Benny Hill is death to Title IX

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 6th, 2007

Humor, it seems, can hurt. So say researchers whose experiments found that sexist jokes promote “discrimination against women.” Participants were asked to imagine they were members of a work group in an organization and, after they read a bunch of dumb blonde jokes and other jokes (that weren’t “sexist”), they were then asked to say how much money they would be willing to donate to help (an imaginary) women’s organization.

The guys who guffawed at the jokes about broads became tightfisted. The others, we suppose, were overcome with a desire to open their wallets.

“We believe this shows that humorous disparagement creates the perception of a shared standard of tolerance of discrimination that may guide behavior when people believe others feel the same way.”

Other subjects were shown sexist video clips and were then “asked to participate in a project designed to determine how funding cuts should be allocated amongst select student organizations.” You can guess the outcome.

The credibility of social scientists hovers around that of Uri Geller or Chuck Woolery.

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