Paradoxical Associations of Masculine Ideology and Casual Sex Among Heterosexual Male Geosocial Networking App Users in China Abstract Momo, the most popular geosocial networking app in China, is used as a common platform to seek casual sex. The present study, which is based on the social constructionist view of gender, examines how the endorsement of masculinity among heterosexual male Momo users is associated with the number of casual sex partners they meet on the app. The study also explores the mediating role of the sex motive for using Momo. Analyses of survey data from 125 heterosexual male Momo users showed that the endorsement of masculinity had an indirect positive relationship with the number of sex partners mediated by the sex motive; at the same time, it had a direct but negative association with the number of sex partners. These paradoxical associations were explained by different patterns across the individual dimensions of masculinity ideology. Specifically, the dimension of the Importance of Sex was responsible for the positive indirect association whereas the dimension of Avoidance of Femininity was responsible for the negative direct association. These findings are discussed in relation to the wen-wu dyad of Chinese masculinity. Because unsafe sex has been found to be associated with the use of geosocial networking apps, my study also calls for integrating the concept of practicing safer sex with the cultural ideal of masculinity.

Toward a More Complete Understanding of Bystander Willingness to Help: What Role Does Critical Consciousness Play? Abstract Sexual assault is a common phenomenon on university campuses with about one in five women victimized while in college. Consequently, bystander intervention programs have been gaining momentum. To improve such programs, research has begun to identify factors that may facilitate or impede individuals’ willingness to help a potential victim of sexual assault. The current study adds to this literature by: (a) examining potential differences in rape myth acceptance, critical consciousness, and willingness to help based on types of self-reported exposure to sexual assault; (b) exploring the previously unexamined mediating role of critical consciousness in the relationship between exposure to sexual assault and willingness to help; and (c) clarifying how the extent of rape myth acceptance impacts the relationship between exposure to sexual assault and willingness to help. Using a sample of 511 U.S. undergraduate students, results generally demonstrated that those with multiple types of exposure to sexual assault victimization demonstrated the highest levels of critical consciousness and greater willingness to help. Additionally, there was both a significant indirect effect of exposure to sexual assault on willingness to help via critical consciousness and a conditional effect of exposure to sexual assault on willingness to help that was stronger at lower levels of rape myth acceptance. Results highlight the importance of programming targeted at increasing critical consciousness.

Understanding Processes of Transformative Change: A Qualitative Inquiry into Empowering Sources and Outcomes Identified by Women in Rural Nicaragua Abstract Despite decades of research on women’s human rights and empowerment across several academic disciplines, inequities between women and men persist at alarming rates across the globe. The current study employs an in-depth exploration of how programs intended for empowering purposes impact individual women’s lives, focusing on the transformation promoted at multiple ecological levels. More specifically, the present study assesses how women involved in a feminist organization in rural Nicaragua were affected by their participation in the organization. Via analysis of qualitative interviews with 14 women, we identify aspects of the organization most associated with actualizing transformative change and assess how involvement in the organization affected women’s sense of self and lived experience. Specifically, we identify and explicate two themes: (a) moving forward, which details aspects of the organization that facilitated positive changes for women, and (b) feminist autoconocimiento, which involved developing an understanding of oneself as capable of offering valuable contributions to their homes and communities. Findings have implications for promoting empowering contexts for women, with a focus on ensuring that desired empowering change is occurring for the women involved.

Invisible Household Labor and Ramifications for Adjustment: Mothers as Captains of Households Abstract We address the issue of invisible labor in the home by examining how the distribution of the mental and emotional labor inherent in managing the household between spouses may be linked with women’s well-being, including their satisfaction with life, partner satisfaction, feelings of emptiness, and experiencing role overload. In a sample of 393 U.S. married/partnered mothers, mostly of upper-middle class backgrounds with dependent children at home, results showed that a majority of women reported that they alone assumed responsibility for household routines involving organizing schedules for the family and maintaining order in the home. Some aspects of responsibilities related to child adjustment were primarily handled by mothers, including being vigilant of children’s emotions, whereas other aspects were shared with partners, including instilling values in the children. Responsibility was largely shared for household finances. Regression analyses showed that after controlling for dimensions of emotional and physical intimacy, feeling disproportionately responsible for household management, especially child adjustment, was associated with strains on mothers’ personal well-being as well as lower satisfaction with the relationship. The implications of our work highlight the need to consider the burden of household management on mothers’ well-being and speak to mothers’ own needs for support and care as the primary managers of the household. In future research on division of labor, it will be useful to measure these critical but often neglected dimensions of who coordinates the household, given potential ramifications of this dimension for the quality of marriages and women’s personal well-being.

“Should Have Known Better than to Fraternize with a Black Man”: Structural Racism Intersects Rape Culture to Intensify Attributions of Acquaintance Rape Victim Culpability Abstract Rape culture is characterized by prevalent rape of women by male acquaintances, which is exacerbated in the aftermath by negative social responses including attributions of victim culpability. In prior research, collaborators and I found that, consistent with norm theory, perceiving sociolegal context as unclear and ineffective in expressing that rape of women is a crime (vs. perceiving that law clearly and effectively expresses that rape is a crime) paradoxically intensified negative reactions and culpability attributions toward a woman raped by a male acquaintance. In the current research, I tested the hypothesis that, amidst rape culture, structural racism—in particular, disparate hypersexuality stereotyping of Black men—paradoxically would intensify attributions of victim culpability toward a woman raped by a Black male acquaintance. In Study 1, 268 students at a university in the Southern United States stereotyped Black men and Black women as more hypersexual than same-gender counterparts of other races/ethnicities. In Study 2, 238 students from the same university attributed more culpability to an acquaintance rape victim whose perpetrator was Black (vs. perpetrators of other races/ethnicities), and this effect resulted in part from rape-propensity stereotyping that was disparately activated by the Black perpetrator. Taken together, the present research highlights that intersectional dynamics do not work exclusively within members of particular groups, where marginalized identities coincide, but also in the contextual space that invisibly but undeniably affects people’s lives. Suggestions for combatting rape culture, structural racism, and their intersections are discussed.

Does Gender Nonconforming Behavior in Early Childhood Predict Adolescents’ Depressive Symptoms? Abstract Gender nonconforming behavior (GNB) is a risk factor for poorer psychological adjustment, but little is known about whether preschool-age children displaying GNB are at risk for depressive symptoms during adolescence. We examined maternal report of GNB at age 4–5 years-old as a predictor of adolescents’ depressive symptoms at age 16–17 years-old in a longitudinal study of U.S. children from a predominantly low SES (61% received Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and African American (90%) sample. Youth with GNB in early childhood (n = 10) reported more depressive symptoms during adolescence than did their peers without GNB (n = 115), and this relationship remained after controlling for covariates (environmental risk, prenatal exposure, and neonatal medical problems). Our findings suggest that early GNB may be a risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms in adolescence. Further research is needed to replicate the current findings with a larger sample and to identify the underlying mechanisms by which GNB may increase risk for depressive symptoms. If replicated, the findings further highlight the need for both professionals and parents to become aware of the potential challenges that children with GNB face and to become knowledgeable about ways to facilitate healthy adjustment among gender nonconforming youth.

Automatic Associations and Conscious Attitudes Predict Different Aspects of Men’s Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Harassment Proclivities Abstract Intimate partner violence against women (IPV) and sexual harassment are both widespread. Research on their causes and attitudinal correlates has rarely examined implicit, automatic cognitive associations related to the partner (in IPV aggressors) or to women (in sexual harassment offenders). The aim of the present research was to study these implicit associations in 129 male German students. Participants completed scales of hostile sexism (HS), masculine gender role stress (MGRS), short-term (STMO) and long-term mating orientation (LTMO), and proclivity to both IPV and sexual harassment. Next they performed a primed lexical decision task that measured whether concepts of violence, power, hostility, and sexuality were differentially associated with representations of women, men, and the participant’s own intimate partner. Results showed that implicit associations of own partner with violence as well as hostility were generally high but did not correlate strongly with the proclivity measures. Furthermore, the proclivity measures were positively predicted by HS, MGRS, and STMO, whereas LTMO negatively predicted IPV proclivity. Practice implications point to the need to address early socialization processes that may shape men’s negative associations with female partners. Some strategies to prevent and reduce these types of implicit associations are discussed.

Laboring to Make Sex “Safe”: Sexual Vigilance in Young U.S. College Women Abstract Definitions of “safe sex” often focus on the use of condoms and contraception, but largely ignore other dimensions of safety, such as efforts to feel emotionally or physically safe. These gaps in the definition of the term safety demand greater attention to how being safe and feeling safe are interpreted by individuals who live and engage in sexual lives marked by social and political inequality. In the current study, we draw on interviews with 17 young women ages 18–28 from a U.S. urban university to examine efforts they used to protect themselves in sexual relationships. When having sex with men, we found young women relied on a range of efforts to keep themselves safe, such as controlling their own sexual desire, developing strict contraceptive regimens, and building relational contexts characterized by physical and emotional safety. We argue that sexual safety labor (i.e., “good” contraceptive behavior, “waiting” to have sex, and “careful” decision-making) offers evidence of what safe sex requires of young women. We examine this range of cognitions and behaviors as forms of labor directed at making sex feel and be safe; however, young women did not describe these efforts in terms of their own time or energy. In our analysis, we suggest that vigilance in sexual relationships has become part of young women’s required repertoire of safe sex behaviors, but largely goes unnoticed by them. We connect these findings with public health campaigns that teach young people about safety and offer alternatives for researchers looking to understand and study what is imagined as “safe sex.”

A Crisis of Competence: Benevolent Sexism Affects Evaluations of Women’s Competence Abstract People higher in benevolent sexism often outwardly endorse gender equality, but support men over women for challenging positions and experiences. Reflecting shifting standards (a tendency to evaluate stereotyped group members against within-category judgment standards), people higher in sexism may evaluate prominent women’s competence against a lower competency standard for women (who are stereotyped as less competent than men are), and not against a standard for men. Thus prominent women could be perceived as especially competent (versus other women), yet men might still garner ultimate support. Study 1 tested for this possibility using an ecologically valid example: the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Study 1 showed that benevolent (and not hostile) sexism predicted less opposition to Donald Trump’s candidacy and more positive attitudes toward the election outcome among 57 mostly female U.S. college students. Study 1 also showed that benevolent sexism positively predicted competence perceived in Hillary Clinton. To determine if this positive relationship reflected shifting standards, we manipulated the gender to which a prominent woman would be compared in Study 2 with 189 U.S. adults. Reflecting shifting standards, benevolent sexism related to evaluating women as more competent when they were evaluated against other women versus other men. Shifting standards also mediated a relationship between benevolent sexism and expecting lower female success. Using shifting standards may be one way that people higher in benevolent sexism might evaluate prominent women as especially competent, yet ultimately support men.

Objectification in Heterosexual Romantic Relationships: Examining Relationship Satisfaction of Female Objectification Recipients and Male Objectifying Perpetrators Abstract Sexual objectification is one of most the common manifestations of discrimination against women in Western societies; however, few studies have examined objectification in the context of romantic relationships. The primary aim of the present research was to bring the study of objectification phenomena into the setting of heterosexual romantic relationships. The present set of studies examined the relation between sexual objectification and relationship satisfaction for both the sexual objectification recipient (Study 1) and the sexual objectification perpetrator (Study 2). The results of the first study with 206 U.S. undergraduate female students in committed romantic relationships replicated a previously identified negative association between feeling dehumanized by one’s partner and intimate relationship satisfaction. Moreover, this link was mediated by greater body dissatisfaction and decreased sexual satisfaction. The second study with 94 U.S. undergraduate male students in committed romantic relationships demonstrated a negative association between sexual objectification perpetration and relationship satisfaction. Furthermore, this negative relation was mediated by greater partner objectification and lower sexual satisfaction. Results of both studies demonstrated the effect of sexual objectification (as recipient or perpetrator) on global intimate relationship health. Additionally, the results highlight poor sexual satisfaction as a key dyadic mechanism linking objectification processes to intimate relationship outcomes.