Manly Men, Statistics, and Ideological Bias
The website “It’s Good to Be a Man” (IGTBAM) is already notorious for praising the sexual objectification of women, condemning servant leadership, warning men of single mothers with no mention of the fathers as if babies just magically spring forth from women without the participation of men, and a scandal involving one of the founders (now excommunicated) teaching that women should endure physical abuse as a part of “Biblical submission.” (see here)
Today, yet again, they put their foot squarely in their mouth—this time in an astoundingly intellectually dishonest way. Michael Foster, one half of IGTBAM, posted the below.
After reading the study cited by Foster, I have a few notes for him and his audience. I’m not a statistician, but I am a professional data analyst. This particular post made me both laugh and cringe.
The claim is being made that there is a “clear correlation” between higher education and “female promiscuity.”
A different claim that is “suspected” is that these porn statistics are the same among evangelical women. Note that this is not the same “clear” claim made above. In now-deleted comments (because this masculinity page is too fragile to allow and dissent), Foster tries to pull off a sloppy motte and bailey defense in acting as if all of his claims were just “suspected” to be true instead of, to use his word, “clear.”
Regarding his “clear” claim, the cited paper does not include statistics about non-college age women. This means any conclusion claiming a “clear correlation” connected to university attendance is non-sensical. It’s like saying that more Americans like apples than oranges and only having stats on how many Americans like apples. I considered that Foster had other data supporting his findings. Still, when I asked if he had non-college data on women using pornography, Foster promptly deleted my question and banned me from commenting on their Facebook page.
Any study will have limitations, and though sometimes secondary conclusions can be reasoned from the study’s primary purpose, it is often folly to pull conclusions from data that was never intended to support those claims. The cited study explicitly discussed how collegiate women view sex and sexuality and if porn usage correlates with those points. The purpose of the study is to show, according to the study itself,
“This study aimed to provide a closer look at differences in a variety of factors between collegiate women who do and do not use Internet pornography.”
This study also does not determine when collegiate women started watching pornography. Even if the study compared collegiate women stats with non-collegiate women, that would not prove any causation because most women (and men) start viewing porn long before college-age years.
Lastly, the point Foster is attempting to make is focused on women while the study does not address male usage of porn. According to numerous studies (here, here, here, and here), porn usage among males is consistently higher than porn usage among women. Though porn usage among women seems to be increasing and though it is often a forgotten or ignored problem, it is a glaring omission to speak of “female promiscuity” connected to porn usage and not even mention men.
This is an excellent example of how ideological bias can severely twist data and abuse data. How Foster and IGTBAM attempted to use this data is both foolish and dishonest. They began with their desired conclusion, that college makes specifically women more sexually sinful, and then worked outward instead of letting the information speak for itself. Yes, it’s good to be a man because God created both men and women, but it’s more important to be a good and honest man. We shouldn’t be so wrapped up in trying to be manly men that we forget to deal honestly with data and with each other. Let this be a reminder of how extremism can significantly affect our ability to reason clearly.