Since the mid-sixties, a large body of literature has emerged in this country in the area of women's studies. Although such literature exemplifies considerable diversity relative to methods and contention, several paradigmatic assumptions unify the majority of existing literature: (1) the concept that women both in America and elsewhere have been consistently and comprehensively exploited; (2) the notion that men are both the source and the beneficiary of the exploitation of women; (3) the assumption that the liberation of females from sexist exploitation will have, as a byproduct, a liberatory effects upon males' lives; and (4) a primary focus upon the means by which the effects of sexual role models upon the female personality can be resolved. Such assumptions are asserted to pervade contemporary research on the phenomenon of sexism as to constitute a unilateral social conflict model of the phenomenon. This paper introduces a bilateral psychosocial conflict model of sexism which (1) traces the mechanism through which sexual role models similarly affect male and females; (2) explores the differential effects of sexual role models upon males and females; and (3) offers an alternative analysis of the "beneficiaries" of the phenomenon of sexism. The article concludes that the emergence of a new set of norms in American society regarding males and females is constrained by the unilateral focus of existing theoretical approaches.
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