I’m having a difficult time seeing how someone can simultaneously be opposed to both of these things.
Slut shaming as I understand it is the act of making people feel guilty over expressing their sexuality, in most contexts I have seen this in is critcism about the way a woman dresses (slutwalk)
The most common argument I hear against sexualized depictions of women in entertainment (again, most common context is the way they dress) is that it dehumanizes them and reduces them to sex objects. Teaching men to value women only for their sexual assets and teaching women that they’ll only be valued as sex objects. This is routinely extended to insinuate that sexualized depictions of women also lead to increased instances of rape and sexual abuse.
That last bit is particularly confusing to me because it seems like the exact same reasoning the police officer used to conclude that women could avoid being raped if they didn’t dress like “sluts” which prompted the slutwalk in the first place.
Can anyone help me understand how this is logically consistent?
Edit: Title should be *sexualized depictions of women, guess I can’t fix it.
One is a role women are free to choose (or not) to adopt. The other is one they are cast in without choice.
The best metaphor I can come up with is the use of “nigger”, in the sense that black people can use the word amongst themselves in some contexts without it having a negative connotation, but others cannot.
I think that the objection of sexualized portrayals of women in the media is not that they women are sexual, but that that sexuality is their distinguishing feature. It’s not that the girl in the action flick wants to have sex with the hero, it’s that she’s only in the story at all so that he has someone to have sex with. All the scanty clothes and such are to emphasize her function, and it’s the function that’s a problem. The hero, on the other hand, is there to save the world. The sex is a detail, an award, a flourish.
There aren’t that many portrayals in movies of women who enjoy sex but aren’t defined by sex. I would argue that this is because we are still uncomfortable, as a society, with that idea. But I don’t think those are the portrayals anyone objects to.
I don’t hear this statement routinely made in conjunction with the issue you’re talking about. At least not from feminists. If this linkage is being made, it’s usually in the sense that the more we treat women like sexualized objects devoid of any worth outside their sex appeal, then their thoughts, feelings, and opinions cease to matter to others (not because their boobs are exposed, but because they cease to count as people). This means their consent (or lack thereof) diminishes in importance, thus encouraging a rape mentality.
Opposition to slut shaming doesn’t contradict this, and in fact, is consistent with it. People who “slut shame” are perpetuating the idea that a woman in a risqué dress loses the right to decline sexual advances because she is turning herself into an object; people who oppose this philosophy believe that a woman doesn’t become an object just because of what she’s wearing (or behaving). In other words, they are against the objectification of women. Just like the people who are against the objectification of women in general.
I think understanding this is key to understanding why there is not a contradiction between the two positions presented in the OP. Its Meryl Streep versus Megan Fox.
It’s certainly true that denying that women have a will and mind of their own can lead to abuse.
Let’s say I have a magazine where I show pictures of naked women. Their sexual attractiveness is what my magazine focuses on. Does the fact that it focuses on their sexual attractiveness mean that me or my magazine or the readers deny all aspects of women except their sexual attractiveness?
Everytime someone focuses on an aspect of an individual, is that the same as treating someone like they’re single-aspect objects devoid of any worth outside that aspect?
Context is key. The skin mag has a singular purpose: titillation. The purpose is to objectify the pixels on the page. The very same woman who modeled for the photos is a complete person when she’s in the grocery store and deserving of the same consideration and respect as the man behind her in line.
No. The problem is when women are so frequently presented as “single-aspect objects” that this portrayal becomes the default, and people lose sight of the fact that women are actually humans.
If images of bikini-clad women are balanced against plenty of images of women functioning in non-sexual capacities, then the risk of harm is lessened.
There’s also the fact that both slut-shaming and (many) sexual depictions of women are based on the premise that a woman’s sexuality exists purely for men’s enjoyment, not for her own. So being against both can be an extension of being against the idea that women exist only as the objects of sexual desire, not as the subjects.
There is a power component as well. Using a woman’s sexual power and then generalizing that objectification across all women (or all attractive women) vs. shaming a woman an individual woman for using her own sexual power.
