Sellers, an assistant professor of psychology at Green Mountain College, was the lead author of the study.

Sellers and her team asked 95 students to watch videos of four married couples talking. Some students watched videos where the woman was verbally assertive in various situations and some students watched men be more verbally assertive in the same scenarios. To my horror, the students looked more favorably upon relationships where the woman was the verbally submissive partner (for example, in one of the videos, the verbally submissive female throws a dish towel down and leaves the kitchen when angry, rather than communicating with her partner). Further horrifying, the students saw the less verbal men as inferior. So, I guess we still think men should wear the pants?

I'm so happy to live in my cozy, liberal Burlington bubble, and this shit is a little too close to home. Like Jezebel says, "If students in Vermont are stuck thinking that women can be seen but not heard and that a real man is always dominant over his wife, what hope is there for the rest of the country?"

You can read more about the study at LiveScience.com.