I would love to see every woman in the world choosing their own path to a full, happy, useful life. Maybe these girls are on that path by performing in these videos; if so, good for them. It seems to me like being objectified for money is not the usual path to a full, happy, useful life, though.
Are you talking about me or the record company executives/musicians/music video directors now?
Are we still debating whether the women in these videos are being objectified? That seems pretty obvious to me and most people who watch them (see my expensive car? see my expensive jewellery? see my expensive, mostly naked women?). Is being objectified also de-humanizing? Yes. When you are turned from a human to an object, you are de-humanized.
The only question here, in my opinion, is that some people think it’s wrong and other people think it’s okay as long as the women in the videos are doing it of their own free will. I don’t think objectifying anybody is right, even if it is their own choice.
I was not trying to emotionalize. Still, my example was careless and inappropriate, so I apologize to whomever I’ve offended. Still, I find sexual nihilism disturbing.
Is it right to allow other people to objectify you?
Women aren’t stupid fragile creatures that need the strong hand of society to tell them what to do with their lives. They don’t need finger-wagging scolds to save them from themselves.
Guy Incongnito said what I was about to say, only better. Well done, sir. I will only amplify his point: featherlou’s statements in this thread sound just as paternalistic and demeaning as the ideas feminism fought against all throughout the 20th Century.
Before reading my post: I do not speak for featherlou here, and it’s quite possible that she will not agree with my post, so I will preemptively request that everyone consider her distanced from me unless she says otherwise, because I don’t want my post to reflect on her. I’m saying this now so that she doesn’t have to distance herself from me if she disagrees.
Unlike say, the idea that if women don’t like whoring themselves out anymore then it’s just tough shit and they have no right to complain because everyone else has to work too?
Is that a strawman? Because that’s seems to follow from what you say. Women who sell themselves sexually are to be considered the same as anyone in any other field of labor? Is that your idea of feminism?
People can wind up doing things they never wanted to do, or can be stuck in a situation they don’t like. Unless of course it involves women and sex! Then the only possibility is that they thoroughly enjoy what they’re doing. If they don’t like it, they can just stop. It’s that easy, and if they’re stuck in a rut it’s just too bad for them. Of course, what about women in abusive relationships? There are a lot of people devoted to helping women out of those situations, how is it less “paternalistic and demeaning” to understand that they stay even though they should get out, and then to try and convince them to leave. Oh wait, that’s right, women aren’t stupid fragile creatures that need the strong hand of society to tell them what to do with their lives.
I do not see it as anti-feminist to think that a woman’s genitals should not automatically be considered a commodity, I see it as disgusting. It is a mark that society is overall degrading to women that they expected to share something as personal as their own sexuality against their greater wishes just to make a living, or even that their doing so is considered a good option in order to make a living.
Talon Karrde, the girl deserves the right to shake her ass in front of a camera if she wants. I don’t see why she has to be saved from her own choices. Objectifying this, stuck in a bad situation that, you just don’t have enough faith that people aren’t morons.
My job requires a lot of thought and planning. Is my brain a commodity? You bet it is. I sell it to the highest bidder. I train it by taking courses and doing things that require thought (this web site being one of them). I don’t object when people compliment me on coming up with good ideas and making/saving money because of it (as long as I get my share).
A professional athelete uses their body as a commodity. Teams pay this person to run fast, hit a ball, score a goal, etc. How about the professional craftsperson who takes a material and forms it into something that people want to buy? They use both mind and body for this task.
Yet, when the body part is sexual in nature there seems to be a problem. *
Why are some physical attributes allowed to be used for the person’s monetary gain, but others are not? Does the actual problem reside with the people selling the gifts they have or with the people who object to them doing it?
*There are male dancers who strip for women. Are these men being exploited the same as women who do similar things? Because it seems to me that when talk of sexual exploitation arises it always refers to men being the perpetrators and women being the victims.
I’m not against rap videos or stripping or prostitution, but let’s not put on rose colored glasses and pretend that it’s a choice that people make just for the love of it. She has that right, but it still doesn’t make it right.
Sometimes a girl just needs to be told that she’s worth more than her body. A lot of women really and truly do not know that. They know what they see in the mirror and they know what they get attention from, if they aren’t terribly smart, what should they do? I don’t know. Stripping is legit, but it’s a hard life.
Anecdote:
At the club I go in there is this young girl of about 19. She’s very innocent looking, and from all the conversations I’ve had with her and observations I’ve made, she really is innocent, and not too bright. When she dances for a guy her eyes glaze over, she lets them put their hands all over her. Even if she was just worth her body she’s worth more than the $20 he’s spending to put his grimy calloused hands on her. It’s a very sad scenario I’ve seen play out time and again. I used to want to help them, now I just keep my mouth shut. You can’t tell people anything. They demand to find out for themselves. Plus, I doubt she has any other marketable skill, and because she is dancing, she probably won’t learn a trade and will end up cashiering at the Village Pantry when she’s 45. That is, if she’s not still dancing like some of the “lifers” I’ve known.
Around here, that’s where a lot of dancers end up. I can’t speak to anywhere else, but it’s just not a pretty picture. Yeah, I’ve done it, but I never could have known what it would do to me or what I would learn in that environment. Once you’ve seen it, you don’t forget. You wouldn’t want your daughter there, or any woman you care about even a little bit. It’s a trap, it really is. I got sucked in and still fight it. When you’ve been adored for your body it’s really easy to forget that your brain can be just valuable. It’s a fight I have within myself all of the time. No matter how well I do professionally I’ll still believe that dancing is what I was/am best at out of everything and that my body my best asset. It’s fucked up thinking.
Yes, but she could go work at the Village Pantry right now and still be there when she’s 45. If both jobs suck why is going for the one that pays more wrong? Save up some money, take some training, and get out. I could see it taking quite a bit longer as a cashier to do this.
Is the job of being a dancer, stripper, whore, any worse than other jobs, or is it the perceptions of society that label these ‘trades’ as being inherently bad and it’s these perceptions that cause the damage?
I don’t think I’d want anyone I cared about working as a cashier at the Village Pantry*, either.
*we are talking about the place where herds of fat people can go for all they can eat meals right?
I do understand what you’re saying, Guy Incongnito and Derleth. If I thought that every young woman shaking her ass on music videos was doing it from a completely empowered place, and these types of videos did no harm whatsoever in our society, I wouldn’t give a rat’s skinny little hiney what these girls do. I don’t believe that this is the way things are, though. I don’t think participating in these videos is good for the young women, and I don’t think they are having a positive (or even neutral) effect on our society. That’s my opinion. You, of course, are free to disagree.
Hey, you know what would fix this issue? All nude, all the time. Every one of us. With no nudity taboo, there would be no titillation to be found in people taking their clothes off.
This isn’t a matter of, “save up some money, get some training, get out.” It’s never that easy, especially when you add in other factors such as a drinking problem, a couple of kids, a deadbeat boyfriend, etc., etc. The particular women I’m talking about have these kind of problems and many more. And yes, I suppose you can also say, “Well, she just shouldn’t get pregnant, she just shouldn’t hook up with the wrong type of guy, she just shouldn’t start drinking.”
These things don’t happen overnight. A lifetime seems to pass between the day you decide you might want to try dancing for money and the day you look in the mirror and realize you have been there for 10 years and have nothing to show for it. You bite off more than you can chew. I doubt working at the Village Pantry pulls you into a whole lifestyle. It might, I don’t know. And the fact that I did get pulled into a lifestyle definitely says something about me, but I feel like if I could get pulled in so easily it must be even harder for someone who isn’t very smart and who doesn’t have an education or some other skill.
I had good times dancing and enjoyed it a lot of the time, but if a 20-year-old college girl came up to me and asked me if she should dance, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell her no. Some things are hard to explain just with words. You have to see the sights, feel the feelings, get to know people, observe them, listen to them when they tell their stories, and so on. I can’t convey the feeling of it just with words, and I don’t speak for anyone but myself. YMMV.
No, they can get other jobs. Why do you think they aren’t qualified for other jobs?
Yes, it is. If men are allowed to shake their bananas for money, women should be allowed to shake their tacos. Gender equality is the foundation of any conception of feminism worth the support of honest people.
Where have I ever said anything even remotely similar to that?
Yes. We all have options, and we may or may not choose to exercise them. Some people get stuck in bad places, but why should we make those places any worse by outlawing harmless forms of moneymaking?
This is insane. You have just equated women in abusive relationships with women who make money pretending to be hookers so they can get on a rap video. Why don’t you go for the gold and call me a Nazi now?
Yes, if she holds paternalistic ideas.
The world isn’t about “empowerment” any more than it is about “feeling good” or “finding yourself” or “being at one with the whole”. The world is about survival, and some people find ways to survive that make others feel bad for them. That does not mean those ways are wrong, unless they actually hurt others.
People would pay good money to avoid seeing me naked. That could be a business plan.
And you’re so different? And you should be able to tell others what’s right and what’s wrong?
Fruit picking is a hard life, and some people really and truly don’t know that they’re worth more than their ability to move fruits from plants to buckets. Therefore, by your logic, fruit picking is wrong.
So, you’d take that job away from her? It’s not ‘glamorous’ in your eyes, but neither is it a difficult job or a dangerous one. If she ends up doing that for a while and ends up in the Village Pantry, that’s still a much better life than she could otherwise have.
Life isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible, either. Not usually, and especially not usually in this country. People make it all the time with even less than her. Countries were founded by people with much less than her, and all she has to do is get enough of an education and enough in the bank to get a job that pays a bit above minimum wage.
Besides, how do you know the boyfriend isn’t just as much of a ‘victim’?
Something tells me that no matter what I say you won’t see where I’m coming from on this. I wouldn’t make any of these things illegal and I wouldn’t take anyone’s job away. I’ve said that repeatedly.
This is probably where we are parting ways - I think those ways are wrong because they hurt the people doing them regardless of whether or not they chose them for themselves and are being well paid for it, and I don’t think things like rap videos that objectify women contribute anything positive to the world we live in.
Sure, she deserves the right. That doesn’t mean society should encourage or expect young women to do so. And I agree with Indygrrl about people being morons, except I wouldn’t be quite so harsh. Everyone makes bad choices.
To me this is an absurd question. However, at the moment, I can not think of a rational answer. The best I can do is that sex is different from using your brain. It’s even different from using your body for physical labor such as farming. In that case the thing that’s being ‘objectified’ is the crops.
Sex is much more personal. Hopefully that much we can agree on. The next step, that sex therefore should be considered differently from other labor, is one that I don’t have it in me to convince you of, but hopefully you can at least understand it.
See, that’s the reason I think clothes are so important! What would be the fun in that?
Sometimes they can get other jobs, sometimes they can’t.
It’s not a question of whether they should be allowed. And comparing female strippers to male strippers isn’t what I’m talking about, I’m talking about comparing stripping to other jobs like being a janitor. There’s no gender equality or inequality in that.
It’s the way you’re arguing as if the women are there only because they want to be all the time. That might not be what you mean, but that’s how it comes across to me.
I’m not arguing that they should be outlawed.
I did not equate them, although there are situations where they can be similar. I brought up an extreme example where the argument could be used in exactly the same way in order to point out why I feel the argument is flawed. Nazi.
See, I think it’s wrong if a woman has to whore herself out in order to survive.
And again I bring up the abusive relationship example: sometimes survival is one of the victim stays. Does that make it right?
I’m asking why a person can use one body part legitimately for profit, while other body parts are taboo?
Also, if society is the one that makes this taboo then is it society that causes the perceived exploitation of these women? To clarify: Are men who perform as male exotic dancers being exploited? Or is it only women who can be exploited or objectified? Because if I had the body I’d think it fun to prance around in front of women. To have them pay me for that would be icing on the cake.
The end result of physical labour such as farming is the crops. The person doing the work is the one providing the labour. That person is being paid for their labour. A dancer is being paid to dance, a stripper to strip, a football player to play football. Few watch the farmer labouring in the field, nor to they pay to watch him when they do. Many pay to watch the football player catch the ball and run for a touchdown. Yet, he is not being objectified? I’d say he certainly was. Is he being exploited? If he is making farm labour wages he probably is due to the amount of people who want to watch him play. Does the typical stripper make the same wage as a farm labourer? Yet, the farm labourer does more for me in the long run than the dancer does. Who is more exploited?
Sex can be more personal. It can also just be sex with no more emotional attachment than making the other person feel good. A massuesse(sp?) can make a person feel good by giving a good massage, but if they massage a certain part of the body (at both party’s consent for a fee) it suddenly becomes wrong and exploitive and objectifies the person doing the massaging.
A better comparison would be you going and dancing at a gay club. That’s probably closer to what female strippers do (although still much different) than men dancing for women (which is pretty rare).
Side note and blatant hijack: once I was totally sick and took a whole week off of work. For some unknown reason, I ended up getting hooked on those made-for-Lifetime movies. Between immersion in the movies, housebound isolation and near delirium from fever, I ended that week thinking I must be the only man in America who wasn’t beating Valerie Bertinelli.
