It was hypothesized that women may have more depressive, anxious, and somatic symptoms than men because they experience a deleterious stressor that men do not: sexist treatment. A total of 255 students (180 females, 75 males) at a state university completed an anonymous questionnaire containing measures of these symptoms. Women were found to exhibit significantly greater symptoms than men on all of them. Further, women who experienced frequent sexism had significantly more symptoms than men on all symptom measures, whereas women who experienced little sexism did not differ from men on any symptom measure. These findings suggest that gender‐specific stressors not only play a role in psychiatric symptoms among women but may account for well‐known gender differences in those symptoms as well.

Racism and sexism were examined in interracial (BlackMlhite) X-rated pornography videocassettes. Five female coders coded 476 characters in the sexually explicit scenes in 54 videos. Characters were coded on aggregate measures of physical and verbal aggression, inequality cues, racial cues, and intimacy cues, as well as other specific indices. Sexism was demonstrated in the unidirectional aggression by men toward women. Racism was demonstrated in the lower status of Black actors and the presence of racial stereotypes. Racism appeared to be expressed somewhat differently by sex, and sexism somewhat differently by race. For example, Black women were the targets of more acts of aggression than were White women, and Black men showed fewer intimate behaviors than did White men. More aggression was found in cross-race sexual interactions than in same-race sexual interactions. These findings suggest that pornography is racist as well as sexist.Videocassettes are the main mode of pornography production and distribution. It is estimated that by 1995, 85 % of all American homes will have videocassette recorders (U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, 1986). In 1989, X-rated tape rentals represented 12% of all rentals, with 395 million X-rated videos rented that year (Johnson, 1991). Previous content analyses of pornography videos have focused on the prevalence of violence and sexualized violence toward women (Palys, 1986;Yang & Linz, 1990) and on the exploitation of women in pornography (Cowan,We are deeply indebted to Tommi Jones, Cassie Lubens, Kathy Bell, and Cristal Waits for coding the videos.

No abstract

Informed consent has been the most scrutinized and controversial aspect of clinical research ethics. Institutional review boards (IRBs), government regulatory agencies, and the threat of litigation have all contributed to increasingly detailed consent documents that hope to ensure that subjects are not misled or coerced. Unfortunately, the growing regulatory burden on researchers has not succeeded in protecting subjects, but has rather made the consent process less effective and has discouraged research on vulnerable populations. As a matter of fact, investigators and ethicists continue to identify failures of the consenting process, particularly concerning participation in research of older individuals. The challenges involved in ensuring appropriate consent from the elderly include physical frailty, reduced autonomy and privacy, and impaired decision-making capacity due to dementia, delirium, or other neuropsychiatric illnesses. Ageism among investigators also contributes to failure of informed consent. The evaluation and continuing re-evaluation of an individual's decision-making capacity is critical but difficult. In the most extreme cases, the older adult's ability to participate in the consent process is clearly impaired. However, in many instances, the decision-making capacity is only partially impaired but declines during the course of a research project. Implementing methods of effective communication may enable many frail elderly individuals to make informed decisions. Special challenges are posed by research on end-of-life care, which typically involves frail, older subjects who are uniquely vulnerable, and research is conducted in institutional settings where subtle violations of autonomy are routine. Clearly, the frail elderly represent a vulnerable population that deserves special attention when developing and evaluating an informed consent process. Two important ethical conflicts should be kept in mind. First, although vulnerable older patients must be protected, protection should not prevent research on this important population. Similarly, because informed consent documents are often written to prevent legal jeopardy, these technical documents, expressed in language sometimes difficult to understand, can prevent comprehension of basic issues, defeating the ethical purpose of human protection.

No abstract