As if we didn’t already guess this from the reaction to Sam Smith’s latest music video, a new study has found that both gay and straight men can be femme-phobic.
This study looked at men in higher-status job roles. It found that traditionally masculine men were judged as more suitable candidates for high-profile positions.
Surprising? Perhaps not from straight guys, but it turned out plenty of gay men felt the same.
The study was carried out by the University of Sydney. It polled 256 men, half of whom identified as gay and half as straight.
It showed participants six videotapes of candidates. Each was auditioning for a lead role in a mock Sydney tourism campaign.
They explained they wanted to cast a gay man to highlight the city’s diverse appeal.
“In the videos, the actors delivered a script related to the tourism campaign in a manner where their voice and body-language was manipulated to come across as either masculine or feminine-presenting,” says the study.
You can check out some of the tapes below. They all read the same script but presented in slightly different ways. All the actors provided two videos – one more masculine and one more feminine.
The flipside videos, where the same actors butch or camp it up, are here.
The results were clear. Both the gay and straight men indicated “a significant preference for the masculine videoclips.”
And, “in most (but not all) cases each actor’s masculine presentations received more votes compared to their feminine presentations.”
