Reading through the article there were many things I, as a woman, recognise too, and that’s where some of the points seem to fail.
I will take note of the lovely arms of an attractive man at my grandmother’s funeral, and my body will respond to that. There are attractive men everywhere I look, I am constantly interacting with beautiful men, I notice them etc. It’s a natural response, an impuls. (Sometimes if I say this, men will tell me “not as much as men”, straight out, like that. What a bizar/moronic thing to say.)
The difference, IMHO, is that men are told this is “natural” for them: they are “hardwired”, women are not. Responding to what is “natural” means that men end up wanking in public, and women who think about sex are sluts.
Of course, the article is vastly ott in all ways mentioned above. I don’t think I know many people who really experience the world the way described. But the author touches on several issues that underlie misogyny. I think the constant portrayal of women as objects can contribute to the way some men perceive their “male gaze” and their physical response as “natural” & therefore ok behaviour.
Agreed. The article is a load of horseshit. But then, I think David Wong is the biggest idiot on the Cracked writing staff, so I was less than surprised to see this was written by him.
The first part is self-contradictory. The heading says “owed”, but the paragraphs beneath it describe movies where the man “earns” or “wins” a woman’s love. In other words, the lead male in such movies has to take an active role and overcome obstacles in order to achieve his goal. This is the complete opposite of what “owed” means.
Sure, it’s often the case that the female character wouldn’t really fall for the male character just because he killed the aliens / defeated the evil King in one-on-one combat / fought off the zombie hordes / whatever. But I don’t see how you get from there to the idea that the movie teaches men they are “owed” anything at all.
But that’s the point. You don’t “earn” or “win” love/sex through your actions. People fall in love when they happen to like each other and enjoy spending time together. It’s not something you get automatically for doing something cool.
Precisely what I was thinking–that if you did a find/replace to swap “men” for “assholes” in the article, it would become vastly more accurate. That’s not to say there aren’t bits of truth in it, but they’re exaggerated, and many of us obviously manage to rise above them.
What? No. If you’re treating a human being like an object, whether it’s a piece of art or a turkey leg, you’re …doing it wrong. Women are not objects to be admired, they’re actual, you know, people.
Do you two see a distinction between saying “A is an object” and saying “A is a mere object”? Do you see a distinction between saying “A is to be admired” and saying “A is merely to be admired”?
If I see a woman on the street, look at her, very much want have sex with her and think about having sex with her and have sex with her despite her absence of consent, I have treated her merely as an object because I have not allowed her to engage in autodetermination, which a person can do but not an object. Not allowing her to engage in autodetermination is denying her person-specific characteristics.
If I see a woman on the street, look at her, very much want to have sex with her and think about having sex with her and leave it at that, what is immoral about that?
As for the article, it seems to accurately describe men with narcissistic and anti-social tendencies. It is as accurate as an article titled “5 ways modern women are taught to be crazy bitches” that uses examples of women with histrionic and borderline tendencies.
Wait, what? Seriously? If it’s positive, it’s okay?
What I found funny, in a depressing way, was the George R. R. Martin point the author made - yeah, the females in A Song of Ice and Fire are pretty well realized, but what woman is always thinking about her tits like that?
It amused me and now I want someone to write a short parody in the same style with a man as the object of unwarranted genitalia-focused storytelling. “As D’arlin sat by the fire, he reflected on the fact that his pants kept his penis secured next to his body without constricting it or doing that annoying thing where it pulls at one’s ball hair.”
I really don’t see any difference because A is not actually an object. Imagining that she is because it serves your fantasy is not ok just because you don’t then go up and grope her when the fantasy gets you all steamy.
For the most part women don’t want to be oogled when they walk down the street, secretly or otherwise. If you really think what you’re doing is harmless, there’s probably no way to convince you that it isn’t.
Once, I walked up to a street corner and the woman next to me clearly gave me the up and down look. She never asked me about myself, only paid attention to the way I looked. Should I have corrected her and told her not to objectify me?
Do I take it that you’ve never looked at a woman sexually and had sexual thoughts about her without getting to know her?
Re: Merely.
Could you answer if you see a difference between “A is to be admired” and “A is merely to be admired”?
Do you see any difference between saying “treating A as a means to B” and “treating A as merely a means to B”?
I think the harm is this: chances are good that if you’re looking at a woman and thinking about what she looks like naked, or what it would be like to have sex with her, she knows you’re doing it. Don’t kid yourself that you are being discreet, she knows. And it probably makes her feel uncomfortable, because if she’s like most women she doesn’t want strange men on the street to imagine intimacies that she hasn’t invited.
So the harm is in disregarding the idea that you might be making her uncomfortable, or not even considering that idea at all, or not caring because geez, I’m just looking.
Honestly I’m surprised that you’re even making the argument that there are situations where it’s ok to objectify another human being. If you’re going to do it, at least do it with the understanding that it’s creepy.
I’ll ask again:
Could you answer if you see a difference between “A is to be admired” and “A is merely to be admired”?
Do you see any difference between saying “treating A as a means to B” and “treating A as merely a means to B”?
Once, I walked up to a street corner and the woman next to me clearly gave me the up and down look. She never asked me about myself, only paid attention to the way I looked. Should I have corrected her and told her not to objectify me?
Do I take it that you’ve never looked at a man sexually and had sexual thoughts about him without getting to know him?
“I’m surprised that you’re even making the argument that there are situations where it’s ok to objectify another human being”
For a strict Kantian conception of the word “objectification”, I have great difficulty seeing cases where it would be moral. I think it’s always or nearly always immoral.
But that is not how the term is being used right now. Rigth now, it seems to be used to mean “paying a lot of attention to someone’s looks and thinking of them sexually” which may be immoral in some cases but on its own, is not sufficient to be immoral.
I’m curious in part because I see this as a possible opportunity for me. See, when a man looks at a woman and thinks about what she looks like naked, or what it would be like to have sex with her, he objectifies her, right? And objectifying someone is violating their dignity, right?
In my jurisdiction, there’s a law that saveguards the right to dignity and allows for punitive damages in case of intentional violation of the right to dignity. So this means that anytime a man looks at a woman and thinks about what she looks like naked, or what it would be like to have sex with her, the woman could sue him and get punitive damages. I think that could bring me quite a bit of business.
I agree. Nothing in that article really rang true to me at all. There may well be men like the author describes, but the world is a thousand times more complicated and subtle than anything he has to say. That he thinks men are like that says more about him than it does about men.
The only one that rings true is “women are decoration”, but the author goes overboard on that one too. Yes, men like looking at women they find attractive. No, that doesn’t mean I am required to hate (?) women I don’t find attractive or think of attractive women as nothing but good looks. And for that matter, just because I’m not attracted to a woman doesn’t mean I dislike looking at her.
