William Costello

Now that title is strategic because there was a famous book called The Mismeasure of Men by Stephen Jay Gould, who was very critical of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary approaches to human behavior.

And we think it's the precise opposite that's happening in scale development in psychology now.

that a lack of insight into evolutionary psychology and just science in general is creating these crazy problematic scales.

So you've got scales that are measuring toxic masculinity, benevolent sexism, and male sexual entitlement that are actually problematic in so many ways.

But one of the ways is they're measuring...

awareness of facts about the world.

So one of the items is, women are often attracted to muscularity and dominance.

And that's taken as evidence of toxic masculinity.

And there's no attitude added on to that inference.

It's just, do you know that that's sometimes the case?

And it is sometimes the case.

And these scales...

They're like what I call the Cathy Newman of scales.

They require an extra inference about the implication of agreeing with the statement.

So you believe that women deserve to be protected.

Oh, so what you're really saying is they should have their autonomy limited.

to keep them safe for their own good.

And it's like, that's not measured.

So it's a total mismeasurement of men.

And it also pathologizes women's own preferences.