Who wrote this thing?

The organizations and writers behind the USA Today article are frankly more interesting than the article itself.

Gina Glantz is a founder of Gender Avenger. Gender Avenger's mission is to “build a community that ensures women are represented in the public dialog.” Gender Avenger seems to mostly do this by taking donations, asking people to pledge to never appear on a public panel that doesn't have a female speaker and publicly shaming any panel that doesn't have enough women for their taste. Their GA Tally App seems explicitly designed to encourage people to bully all private and private speaking panels into always having a 50/50 gender split. Be sure to watch GA Tally's cringe worthy video ad.

Julie Burton is the President of WMC (Women's Media Center). WMC was “founded in 2005 as a non-profit progressive women's media organization by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem.” It claims to be “directly engaged with the media at all levels to ensure that a diverse group of women is present in newsrooms, on air, in print and online, in film, entertainment, and theater, as sources and subjects.” Mostly these means obsessing over women's supposed under/misrepresentation in all forms of media. I mean really obsessing - seconds of screen-time for women, number of bylines, stories about women, etc.

I've actually been meaning to write about the WMC for awhile. I'm particularly worried about the WMC Speech Project, which seems like (yet another) feminist Internet censorship campaign.

Lastly, there is Debbie Walsh, director of CAWP (Rutger's College Center for American Women in Politics). CAWP's “mission is to promote greater knowledge and understanding about women's participation in politics and government and to enhance women's influence and leadership in public life.” They seem less ridiculous than Gender Avenger and the WMC. They do run programs that encourage only girls (rather then all children) to run for political office. However, I don't see anything on their website advocating for women's only political quotas (which is a popular feminist cause in Europe and the UN).

Article's supposed evidence is questionable, if not outright dishonest

Let's talk about the article's claims and evidence. The byline “Hillary makes history and who do you call to chew it over? If you're TV bookers, mostly men” makes it sound like all the data will be about the gender split among analysts talking about Clinton:

“Usually when history is made, news outlets call upon individuals with unique understanding of the circumstances to interpret the significance of the milestone and explain its consequences — people whom viewers would consider experts.

Apparently on cable news, women political commentators don’t fall into that category. Hillary Clinton made history by winning enough delegates to be the first female presidential nominee from a major party. Yet the conversation and analysis about that historic moment has been delegated primarily to male commentators.”

However, the article has a rough start with its first piece of supposed evidence for this claim:

“On the day when headlines and large photos of the former secretary of State celebrated her historic role in American politics, not one woman appeared on Fox News' The Kelly File. In fact, the only time Hillary Clinton was mentioned was when Megyn Kelly speculated about the cost of her wardrobe, referred to a focus group discussing Clinton’s supposed divisiveness and considered whether President Obama's endorsement would create a conflict of interest with the investigation of her State Department emails.”

Megyn Kelly, the host of the Kelly File, is a women. So, it seems dishonest (if not balantly inaccurate) to claim "not one women" appeared on the show. The article also (conveniently) doesn't mention what day it is talking about. It sounds (or is meant to sound) like is it talking about the day Clinton was reported to have won the Democratic Party's nomination. However, this can't be the case.

Clinton was widely reported to have won the democratic nomination on June 7th. On that day, the Kelly File had a large audience panel with female participants as well as an interview with a female senator and a female Bennie Sanders supporter (who is going to hell for the sin for not basing her political decisions on a candiate's genitals). The interview's main topics were the viability of Clinton's candidacy and the remote possibility Bennie Sanders could still win the party nomination. Clinton's wardrobe never came up during the interview:

Megyn Kelly (host): “It is history. This is history – first time a women has secured the nomination of a major party”

Female Senator: “Yes, absolutely historic and long overdue”

The article is either trying to deceive its readers or outright lie to them. Things don't get much better as the article continues:

“Other cable shows did a bit — just a bit — better. On CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and the MSNBC, Fox and CNN morning shows (Morning Joe, Fox & Friends, New Day) about one in three of the voices in their discussions were women. Only The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC hit 50%”

Notice the second paragraph's list of news shows doesn't explicitly mention whether or not the shows in question were even talking about Clinton. Furthermore, what do those figures even mean? Morning Joe and Fox & Friends happen to have 1 female host and 2 male hosts. New Day has 1 female host and 1 male host. Rachael Maddow only has one female host. Maybe Maddow had a guest? What is the article saying even happened?

By the way, those two paragraphs are the only information the article offers on the gender split of male/female analysts discussing Hillary Clinton's campaign. The article then almost seamlessly transitions into Who Talks data for the entire presidential campaign from March 1st – May 31, 2016 for the guests on these shows. This data (along with included charts) is the center piece of the article. It also tells us nothing absolutely nothing about the gender split of guests specifically talking about Clinton, although it certainly seems like the article doesn't necessarily want readers to notice this. Who Talks' 3 month data doesn't elaborate what aspects of the presidential campaign female guests talked about. For all we know, 100% of all female guests (or male guests that matter) could have talked exclusively about Clinton during this time.

Sample Size: 6 shows is not representative of all TV

You might think, “So the data isn't about Clinton. Doesn't it still shows more male guests?” It only shows more male guests on 6 shows on 3 different networks. This small sample is no where near representative of all TV news media, much less all media in general.

Women aren't represented...in 2 shows named after women?

Who Talk would have us strangely only look at a show's guests when considering female representation in news media, even when talking about two shows hosted solely by and named after women (compared to only one show named after a man). Maddow in particular is not only a women, but something of a feminist media icon. One of the three hosts of both Fox & Friends and Morning Joe are women. One of the two hosts of New Day is a women. I notice the Who Talks doesn't include Fox News' Outnumbered, a show where the whole point is there are 4 female hosts and only 1 male host.

Show Male Hosts Female Hosts Morning Joe 2 1 Fox & Friends 2 1 New Day 1 1 Rachael Maddow Show 0 1 The Kelly File 0 1 Anderson Cooper 360 1 0

It's an interesting side note that the show with supposedly the fewest female guests (The Kelly File) is hosted by one woman. However, the show with supposedly the most female guests is the only show on the list hosted by just one man with no female co-host (Anderson Cooper 360).

Where is the actual data?

I say "supposedly", because I'm not sure I should take the Who Talks data at face value. These are organizations with obvious feminist bias and the article (written by high-ranking members of these organizations) seems to be trying to deceive the reader. Who Talks doesn't provide any of their raw data or detailed explanation of their methodology. Would the same guest be counted twice if he/she appeared at different times? Unfortunately, there is also no easy way for me to check the data. It isn't worth trying to track down and watch 3 months of 6 different shows. However, the article's deceptive reporting of the Kelly File makes me distrust this data.

WMC Reports will make your eyes bleed

The meat of the article is the Who Talks data and charts. However,the article also throws out statistics from the WMC:

"Last year, as the presidential election got under way, research conducted for the Women’s Media Center showed that men reported 65% of U.S. political stories in 2014. Research commissioned by the center on the 2012 presidential election found that 71% of front-page stories were written by men and that on cable and network TV, political news show guests and experts were 77% men."

These are from the WMC's annual “The Status of Women in the U.S. Media” reports, which are typhoons of feminist grievances and statistical talking points about media diversity/representation.

The sample for the 65% statistic is from a study by Novetta commissioned by the WMC. I can't find much about the methodology used. The WMC report claims the sample used article from 10 newspapers collected from October 1st to December 31, 2014. There are major newspapers (USA Today, New York Times), but this is still a very small sample size. Also, I'm a little concerned by exactly how articles were selected. WMC claims that “first or A section” articles were used for 8 of the papers, but for the 2 “tabloid format” newspapers articles were “selected based on content, generally excluding sports/lifestyle/entertainment” (2015 WMC Report, pg 16).

The 71% and 77% stats are from the 2013 WMC Report (pg 11-12), which sites the 4th Estate Project as its source for both stats. However, the 4th Estate Project seems to actually give somewhat different numbers for both figures. Instead of 71%, the 4th Estate claims that from Jan 1 – April 14 76.2% of stories were written by men, which then lowered to 72.1% from April 15 – August 23. The link to the web page that supposedly explains 4th Estates methodology in detail is broken.

The 77% of show guests and experts actually appears to be “percent of all quotations”, so I'm not exactly sure how that works. However, a 4th estate infograph says the number is actually 81%. Again, the link that supposedly explains the methodology for this statistic is broken.

I'm not necessarily trying to strongly dispute WMC statistics, but I am casting doubt on them. The WMC has obvious bias and appears to be playing fast and loose with these statistics. Ultimately, the Who Talks data is the meat of the USA article and (as I've shown) it is not only untrustworthy, but mostly ridiculous.

Focus on equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity

The Who Talks data is a weak foundation for the article's assertion that women are devalued/under-represented in news media, but that is still the assertion they make. The article claims there are many female journalists (but I guess they just don't get work, except the ones with their own shows?) and women have been the majority of the U.S. electorate since 1964 (a fact feminists looking to paint women as an oppressed class normally wouldn't point out), so women should “except a better balance of commentary”.

Statistics aside, this article touches are two very common trains of thought in modern feminist thought that I take issue with:

Falsely equating physical diversity with intellectual diversity/ability

Focusing on equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity

The article itself completely ignores why they may be any sort of gender imbalance in who creates news coverage. Is it because of gender discrimination or other factors that have nothing to do with sexism. For example, could men tending to say in the work force longer be causing them to be the majority of experts in various fields?

By ignoring why there is a supposed gender imbalances, the article also ignores the possible moral implications of trying to correct it, which would almost certainly involve some form of gender discrimination against men.

Conclusion

The USA Today opinion piece is a dishonest attempt by three feminist organizations to show widespread discrimination against women in news media representation. Writing in the article appears intentionally designed to be deceptive. The questionable Who Talks data at the center of the article has a ridiculously small sample size and unclear methodology. It supposedly shows gender discrimination among guests on a few popular news shows, which inconveniently almost all have female hosts. The tangential data cited from the WMC is less embarrassing, but still very shady.

Ultimately, the USA Today article is a reminder of how surprising large, well-funded feminist organizations are constantly using deceptive methods and biased interpretations of questionable data to control and influence every aspect of public discourse.

Endnotes:

Twisted feminist ideas of gender equality

There are some other additional points I wanted to make. While feminists often demonstrate they believe in equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity when talking about certain gender quotas, they only apply this in areas they perceive as desirable and only when it's advantageous to women. Notice there is no feminist outcry for 50/50 gender parity in primary school teaching or nursing. These are fields dominated by women, so trying for a 50/50 gender parity would require preferential hiring of men (which would be discrimination against women).

Vast majority men = problem

Vast majority women = equality

"Gender equality" is not a consistent belief within modern feminism, just a political weapon to be invoked when convenient. Feminists will talk about the importance "gender equality" in the boardroom, but are less concerned about "gender equality" when campaigning AGAINST the presumption of equal shared custody of children following divorce.

Feminists don't really want more women, they want more like-minded female feminists

Mainstream politically active feminism is very much a creature of the progressive political left. I wonder how Gina Glantz (founder of Gender Avenger, but also chair of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund) and Julie Burton (WMC President) would respond to a new primetime show with 10 conservative female hosts condemning abortion. They might try to counter they (despite what their websites says) don't actually want simply more women, but a balanced increase of more women of all viewpoints. If this is the case, maybe the WMC should re-think its training course designed to train "progressive women's voices".

Both Time Magazine and Fortune wrote articles about the new study and uncritically accepted its findings. Both Time and Fortune magazine also used the opportunity to push even more sensationalist misinformation about the "gender wage gap" and women in the workplace.

In its article entitled "Even on eBay, Men Make More Money Than Women", Time magazine writes:

"The wage gap between men and women has been shown to be real time and again: men tend to make significantly more than their female counterparts for the same work."

No, it doesn't. It doesn't show that men make more that women for the "same work". It shows that men tend to choose career fields that are more demanding, more dangerous and more lucrative. Even when they are doing the "same work", it's often not really the same work. For example, male doctors tend toward more demanding medical specializations than women. Men also tend to work longer hours and take less time off work.

This is why gender wage gap propaganda is so dastardly - there technically is a gender wage gap, but it is not likely due to be gender discrimination, but due to the different career choices men and women tend to make. The claim that the wage gap is caused by gender discrimination has been repeatedly debunked. However, the gender discrimination line is still spread by feminist ideologues and politicians who think they can use it to garner voters (even when they have a gender wage gap in their own ranks).

The Study: Is eBay representative of product markets?

The study is entitled "How many cents on the dollar? Women and men in product markets". However, eBay is not a very good general representation of all product markets. For one thing...

Problem #1 - How do you reliably determine an eBay seller's gender?

The study claims:

"Data were extracted in 2014 at the eBay Research Lab. The 420 most popular products from each of the meta-categories in the eBay catalog were selected for analysis. The gender of sellers and buyers was identified on the basis of the gender reported by users at the time of registration" (7) [emphasis added]

However, seller profiles do not appear to list gender. Clicking through a bunch of eBay listings I couldn't find a single seller profile that listed gender. Sure, sellers could list their respective genders in their general seller information if they really wanted to (most seller's don't because there isn't any reason to), just as a sellers could just as easily put his/her race, shoe size or favorite pizza topping. However, there is not a separate field that specifically lists a seller's gender.

I even made an eBay account to double-check. I was never asked my gender during account setup and no where in the account settings could I find an option to identify my gender.

Furthermore, the Time magazine article claims:

"eBay released a statement noting that it was not involved and the research, and nearly half of its top consumer sellers in the U.S. are female. “We are passionate about harnessing our platform to empower millions of people by leveling the playing field for them,” the company said. “We do not reveal the gender of our sellers, although they can choose to do that themselves. When our sellers succeed, eBay succeeds."” [emphasis added]

I haven't found a primary copy of this statement yet, but its telling how Time magazine expressed little skepticism of the study despite having this statement from eBay.

The study could have guessed gender from the first names of eBay members. However, it is risky and imprecise to guess gender based on names. Furthermore, while I could believe that eBay might share gender data of its sellers, I find it harder to believe that eBay would share the first names of its sellers with the study's authors - two outside researchers that don't seem very noteworthy. Frankly, I would be pretty angry if eBay shared any of my personal information with these people without my explicit consent.

However, the study supposedly used eBay transaction data from 2009-2012 (which makes all the data in this new study at least 4 years old). Maybe between 2009-2012 eBay asked sellers for/gave sellers the option to provide gender identity and changed their practices later? In addition, maybe eBay decided to keep this data years later despite changing their practices. Then (strangely), eBay decided to share it with researchers with seemingly no connection to eBay, despite eBay supposedly claiming "we do not reveal the gender of our sellers".

There are a lot of questions about how exactly the study got this data.

Also, even if the seller is registered as a man or women (which currently there does not appear to be any way for a seller to do) that doesn't necessarily mean that seller is actually that gender. First, sellers could lie about their gender (again - sellers don't actually appear to be asked about their gender anyway). Second, while the study supposedly eliminated eBay "stores" from its statistics, some private sellers may still be multiple person operations. You can't really say the seller is a woman or a man if a man takes the product pictures and a woman writes the product descriptions.

Buyers' perception of gender

In addition, the study has an Achilles heel. While the authors claim to know the gender of eBay sellers, they admit that most sellers don't publicly identify their genders:

"Potential buyers do not receive direct information from eBay about the sellers’ gender. Yet, the gender of a private seller can be gleaned from the range of items a merchant is offering for sale (for example, selling female clothing suggests that the seller is likely a woman) and, at times, from the seller’s username."

The authors want to attribute their findings to gender discrimination, but they can't unless they can prove that buyers can figure out the gender of anonymous eBay sellers. So the authors are trying to claim that buyers routinely accurately guess the gender of a seller (again - assuming the selling actually has one gender).

"Four hundred people participated in the experiment, each evaluating five user profiles. Of the 2000 evaluations, the gender was correctly identified in 1127 cases and mistakenly identified in 170. In 701 cases, participants reported that they could not discern whether the sellers were male or female"

So 170 (mistaken gender) + 701 (could not discern) = 871 (couldn't correctly guess gender). 871 (couldn't correctly guess gender)/1127 (could correctly guess gender) = 56.35% chance can correctly guess gender

1127 (could correctly guess gender) + 170 (incorrectly guessed gender) = 1297 (could make any guess about gender)/2000 = 64.85% chance confident enough to make make any guess (true/false) about gender.

A 56.35% chance respondents could guess the correct gender and a 64.85% respondents felt confident enough to make any guess regarding gender. This doesn't seem like a very convincing argument that buyers consistently guess a seller's gender, especially when guessing gender is already only a 50% coin toss. Indeed, it shows that over one-third (100%-64.85%=35.15%) of the time a buyer doesn't even feel confident enough to guess a seller's gender. Also, none of this actually proves that actual buyers try to guess the gender of the seller or that it affects their bidding decisions.

Gender is least likely of a sea of factors

The study claims:

"Auctions are ideal for testing for gender differences in outcomes because, after an item has been listed, the final price is not affected by the seller’s behavior, only by the bidding of potential buyers."

This is not true. There are numerous other variables that could affect a buyer's bid: the sellers rating, the sellers return policy, the seller's page layout, the product description, shipping fees, shipping location, warranties, pictures of the item, whether the buyer is currently bidding on competing items, time left in the auction, number of other bids, number of competing auctions currently available, etc.

These seem much more obvious and likely decisive factors than what gender a buyer thinks a seller might be. The study claims it controls for many (but not all) of these of possible factors, but I don't see how they could possible effectively control for qualitative subjective variables such as the quality of a product photo or product description. They also don't appear to include major factors like return policies or warranties.

Furthermore, the study finds that men and women tend to sell very different items. Women also tend to sell cheaper items and set lower starting bids. In addition, female sellers only make up only 23.07% of the sellers in the study's dataset. So even more statistical voodoo is used to try to make data on male and female sellers comparable.

Personally, I have never considered someone's gender when buying from eBay. It just isn't a factor. I'm sure the authors would argue I still have a unconscious bias (supposed unconscious biases being conveniently almost impossible to disprove). It seems like the study is trying to attribute its findings to one of the least likely factors that may affect a buyer's decisions.

Brad and Alison

I'm pretty skeptical about this study. The authors also are claiming to have data on the gender sellers that it doesn't seem like they could have and claiming that eBay buyers reliably sniff out gender when it appears they do not. However, there is one part of the study that seems somewhat okay:

"To test whether people evaluate products that women sell as less valuable than the same products when sold by men, we conducted another experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk, asking participants to report the monetary value they assign to an Amazon $100 money-value gift card (“How much are you willing to pay?”) when sold by either Alison or Brad...One hundred sixteen people participated in the experiment; 59 were asked to report their evaluation of a $100 gift card sold by Alison, and 57 were asked to report their evaluation of a $100 gift card sold by Brad. The average value assigned to the gift card sold by a woman was $83.34, whereas the average value assigned to the same card sold by a man was $87.42" (6)

Okay, so that's a difference. Doesn't strike me as a major difference, especially when you consider how small the sample size for the survey is. I would also be interested to know how they recruited people through Mechanical Turk. The wording of the recruitment ad could have biased responses. However, while it seems kinda interesting, I'm not prepared to jump to the same conclusions as the study's authors.

Authors push most feminist interpretation of data

I often talk about feminist bias in research. I have explained that feminism is not simply (or even always) the belief in the equality of women. Its an ideology with various ideological beliefs. The main feminist ideological belief is the existence of a "patriarchy" - a vaguely defined societal system that seeks to oppress women as a class (normally for the benefit of men as a class). When I say that the study's authors are pushing the most "feminist" interpretation of their findings, I mean that they are pushing a interpretation of their data most in-line with this belief

Notice the study's authors introduce their study with the claim that:

"Gender inequality persists in U.S. society to this day. In the labor market, progress toward equality in employment..." (1)

Then they drop a slew of stats on the gender wage gap and employment differences. However, as I pointed out with the gender wage gap, none of these stats may be the result of oppressive gender discrimination against women, but may reflect different work and lifestyle choices that men and women tend to make. However, the authors only seem to see gender discrimination as the main possible factor.

Look at what they authors write about their own study:

"To test whether people evaluate products that women sell as less valuable than the same products when sold by men..." (7)

"One explanation for this disparity is that people tend to assign a lower value to products when sold by women rather than by men." (7)

with new identical products, the gender price gap cannot be attributed to the quality of the product but rather to beliefs about gender." [emphasis added] (6)

"One mechanism that could generate disparities between women and men in product markets is the attribution of a lower value to a product sold by a woman than to a product sold by a man." (6) [emphasis added]

"Women’s willingness to pay more than men for identical products may be related to the cultural beliefs and stereotypes about women being less instrumental and agentic than men."(4) [emphasis added]

Note the authors strangely also found it didn't really matter much for sellers for buyers were men or women:

"The gender of the participants in the experiments did not affect the final price, nor did it affect the differences between the prices of gift cards sold by a woman and the prices of gift cards sold by a man" (6)

So women are willing to pay more, but ultimately devalue female sellers just as much as men? This is probably the sort this thing feminists would write off to supposed "internalized misogyny".

I don't think the author's base findings are trustworthy. However, for sake of argument, even if we assume that both men and women give lower bids on products from female sellers, that doesn't necessarily imply anything negative toward female eBay sellers, much less women as a group.

Instead of claiming this shows that people devalue women, we could just as easily claim it shows that people view women as more generous and less greedy. This interpretation could be bolstered by the study's finding that female seller's tend to get more positive feedback even though they tend to have slightly less experience as sellers.

We could also consider that male sellers might tend to do certain things that female seller don't, which make their products more attractive. Male sellers might get higher bids, not because people devalue female sellers' products, but because male sellers tend to write more complete product descriptions that buyers respond to even when they don't know the sellers' gender.

Also note that authors largely brush off their finding that:

"Note that although women tended to buy more from women than from men, the effect of the interaction between being a woman seller and being a woman buyer was insignificant." (4)

If the authors were of a different mindset, they could talk about the anti-male bias of female eBay buyers (more likely female sellers just sell more products female buyers want to buy; even more likely the study is all garbage anyway).

I don't think any of these alternative interpretations are very accurate either, since I doubt the basic methodology of the study. My point is there are alternative interpretations. However, the feminist bias of the study's authors causes them to push readers toward the very dim oppressive view of women's place in the society espoused by feminism.

This is a feminist grievance study

I am very skeptical of how this study attained and manipulated it's data. However, the Achilles heel of the study is that it depends on the assumption that eBay buyers accurately and consistently guess the gender of eBay sellers, which the study data itself suggests isn't true.

It is very obvious the the study's authors wanted to create a new politically useful "wage-gap" style statistic. The authors outright state they seek to "improve on the existing literature on the gender wage gap in the labor force." The questionable narrative the study wants to push is that women are valued less than men by society, so people value the products women sell less.

Journalists debunk questionable statistics regarding violence against women

The Toledo Blade investigated the Ms. Report along with other rape studies in their comprehensive 1993 expose "The Making of an Epidemic." The Blade reported that 73% of the women Koss's study counted as "rape victims" maintained they had in fact not been raped. 42% even went on to have sex with their supposed rapists at a later time. The Blade describes the Ms. Report's flaws as a common problem within rape research: “Surveys that find high rape rates also find that many of the women labeled victims don't think they were raped.”1

Philosophy professor Christina Hoff Sommers further detailed and criticized Koss' work in her 1994 book, “Who Stole Feminism.” Sommers also debunked many other sensational statistics regarding men's supposed victimization of women, such as claims that domestic violence against women raises 40% on Superbowl Sunday and that the March of Dimes found domestic violence against women to be the leading cause of birth defects. Unlike the Ms. Report, which at least put on the pretense of actual academic research, Sommers found these figures were simply made up. There was no real primary source. However, Sommers points out that this didn't stop journalists and activists from routinely citing these statistics.

20 years later, Sommers runs a video blog where she still debunks a seemingly endless parade of sensational statistics on women's supposed oppression. In her video entitled “The Top Five Feminist Myths of All Time” she claims that “much of what we hear about the plight of American women is false,” but that “some claims have been repeated so often they are almost beyond the reach of critical analysis.” Despite her convincing research, she says all this misinformation is still difficult to publicly discredit, “because armies of advocates, journalists, political leaders” depend on it to promote their causes.

She suggests that “stories of female exploitation are readily believed” by the public because of an “admirable human tendency to be protective of women.” However, Sommers has often pointed out that even if the creators of these statistics have good intentions, their deceptions still do damage by creating a false understanding of important problems. This results in bad policy and the misdirection or squandering of scarce resources. I will add they also instill unnecessary fear in women and contribute to a climate of misandry (anti-male bigotry).

Characteristics of false statistics on gender issues

False statistics like the ones Sommers debunks often share similar flaws. Misleading and loaded questions get researchers closer to the results they want rather than closer to truth. Respondents are asked indirect rather than direct questions. Non-victims are classified as victims. Flawed studies cite other flawed studies, miscite studies, cite studies with no primary source or simply make things up. Semantic tricks, such stretching the definitions of words (especially emotionally loaded words like "sexual assault" or "violence"), are often used. Data is often portrayed in the most sensational, but least accurate way. Results that challenge the researchers' desired narrative are misrepresented, glossed over or buried. Male suffering and female perpetration is ignored (even when they are equal or greater than female suffering or male perpetration) so female suffering appears uniquely tragic

Normally by the time these statistics are debunked (if they ever are), the damage is done. They have already been accepted and promoted by mainstream journalists, politicians and activists. They have already influenced legislation, activism and public discourse. Furthermore, a new similar (and similarly questionable) statistic will soon be created to fill the void left behind by the debunked one. For example, the Superbowl domestic violence myth Sommers debunked was replaced with Superbowl sex trafficking myth.

The old debunked statistic may continue to be seen as valid in many circles. It may even detach from its primary source (if it even had a primary source) and enjoy a second life as a wandering factoid that may further mutate to reflect the biases of its users, who may claim the statistic comes from official sounding organizations like the FBI or CDC.

Such statistics often demonstrate misandry by inflating or inventing male perpetration in order to inflate or invent female victimization. They also often hide or ignore male victimization, so women can seem uniquely oppressed. The misogyny of these statistics should also not be ignored. It is cruel to terrify women with inflated claims of oppression and violence that are tenuous, if not outright fraudulent. If you are going tell women that have an incredibly high 1 in 4 chance of being raped while attending college, you better be damn sure your numbers are rock solid.

Sadly, these false statistics are so common they have become the norm for almost all gender-related issues, polluting public understanding of important issues with false and often bigoted propaganda.

This is why I am starting this blog.

I am tried of questionable and outright fraudulent information on gender issues influencing public discourse. I am tired of mainstream media outlets and political leaders regurgitating ridiculous statistics about the supposed oppression of women and evils of men. I am tired of people who try to propose the slightest rational criticism or skepticism being censored, harassed, slandered, threatened or punished. I am frustrated that genuine understanding and solutions for real victims and real human problems are sacrificed to create more political ammunition for an endless gender war in which women are used as the pawns of ideologues and men are portrayed as demons.

I hope to expose a lot of the bad scholarship on gender issues as well as encourage healthy skepticism of gender-related research. I will also touch on other issues related to gender, men's human rights and feminism. My current goal is create a kind of fact-checking resource. One of the main features of this blog will be the Gender Stat Checker (I'm thinking about a better name). This will be an continuously updated list of the many of the questionable to outright fraudulent statistics on gender issues. It will include their sources, a short explanation of their problems and other interesting facts about their use. Many of the statistics on the list will also get more through examinations in later posts. Please feel free to contact me with any suspicious gender-related research or statistics you encounter.

Footnotes:

I'm still considering what I will do for citation. I think will include in-document links for most webpages, but include footnotes for other sources (especially those that require page numbers) and additional comments. Clicking "JUMP BACK" on a citation will take you back to the footnote in the post (so you don't have to worry about losing your place).