Feminists Have More Fun Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Thu Oct 18, 8:30 AM ET
Feminism boosts sexual satisfaction for both men and women, a new study suggests.
Busting stereotypes that peg feminists as ugly lesbians, a new study shows that having a feminist partner is linked with healthier, more romantic heterosexual relationships.
The study, published online this week in the journal Sex Roles, relied on surveys of both college students and older adults, finding that women with egalitarian attitudes do find mates and men do find them attractive. In fact, results reveal they are having a good time, maybe a better time than the non-feminists.
Both men and women are prone to holding negative views of feminists, the authors say. Along with the sexually unattractive stereotype, some women also view feminism as a movement for victims, or for women who aren't competent enough to achieve success on their own merit, according to the Rutgers University researchers.
Psychologists Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan carried out a laboratory survey of 242 Rutgers undergraduates and conducted an online survey of 289 older adults who had an average age of 26 and typically had been in their current relationship about four years.
Older adults have more life experience "and thus may be more likely to show an incompatibility between feminism and romantic relationships," Rudman and Phelan write. While younger females likely grew up with the attitude that "women can have it all," the researchers note older women may have come of age in the era following U.S. women's suffrage (1919) or during the women's movement that emerged in the 1960s.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071018/sc_livescience/feministshavemorefun