Indeed. It is important to be aware of when someone is being *seen *as something, and by who is that, vs. whether they are *consciously portraying *something, vs. if they ARE or are NOT in fact that something.
And yes, excessive objectification can lead to desensitization that in turn can make degradation easier. It really need not be circumscribed to the sexual realm; take again the example of the menial worker – you have to watch out for the situation in which since in theory you could replace the worker with a machine, you begin treating him like a machine. You don’t actually replace him but you make his replaceability a way to justify poor conditions. Or think combat situations: in training the language is not “kill your adversary”, it is “neutralize the threat” or “destroy the target”. The other guy still dies but you are thinking of it as carrying out a depersonalized mission objective. Get that training wrong, and you may end up with troops who feel they might as well neutralize the entire population.
The sexual context gains more urgency since while in everyday life you seldom are in a position to repel an ambush or take a fortified position, you *will *be regularly interacting with women, and what happens when some in the audience fail to get it that what you are seeing in porn is a *caricature *of sexual interactions can lead to a lot of trouble (or at the very least a lot of frustration).
But then does this mean that the ones who WOULD be freely participating in sexwork or in some other “exploitative” trade, must be denied their due out of a cautionary principle in order to protect the vulnerable or damaged ones? That may lead us into a whole another sphere where arguments may come up along the lines of “one is too many”, of whether picking from a limited range of (what by whatever social standard is dominant are) undesirable choices is still freedom, of whether eliminating the alternative of a “bad” choice is limiting or liberating, or whether we are attempting to justify having those choices around.
the whole “obectification” thing is and always has been nonsense. What the hell are they talking about? What is the claim? That if a man is sexually attracted to a woman, he doesn’t understand that she’s a human being with a mind and a soul? That’s ludicrous? Or is the claim that he doesn’t care? In which case, maybe, momentarily, but isn’t this true of most people you see at all during the day? It’s not like he wouldn’t be open to getting to know her.
I mean honestly, what the hell are they talking about?
The whole terminology came from second wave feminist writings, with very specific conecptualizations. But both second and third wave feminist writings are chock full of insanity , depending on who/what you’re reading.
I’m not a woman, and I’m not entirely up on my Martin Buber, but isn’t objectifying a person sort of inherently degrading them? If you’re objectifying somebody, you don’t see them as a full human being, equal to yourself…you see them as just a means to an end, with them subordinate to your needs and desires.
Obviously, like Bryan Ekers points out, we do that all the time. But what we’re doing isn’t any less dehumanizing for being common.
I agree, and really am not interested in arguing the point. I’m simply pointing out how some feminists see it.
And I can see that if you’ve been sexually abused by your stepfather (as one of my former stripper friends was), then end up being the breadwinner in a household where your boyfriend is an abusive jerk (as she then was) and have no idea what normal is, and didn’t graduate from high school because you ran away from home to get out from under your stepfather (quite literally) - that maybe when you are an eighteen year old adult, you aren’t really in the position to make good choices. And, how maybe when you are now a 45 year old feminist, you think that the system is screwed, cause frankly, it screwed you up and over.
Yeah, it’s a basic principle of ethics (maybe Kant was the first to articulate it as such) that human beings should be considered as ends in themselves, never solely as a means to an end. I’m not sure what that means in practice, though. But, to take Bryan Ekers’s example:
I assume/hope you recognize that person’s humanity on some level. If a machine that’s supposed to give you your food breaks down, you might get annoyed and swear at it or kick it in frustration, but if a person that’s supposed to give you your food breaks down (i.e. has a heart attack or something), you’d have concern for that person.
I’m not sure how that ties in with the main topic of the thread, though.
And that is my problem with the logic. There are women who are healthy in their mental state who choose to strip because its a good way to make a lot of money and pay tuition. One of my friends has been in the sex industry for years - not selling herself, but marketing the sale of sex toys and porn to others. To me, its a valid way to make a living, one that we shouldn’t judge out of the gate, and a door we shouldn’t shut.
So if one molests a 12yo, should he get a get out of jail free card because his father sexually abused him?
Is it okay for racists to be racists because that’s the way they were raised?
I could go on to ad nauseam but I won’t.
I think the main issue here is that for a long, long time–like, most of human history–being fucked, being penetrated, was seen as inherently degrading. The most “sex-positive” attitude available–the nice guy option, the noble option–was that you should be grateful to a woman who loved you enough to let you do something so degrading to her. Even within marriage, sex was something women tolerated, accepted, submitted to, and marriage basically functioned as a magic spell that allowed a man to do something degrading to a woman without actually degrading her.
Under that paradigm, seeing a woman as a sexual object is degrading. It’s not possible to respect a woman and think about fucking her, because fucking is disrespectful. This paradigm is arguably shifting, but it’s not gone. I tend to feel like there’s still plenty of men (and women, but that’s less germane here) who believe it absolutely, and a greater mass of people who mostly reject it but have still internalized it to some degree. As long as that attitude persists, focusing on a women as an object to be fucked will be problematic–because it’s a focus on that which makes her less than a man.
Are you equating the choice to become a stripper with the choice to sexually abuse someone, or to be a racist?
This is what I am talking about: “she chose to do something as degrading as strip/porn, so it’s okay that I am thinking of having sex with her, something that lessens her as a person”.
I am sorry, don’t mean to spam, but I keep thinking about this.
Even in this thread, and certainly everywhere else, you constantly hear 'You can’t blame men for wanting to fuck women, it’s biology/evolution/whatever". But buried in there is the assumption that wanting to fuck women is something bad–something that needs to be excused as involuntary. That were it not for that hormonal imperative, wanting to fuck a woman *would *be something to blame a man for. Again, I am confident this attitude is changing with amazing speed–but it’s not gone.
I’m mere trying to illustrate the point that we shouldn’t feel sorry for strippers because they were ‘forced’ into that position. It was their choice to do so. And frankly, I’m okay with that.
I don’t see strippers as sub human. I have just as much respect for them as I do anyone else.
To what extent are these attitudes culturally relative, and not just an extension of our Biology? It has always been an evolutionary advantage for a female to be more selective of who she sleeps with than a man. It’s theorized that promiscuity has varied as a strategy relative to other women, but generally not in comparison to men. This is because women can only become pregnant once every 9 months, while a man is free to move on and continue spreading his genes. This benefits a woman to be selective for a mate who shows commitment to helping raise her offspring. It benefits a man’s genes to find a more chaste woman to mate with who he has a high probability of not raising someone else’s offspring with.
It’s not unreasonable to believe that the cultural attitudes you mention stem from a hardwired morality that isn’t entirely alterable.
If you respect them, why would you have to come up with a reason not to feel sorry for them? “I don’t feel bad for them, they chose that life” suggests that you think that’s a life they probably don’t enjoy, that being a stripper is not a good thing.
And I feel sorry for lots of people because they are dealing with the consequences of bad choices freely made.
What’s “bad” is thinking that a woman who has been fucked, especially a woman who has been fucked a lot, or been fucked by a lot of people, or been fucked by you in particular, is some how made less, that she’s given something up. It’s the idea that she has, at best, consented to being degraded to please others, or, at worse, acted to satisfy urges that are shameful for her to even have, let alone indulge.
Boys (and girls) are also hit over the head with this mantra, as well: it’s why it’s bad to “objectify” women, because of the underlying assumption that anything you want to fuck, you think of as inferior. That’s what has to change.
Why does wanting to fuck a lot of women = thinking the person who penetrates is superior to the person penetrated?
And that seems to trap the players into a tautology, doesn’t it?
But may I comment on one thing: I can say I am sorry for someone who was forced by parental or social pressure into a “respectable” career or marriage that was not really their choice, or who was forced by economic circumstance into an exploitative labor situation, without it meaning I see lawyering or marriage as evil or undesirable things.
Essentially there is the whole structure of sociocultural conditioning drilled into everyone’s head that this is something that should be limited and restricted to situations that are under a specific set of controls and rules. Even the male, who is clearly in the dominant position in the construct, gets pointedly warned at every turn about women who will “tempt” him and “lead him astray” (I’ve often said that in my community, the major perpetuators of sexist conduct are boys’ mothers, raising them with warnings against “bad girls” and sluts they should watch out for).
Biology not being destiny, the notion of some sort of “hardwiring” may serve as a possible explanation for an initial impulse or inclination but hardly gives light as to how to proceed from there.