A few years ago I asked my college class to identify gender stereotypes in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Not surprisingly, students chose only female characters as being portrayed as sexist – Bianca as the ingenue and, of course, Kate as the “shrew.” When I prompted students to look again and identify any stereotypical male characters, I was greeted with baffled looks.

“What male stereotypes?” asked one student. “The play is all about sexist stereotypes of females.”

“That’s one interpretation,” I countered. “Another interpretation would be that both men and women in the comedy have been stereotyped. Look at the play again. Some women are reduced to innocent damsels or raging bitches, while some men are reduced to naive suitors or misogynistic jerks. And even if all these characters possess some redeeming aspect for Shakespeare, they are treated in sexist terms.”

A fruitful discussion followed. But for most in the class at a public college, it was the first time they had discussed how sexism is applied to males. Typically, sexism is only critiqued from the point of view of feminism. That day, students learned that sexism can also be critiqued from the point of view of both feminism and men’s studies. The question is: Why are critiques for sexist stereotypes of both men and women so rarely done?

Some obvious answers first.

Feminist ideology operates ironically on a binary logic (men = oppressor, women = oppressed). Hence stereotypical male characters (misogynists, fools, idlers, etc.) are viewed as fair – while stereotypical female characters (shrews, damsels, etc.) are viewed as unfair. Despite feminism’s desire to move beyond such binaries, the movement seems stuck in this one-dimensional perspective. Liberal ideology views men as the instigators of stereotypes for women in literature, art, film, etc. But the evidence obviously bears this point to be inaccurate. There is as much stereotyping of males as there is of females.

Now for less obvious answers.

Western civilization stereotypes men as ultimately responsible. This is a grand stereotype that goes unstated; it is the ground on which sexism grows. Biologically, the male primate is more aggressive than the female primate. The evolutionary path of the biologically male primate has followed a violent trajectory. Biology is never factored into the social constructionist view of gender.