Pregnancy and breastfeeding trigger derogation of women when death and animality are salient
Evidence
After reading that humans are special, the participants regarded both Moore and Paltrow highly, regardless of whether they were gestating a baby. However, following the reminder that humans are just like other animals, the celebrities were evaluated more negatively by both male and female participants if the photos showed them pregnant. Similarly, after participants wrote essays about death, they subsequently gave more negative evaluations of, and sat farther away from, a mother they believed was breast-feeding. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 603
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Women’s fertility makes them seem dangerously sacred while male sexuality is profane. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 353; Attitudes toward women’s flesh track how seriously men take their own death and destiny. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 364; The mother-in-law myth expresses man’s repressed horror of motherhood and mortality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 370 (+7 more)