Abstract
Research on femmephobia, or anti-feminine attitudes, suggests that negative attitudes towards gender non-conforming femininities (e.g., feminine men) may be connected to gender/sex essentialist beliefs (e.g., beliefs about gender/sex identity as biologically determined and immutable). I hypothesized that femmephobic attitudes would be (1) significantly positively related to gender-specific system justification, gender essentialism, and traditional gender values and (2) significantly negatively related to social constructionist beliefs about gender. Participants (n = 250) completed an online survey, including the Traditional-Egalitarian Sex Roles Scale (Larsen & Long, 1988), Gender-Specific System Justification Scale (Jost & Kay, 2005), and the Social Constructionist and Essentialist Beliefs Scale (Schudson & Gelman, 2023). Femmephobic attitudes were evaluated through responses to a vignette, in which participants were asked to imagine that they overheard a conversation of individuals expressing anti-feminine attitudes. I found, as predicted, that higher essentialist beliefs, traditional gender values, gender-system justification and lower social constructionist beliefs predicted femmephobic attitudes. My findings demonstrate that beliefs about the nature of gender/sex and how gender is viewed and regulated are important to understanding femmephobia.