There is a difference, but I don’t think changing the single pronoun in the original post moves it from “I’m not even acknowledging that there is a person there” to “I disrespect this person”. The semantics either way indicate that, for at least the duration of the fantasy, he did not acknowledge that the woman is a person.
It’s probably just me, and I do not mean to say that you or any other poster - even nate - is responsible for my lack of understanding on some issue.
I thought I might have gotten it with that last post, but I guess not.
The spoiler text was a response to Broomstick saying she could not imagine her husband saying with affection: “My wife, I want to have sex with that”. I planned on responding with an analysis of that sentence’s syntax and semantics. The conclusion of my analysis was that a husband (not necessarily Broomstick’s) could conceivably say that sentence with affection. Using “that” will always be dehumanizing, but affection and dehumanization are not mutually exclusive.
After I finished writing everything up I realized it had nothing to do with nate’s post, which involves objectification regardless of the pronoun used. I’m a little proud of what I did so I stuck it in a spoiler instead of chucking it.
I don’t think you can say there is semantic identity because our brains don’t work that way. We connect all kinds of additional information to words and phrases based on context.
I don’t think this is about “some women being conditioned to be more offended” by one word than another.
Because you brought up the issue of race here, let’s try to analogize.
Someone can write an offensive and demeaning statement about a racial group. In the context of that statement, E can use a range of terminology – African-Americans, black people, blacks, Canadians, coloreds, negroes, darkies, spooks, spades, thugs, n------.
Those words represent a spectrum of disrespectful terminology. The issue of what terminology you are using is a valid subject of discussion and criticism, in addition to the message and attitudes reflected by the text as a whole. Choice of words constitutes an additional message, on top of the message conveyed by all the words together. It doesn’t make the overall message better or worse, necessarily, but it is another thing that the speaker communicated.
Then I think we are close to agreeing, at least about what I am talking about. At least, what I think I am talking about.
When I say that I am thinking “nice ass” or something, I am describing the thought in my head, not boasting and not expecting a positive reaction. If it is possible to express that I am thinking like that without nudging in the direction of the paradigm you describe, I can’t tell.
I was comparing “nice ass” vs. “women are only there for sexual purposes”. Just like “that man is a creep” does not translate to “all men”, and “nice ass” does not translate to “all women”.
My understanding of the offensive nature of profanity (eg: n-, c-, dy-) is that people are conditioned to be offended when they hear that particular word, more offended than if another less-profane word was used to the exact same semantic effect. The fact that not all profanity is offensive in all situations, especially with the N-word, reinforces my hypothesis. People are told from a very young age that profane words are more offensive than non-profane words even when they mean the same thing (a la “darn”, “crap”, or “frick”). In my experience and what I have heard of others, the concept of profanity is instilled with negative reinforcement. This causes profanity to be reserved for especially abusive use, and when people are at the end of a profane statement it tends to be offensive and insulting semantically, which is positive reinforcement. Therefore the offensive nature of profanity is a result of conditioning.
“Never” is a pretty comprehensive term. I think you’re trying really hard to understand this and I truly appreciate that. What it comes down to is that context is very important with all this. What two lovers say between each other in private can be vastly different than what either would say to anyone else, and some people, in the context of sex play, get off on all sorts of role play. In that context anything could mean almost anything.
But, in the context of typical and public speech, referring to a woman as “that” can probably be stated as something you should not do if you want to be polite and respectful. Now, there are definitely occasions when one may not want to be “polite” or “respectful” to a particular person, but the proper way to do that (IMO) is to make it clear that your ire is directed to an individual rather than half the human race.
And I suppose that there might be a very rare occasion where someone outside the typical gender binary asks to be referred to as “it” or “that” or some other atypical for a person pronoun in which case you should do so because it requested that but it would be a very, very rare and highly specific instance.
Of course, when a man (or a woman, for that matter) says “I want to fuck her” (or him) there is also a subtext of “I want to fuck her (his) body” - that normally is how you engage in sexual intercourse, which is what is being referred to. When my doctor inquiries whether or not I have constipation I’ll most likely say “I had a bowel movement after breakfast” rather than “I took my morning shit after breakfast” even though both convey the same information because one version is more polite than the other. Other alternates are “took a crap” or “defecated”. Again, all convey the same data but they also all carry slightly different subtext or emotional content.
On a certain level it’s not important that you understand why but that you understand it does.
An example from the language/racism file: I do not, for the life of me, understand why it is acceptable for dark-skinned people of African descent to refer to each other by certain word(s) of two syllables starting with “n”. I have read/viewed/asked some trusted friends of that group why this is so because I want to understand the nuances but I have to admit I don’t get it. I’ve been told it’s actually two different words (on my part, I can’t hear the spoken difference even if I’ve seen alternate spellings). I’ve had people try to explain cultural and historical reasoning behind it. I just don’t get it… BUT, because I don’t want to cause offense I refrain from using that term(s). Even to the extent of not using them when discussing them, as in this paragraph.
While it would be great if I had a true understanding that is NOT as important as my understanding that using such language will cause hurt and offense to other people, and my choice not to use such language. I also don’t rail about not being “allowed” to use such language when other people are - I am not African-American, while I might have an intellectual understanding of some of their issues I don’t have a visceral understanding and never will. If by refraining from ever using two or three words out of the hundreds of thousands available in the English language I can avoid offense that’s a pretty easy way to be polite and respectful and what they do amongst themselves is THEIR business, not mine. No white person should weigh into that conversation, that would be “whitesplaining” in the worst sense, and insulting and disrespectful.
Now, the particular language use in the OP does not rise to the level of the infamous “n-word”, but it does deal with sexism. It’s more important for a man to understand that the language used was offensive to multiple women (so it can’t be dismissed as just one person’s opinion) than exactly WHY it was offensive. It’s even possible that different women find it offensive for different reasons, or there are multiple reasons. Analyzing why can be an entertaining exercise, but it’s not as important as knowing it causes offense.
That’s an impressive amount of work. However you are missing the forest for the trees.
Here’s the analogy: you’re analyzing language as if you were analyzing a fine painting by examining it with a magnifying glass, identifying the chemicals used as pigments, the type of brushes used to make the strokes, oil vs. acrylic vs. some other media, and so forth. And while there is value in such analysis, other people are standing back ten feet and discussing light and shadow, abstract vs. impressionist vs. realist vs. surrealism, and engaging with the visual image and its emotional impact rather than analyzing the structural elements. You are all talking about the same painting, but examining it on very different levels.
Likewise, by drilling down through the exact grammar you are analyzing the OP in structural manner while others in this thread are discussing it in the context of cultural and social dynamics, history, and other meta level aspects.
TO YOU they are equally bad. TO OTHERS one is less bad than the other (although neither is good). You are not required to understand or feel this on the same level as the women in this thread. It’s totally OK to say “I don’t feel the same way” or “I don’t perceive a difference” as long as you acknowledge that others feel/perceive differently. Which I think you’re doing.
To put it more crudely - Because I don’t possess testicles I am never going to understand on a visceral level, the way men do, that getting kicked in the balls is so damn painful for men… but I don’t have to. I just have to understand that getting kicked in the balls is really fucking amazingly painful for men and refrain from performing that action. Probably best I don’t even threaten to do that verbally, it seems to make them uncomfortable just to think about it.
Yes, my husband and I were intimate.
We were also open enough that he would, at times, mention that he found another woman sexually attractive (which was OK - we were both self-confident enough and trusted our partner enough we could discuss sexual attraction to others outside the marriage without worrying that someone was straying). And I remember him saying "I would do her" but never recall him saying "I would do that" He definitely had preferences for certain body parts, but he also very much saw women as individuals, too. Which had a lot to do with why even though he was short, overweight, and disabled he never had problems with getting a girlfriend, gosh darn, it really does work if a man treats women as human beings. (Yes, some women would refuse to give him the time of day because he was short/fat/disabled but he didn’t waste time pursing them, as there were a lot of other women out there who, as he put it, “are really interesting people”.)
Granted, that’s anecdotal (based on a 30 year marriage) but while anecdote is not data that doesn’t make them completely useless for illustrating a point.
I see your point but, again, these are things along a spectrum. All of them are objectifying, but how you talk about it can be more or less objectionable.
There is “I want to fuck the hell out of her”
There is “I want to fuck the hell out of that”
There is “I want to fuck the hell out of the fembot”
There is “I want to fuck the hell out of that whore”
There is… well, you get the idea. It’s not just the idea - that you see a human female and you the adult human male want to fuck her, which is a biological urge and normal - it’s also about how you think/speak about the situation. You’re analyzing the language and the grammar, women are analyzing word choice and emotional nuance. That’s why we’re still having trouble communicating. You are correct - *grammatically *there is little to no difference is all those sentences. However, word choice and cultural context makes them significantly different. That is why a language like English has so many words that have such similar meanings - they all convey slightly different messages regarding culture, social status, emotional nuance, etc.
For another analogy with race - can you understand that a 50 year old white man referring to a work crew of four 25 year old white men as “boys” carries a very different impact than the same 50 year old white man referring to a work crew of 25 year old black men as “boys”? It’s not about the grammar, or in that case even about the words (which are exactly the same) but about historical and social context and baggage that are very important in modern America.
In the OP, a lot of the objections are coming from historical and social context more than the actual grammar and language structure.
Accepted but not necessary. We aren’t going to improve the situation without being able to discuss the topic.
Avoiding unconscious bias of any sort is hard - you’re not even aware you’re doing it. The first step is to actually listen when someone says you’re being offensive instead of having a kneejerk response of “no, I’m not”. I find replaying with “I’m sorry - I did not intend offense and I’m not sure how I did that. What, exactly, am I doing wrong here?” Sometimes it doesn’t work - not everyone wants to discuss things. Sometimes I wind up learning something new.
As an example from a few decades back when I first moved to Chicago - in the sub-culture in which I was raised you generally didn’t speak to people you didn’t know in passing. So, working in a large company us white folks who didn’t really know each other would pass each other in the hallways without saying anything. A black co-worker one day asked me why “you white folks” were so incredibly rude. Instead of getting defensive I said “I wasn’t aware I was being rude - what am I doing wrong?” Instead of getting angry she actually explained to me that black people routinely greeted strangers - even if she didn’t know the person at all, even if she had never seen them before, she would say good morning or hello. Basically, she would acknowledge their presence, that they existed as living human beings (that’s actually a paraphrase of what she said, along with a bit of history regarding how slaves used to be treated as part of the furnishing or decor). And I said, oh, I get that, and I mentioned how in my sub-culture you didn’t do that because it was considered polite not to “bother” other people you didn’t know and how the whole “recognized as a person” thing probably wasn’t as important to white people who never had to worry about not being viewed as a full human being in our culture. So, going forward, she said she’d try to take that into consideration that a white person might not be shunning her or deliberately rude as being culturally conditioned not to speak to total strangers, and going forward I’ve tried to make a point of saying “hello” or “good morning” to everyone, a practice that serves me very well today working in retail with people from all manner of backgrounds and cultures. Yes, occasionally I get a negative reaction but infrequently enough I can put up with it, the benefits greatly outweigh the negatives.
But that’s an example of WHY we need some frank discussions about race, culture, gender, and other divisions in our multi-cultural society in order to make things work. I don’t have to understand things on the same level or to the same degree as another, the important thing is that I understand something is important.
It is very important, ESPECIALLY in sexual contexts, for women to feel like that are recognized as a whole human being because for so often we have not been, and still aren’t far too often. This is really not as difficult as some men make it out to be. As I pointed out in an earlier thread, sometimes it’s just as easy as saying “her” instead of “that”. “Woman” instead of “female”. “I know there’s an entire woman attached to the pair of tits, but these tits were AMAZING, I really wanted to titty-fuck, I couldn’t think of anything else…” or “Her ass-cheeks were hanging out and they were so sexy I had trouble remembering there was* a whole person attached* to those ass-cheeks, I just want to squeeze them and fuck her and I was so distracted…” Avoid “that” and “it” and other words that dehumanize. Nobody is expecting you to do it perfectly, but at least try.
Well… what works for me is someone saying something like “I still don’t get why this is such a big distinction, but* I do see that it is important to you.*” That last bit is important, because it says that even if you don’t see it or don’t agree with me, even if you think I’m wrong, you are still acknowledging my different viewpoint rather than dismissing it out of hand. In other words, we agree to disagree.
It’s been explained to you multiple times by multiple people. This can be very frustrating to those of us on this side of the fence, especially since all of us have had to explain our position(s) over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again throughout our lives. It gets tiring.
At which point it’s fine to say "I don’t really get it, but I do see that it is important to you" Even better is to say “I’ll try to refrain from using these words and use those other words instead” but it’s not like we can compel you to do so.
That is a problem. Or several problems, one of which is that we live in a society that has historically been sexist and still is on many levels, and that language itself can have sexist aspects to it, customary language use can be sexist, and we all have a certain level of bias. However, the first step to reducing sexism is to recognize that it exists, including our own sexist behavior we are not aware of until someone else points it out. If you aren’t willing to admit to that flaw there’s no way you’re going to reduce or eliminate it. And I very much include ALL of us in that statement as we all exhibit unconscious bias.
It’s OK to state that. Your posting has demonstrated you have, in fact, read what we have to say and clearly you are struggling with this. So… you’re honest (point to you) in saying that. I, for one, appreciate your honesty. Now is the time to say that even if you still don’t understand you at least understand that it is important to us.
I don’t have to know what getting whacked in the balls feels like to recognize that it’s really painful when it happens to a guy. It’s clear from their reaction that it’s a problem. You don’t have to understand the details of why a phrase or wording is offensive to women if a lot of women demonstrate by their reactions that to them it’s a problem.
Really, honestly, that’s progress. That’s actually what we women on the Dope want. You don’t have to understand on a deep level, you just have to understand that the distinction is important to us.
Because one is *more *dehumanizing and offensive than the other. It’s not A is good and B is bad - they are *both *bad but A is less bad than B.
I think that emphasized sentence is true of all of us.
Yes, I think we’re getting somewhere. It’s a bit messy, but progress often is.
Naw… it’s not about “maybe a relationship”. It really is just acknowledging there is a person there.
I’ve mentioned about each side having some give. In the case of women, our “give” is that we understand that men really do think about sex all the time, and often that men can be so focused on a bodypart or act the whole woman isn’t in their frame of view. That’s not how I think, but that’s not the point - I can’t discuss these things with men without recognizing that they really do think about this stuff differently than I do.
Both sides need a safe space in order for these things to be discussed. Men need to feel like they can talk frankly about what’s going on in their brains without women scolding them or telling them they are thinking incorrectly. Men need to be a more sensitive to how women feel about things. As I have said, sometimes it is as simple as prefacing a statement with "I understand that women want to be seen as whole people and individuals but this is what was going through my head" before going on about the unedited objectifying fantasy in their brain. We all have thoughts that raw and unedited would be offensive to others, but how we talk about them matters. We all shit, but when we talk about it we often use different words that are considered more polite and less crude.
That last bit is the important take-away from this discussion.
The problem with the OP is not just his sexual objectification of women, it’s that his sexual thoughts make him a driving hazard because of how intrusive and distracting they are. He came here seeking validation that he is normal. He is not. Thinking sexual thoughts about women is normal. Being so distracted by those thoughts they disrupt his relationship with his wife and/or make him less attentive to driving is NOT normal. As not only women but several men have pointed out to him.
IF the words were equal yes, but they are NOT equal in regards to objectification and/or offensiveness from my side of the fense.
I think you’ve got, or at least you’re getting there. It has more to do with emotional nuance and social/historical context than the grammatical structure. A building can have a sound foundation but still look fugly, and a different external treatment would not alter the foundation but make the whole structure more appealing.
^ This.
One is quite literally dehumanizing.
As long as you understand that that is YOUR side of the fence and the fence has another side we’re making progress.
No. The attempt can be important whether or not it is successful.
And if, in the end, you still can’t understand why someone finds it offensive you can still acknowledge the other side of the fence and try to refrain from offending others.
My old psych teacher would kill me. Parents telling kids not to say bad words, and punishing them when they do so, constitutes positive punishment. A person on the receiving end of a profane statement which is semantically insulting will associate the profanity (a neutral stimulus) with the insult (unconditioned stimulus), and over time the conditioned response to profanity is to be offended. A person hurling profane insults, upon seeing that the recipient is offended, experiences positive reinforcement as offending the recipient was the desired effect of the profane insult.
I’m just pointing out you are excluding critical info in your analysis which will make it challenging to figure out. The critical info is what our brains do when processing communication. We aren’t strictly logical, we perform immediate pattern matching and associations to all kinds of other info, we are influenced by feelings, experience, context etc.
You can’t look at things like sentence structure and dictionary definitions alone to figure out how a person will feel when they hear something.
I believe the concept of profanity is a red herring in this context. The point is that words have accumulated meanings from the context in which they have been used in society, and choosing to use those words conveys a message in addition to the message contained in the entire text in which those words appear.
To Broomstick’s use of the example of the word “boy.” The choice to use that word in reference to black men is itself a communicative message, on top of whatever sentence that word might appear in, which might or might not be deserving of criticism.
I think it does. Or at any rate using the pronoun for a thing makes it utterly clear that there’s no acknowledgement of the person, while using a pronoun for a person makes it possible that there is.
They’re not semantically identical. “That” doesn’t mean the same thing as “her” just because they have the same referent.
Quoted for emphasis. All of that is true.
Also this, and to further emphasize: it’s not just one poster, or one thread, or one forum, or one message board. It’s the total accumulation throughout our lives. Any individual person asking to have such things explained to them is being, as an individual, perfectly reasonable. But it’s necessary to bear in mind that they may nevertheless be the three thousandth person to want that explanation from the people who they’re asking – and, for that matter, that two thousand of them might not have been asking in good faith.
Here I’m going to disagree with you. There may be overall averages that are different, just like there are overall differences in height – but I don’t think it’s that all men think about sex differently than all women think about sex. Consider the number of men who’ve come into this thread to say that they don’t react anything like the OP, as well as the fact that multiple women have come into the thread to say that we do think about sex in reaction to seeing body parts – perhaps not in the fashion in which the OP describes it, but in the fashion in which some of the men in this thread are describing it.
To expand on this, which is true: I wonder whether part of the problem Max is having is that he may think that what people are objecting to in the original post is that the poster has a quick immediate reaction to seeing attractive women that focuses on parts of the women’s bodies, instead of on the women as a whole including considering their personalities.
That’s not where the problem is. That sort of immediate physical reaction is as normal as getting hungry when one’s belly’s empty and one sees food; and is no more something that’s reasonable to criticize. And I don’t think people in this thread have been criticizing it (with a couple of possible exceptions in post 51 by CarnalK and post 121 by Max S, but I’m not sure whether that’s what’s being done even in either of those posts.) What people are criticizing is what’s done about that reaction – as in allowing extended major distraction to affect driving, leering, and one’s ability to listen to others; and also as in the specific language being used to describe the reaction.
So the problem isn’t that the initial momentary gaze is objectifying. Probably it is; but that’s not what people are complaining about. The objectification in the words chosen to describe the experience is not the same thing as the initial experience itself.
Sorry, I lost track of the thread a bit and thought you were supporting the usage of that. Maybe the OP should respond to my post.
“That” is an indicator of the problem, but removing it doesn’t make things okay.
And everyone seems to be talking past each other in this thread. My head is spinning.
What about in music? Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.” calls women “things”, but I don’t think many women are offended by that song. It was hugely popular among the girls in high school, like other Michael Jackson songs. Is music another one of those contexts where it might be OK to call women “that”? (certainly not all music)
What if we reduce the song to a poem? What if we have the husband recite the poem to the wife?
I don’t think nate was trying to be polite or respectful, nor do I think his speech qualifies as “typical and public”.
He said he was being honest and I believe him. It follows that he literally thought, or thinks it is likely that he would literally think, word for word, “damn, I’d like to fuck the hell out of that.” If he changed the words, he wouldn’t be totally honest - he could still get the point across, but he could not express his thoughts verbatim without using the word “that”. Those internal thoughts are usually private, not public. When nate repeats his private thoughts in a public forum, I don’t think that counts as typical and public speech.
He also apologized: “Sorry in advance. Sometimes I just feel like posting what is on my mind”. I can only conclude that he is sorry for being impolite or disrespectful. If he realized that his post was impolite or disrespectful, but still posted it, either 1) he did not realize there was another way to phrase his post without being impolite or disrespectful, or 2) he thought there was no way to phrase his post without being impolite or disrespectful. Either way nate still thought he should post the thread.
In my opinion, the disrespectful act occurred when nate sexually objectified the women on the television screen and on the scooter. I think all sexual objectification is disrespectful, and those acts of disrespect were towards individual people. I do not think nate made this thread to talk about objectification of individual people. In my opinion, the original topic of this thread is nate and other men’s involuntary objectification of a whole class of people, “attractive women”.
My read of the original post is that nate thinks neither he nor 98% of men have any control over their thoughts when they see an attractive and scantily-clad woman. He doubles down on that in [POST=21801661]post #119[/POST], where he wrote:
I don’t think voluntary disrespect is the same as involuntary disrespect, but I think both can (and do) happen. Much like conscious and unconscious bias.
If we assume that “what is on [nate’s] mind” is his and other men’s involuntary disrespect of “any attractive women”, and that “any attractive women” is a class of people, then his and other men’s involuntary disrespect of a class of people is on nate’s mind.
Now let us assume that nate wants to discuss what is on his mind. He actually wrote “posting what is on my mind” but I’m stretching that into a discussion because that’s what we do here: we discuss things. If nate wants to discuss what is on his mind, and his and other men’s involuntary disrespect of a class of people is on his mind, nate wants to discuss his and other men’s involuntary disrespect of a class of people. That is the intended topic of this thread, in my opinion.
I can be wrong. You might have a different opinion but I don’t know for sure what you think the topic of the thread is or why. In an effort to avoid Socratic dialogue (which I would prefer, but have been told is extremely frustrating), I try to form my own opinion first and lay out my whole argument so you can point at the parts you disagree with, and I can learn how we differ.
As for politeness, I think his decision to post about objectifying any attractive women is impolite, regardless of whether he actually does so or not. Objectifying any attractive women is disrespecting a class of women, and I would think a post about disrespecting women would make some women uncomfortable. Women are people and making people uncomfortable is impolite, in my opinion. Therefore nate was impolite when he decided to make his post.
As I said above, I think he was apologizing for his impoliteness. If true, he considered that women might be made uncomfortable but still decided to make the post. I can only guess that he couldn’t find a way to present the topic without being impolite, and thought his making the post was more important than making women uncomfortable. That isn’t terribly crazy given some of the taboo subjects Cecil has written about.
I am presently thinking these “subtexts” and “emotional content” are the results of behavioral conditioning. But then again I think all spoken language is influenced by behavioral conditioning. The reason I might not associate “that” as being more offensive than “her” might simply be because I don’t have a lot of negative experience being called a “that”. Similar to the operant conditioning for profanity I laid out in [POST=21807500]post #233[/POST], the word “that” might trigger a conditioned response in you but a neutral response in me. For some woman, perhaps reading the word “that” evokes the gazing, catcalling, the sexual discrimination, the sexual harassment, the rape, and the crying, lots of crying alone, sometimes in a dark corner trying to convince herself that she is a person with value and not a mere sexual plaything. Constant sexism in her history hotwires the very use of “that” to refer to a woman with a number of red flags in a way that “her” does not. This is an explanation I understand and agree with. What do you think?
Why didn’t I get this before? In hindsight it looks like this is exactly what everyone has been saying.
I’m going to cut off my response here because if you actually agree, the rest is moot.
