Do you lack gender bias because of AS?

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It probably means that you don't have any religious bias. That can happen if you grew up in an environment with pretty much equal exposure to religions and secular worldviews, or more likely an environment that largely ignored religious matters.

I get the same result with the black and white IAT--smack in the middle, no bias either way. That makes sense, because I grew up in Germany until I was about six years old and simply didn't encounter any black people, nor was I taught any stereotypes about them. Then when I came to the US, one of my major first exposures to black people was neutral--my uncle was black and my cousins are biracial, and it never really made much difference because they are a military family and that defines them a lot more than race. Only once I was about twelve and my mom married a racist did I get exposed to anti-black prejudice, and by then I was too old to really internalize it.

I do have a strong anti-disability result on the IAT. That makes sense--my mother is strongly ablist, with a fear-and-pity approach to disability, and as a young child I was exposed to things like people with disabilities being talked about with pity, or being threatened with acquiring a disability myself if I did something dangerous.

I do have some minor tendency to think of young black men I don't know as being potentially a threat, but I think the same way of young white men that I don't know. Their race doesn't seem to be a factor so much as the mental image I have of men in their late teens and early twenties as being more "dangerous" than other groups. Statistically, this is true, but it is not a stereotype I agree with acting on. Most young men are not violent and it does them a disservice to lump them with the minority who are.

What I learned about prejudice in my social psychology class was interesting, though: Unprejudiced people are not the people who don't have internalized stereotypes. Like the prejudiced group, they will show biased results on the IAT. However, unlike the prejudiced group, they work to override their bias, monitoring themselves for biased actions and even biased thoughts. When you put unprejudiced people in an MRI machine, you can see their brains lighting up, working harder to counter the stereotypes they have internalized. So what the IAT measures is that internal stereotype--it doesn't measure your response to it.

Yeah, I still have a lot of trouble with using singular "they" properly. It always feels awkward. I wish I could get a good grammar tutorial on it from somewhere. Usually I try to weasel out of it by using plurals; then "they" sounds fine. Or I cop out with s/he.

I use they a lot. It's a good gender neutral way to refer to someone and is especially useful for referring to a person of unknown gender.

[img][800:675]http://www.winggirlmethod.com/images/differences-between-men-and-women2.png[/img]

Traditional Gender Biases apply to people who try to live by Traditional Gender Roles.

If the person in question actually lives by their own standards, then you can't accurately apply these traits to them.

Whilst I consider that Males & Females are Equal, my observations & experience in life has created my opinion that certain roles operate better (more efficiently) if they are carried out by a member of a specific gender.

As an example;

I consider that females make far better managers of a company/businness than males if staff confidence is to be sustained. Male managers usually (based upon my personal experience) tend to be focused on the product, meeting deadlines, pushing sales, encouraging competition between staff members to make more sales than another, etc. whereas Female managers are better at maintaining staff moral, & keeping the team working together as a whole.

It is just an observation from my own experience.

okay im sexist.

I don't think that there is any real behavioral difference between genders. I often wonder how much gender bias affects the behavior of people who have them. If anything, if people ignored gender norms, many of them would be androgynous.

I have seen many people at my special school for people on the autistic spectrum try to conform to gender expectations, but it is noticeable when they are faking because of their stereotypic behavior. There are even classmates that act according to gender norms in social situations, but act like their opposite gender in the classroom.

After earning degrees in English and Cultural Anthropology, I can tell you that the singular use of "they" is not always accepted as grammatically correct in academia. On a casual basis it's fine, but plenty of professors and TA's will ding you for it. In most classes I had, students had to use either he, she, he/she, or she/he. The professors always told the class on the first day and wrote in the syllabus if students were required to avoid the use of the general "he," as was department policy. Most professors specifically told their classes to not use "they" in a singular context, but one or two stated it was OK because none of the accepted conventions are correct anyway. It seems like one of those things that depends on who you ask, and on which grammar book you read.

I find this whole topic to be inherently confusing.

What exactly is 'gender bias'?

Is it biased to note that there are physiological, hormonal, and mental differences, in general, between the two biological genders?
If so, I suppose I'm biased, because I'm aware of those differences, and in general that awareness has proven fairly helpful in terms of anticipating the parameters of interactions with a person of a particular biological gender.

However, I'm also aware that those differences are not absolute and that there is certainly a large amount of room for deviation from the norm, especially in terms of brain structure, and that awareness allows me to adjust my perception of a particular individual based on their own identification and general interaction style if it deviates significantly from the norm for their particular biological gender.
So in that way, I'm not really biased.

I do my best to treat and react to everyone as equally as possible, at least in terms of their gender, although being an (unfortunately) heterosexual male sometimes I will treat and react to women I perceive to be attractive differently than others, even though I might rather not do so.
Damned hormones.

Am I gender biased?