While eating a peanut butter and blackberry preserves sandwich, I leafed through this past Sunday’s issue of the Baltimore Sun - the Arts & Life section - which happened to be sitting on the table. I found myself reading some random dumb advice column. One item was by a telemarketer defending their practices and another was by a mother describing the liberties she gave her teenage son. Said liberties included “wearing shorts in winter” if he felt like it, and allowing him to have “soft core pinups” in his room. The advice columnist applauded giving the boy space to make his own decisions, but “wished that she had drawn the line at objectifying women” (a close paraphrasing).
It strikes me that this is, of course, the politically correct response to give. And yet, it does precious little to explain why men objectify women. Perhaps this isn’t common knowledge, though, so allow me to try and fill in the gaps as I see them. I could, of course, be speaking from a non-consensus viewpoint, but I feel like it’s worth talking about in any case.
As I see it, the argument against objectifying women (or one of them anyway) has to do with some kind of latent aggression on the part of men towards women. And it has to do with the idea that men objectifying women through sexy pictures, etc, somehow devalues women and makes them “less than human.” Correct me, of course, if my perception is inaccurate to anyone else’s experience in these areas, but this seems to me to be quite backwards.
As a male, I can say that - especially in my younger and more naive days - women have great power. And not only are they extremely mysterious, but in a sense, they are extremely dangerous: they make you feel things and think things and do things you wouldn’t necessarily do on your own. I am not necessarily talking about rape or anything creepy so much as I am talking about the simple and provable fact that beautiful women make men act stupid. They have power over us…
…But only because we let them.
So, in one sense, it could be argued that objectifying women is part of modern man’s defensive tactics against the power women are felt to have over men. By projecting onto outward images the feelings of sexual attraction and frustration that men have, they are able to contain and manage those feelings. It creates a sort of safe zone to express those feelings without the ‘dangerous’ emotional repercussions (rejection, etc) connected to interacting with women in real life.
What I am saying is that I see what drives men to do this (myself included) and I even see how it can be useful and in some cases even beneficial for men to project these feelings outward so that they can learn to master themselves. I mean, yeah, there are better ways. I’m not necessarily trying to defend it so much as I am trying to open up possibilities to people who just have knee jerk reactions to certain types of behavior and attitudes without actually looking deeply at what underlies it. You can complain about something and tell people it’s wrong all you want, but if you’re not addressing underlying causes, you’re just inducing guilt and shame and not helping people solve anything. Making men feel guilty and ashamed of sexual feelings is far more dangerous and damaging in the long run than letting your son post nudie pictures on his walls so he can experiment with images of the ideal woman and relationships.
- END -
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26 Comments
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/01/14/joe-rogan-on-sex-porn-society/
I would say hardcore porn definately has elements in it specifically designed to degrade women and put men in a position of power and domination. That’s the fantasy they promote.
Anybody that denies that is lying.
Soft core stuff like Pinups, I think is somthing different. It’s objectifying women, kind of in a way that makes women into objects of worship almost. Like Godesses.
I think that’s why boys/men freak out so much about beautiful women. We see them not as individuals but as embodiments of this goddess.
I wanted to write about my experiences in strip clubs in conjunction to this as well, but it will have to wait for another time. The main point of it all though is this: is there anybody in a strip club who is *not* being exploited?
The point about power/domination is also an interesting one. I’ve never heard anybody talk about how subservience can be its own kind of power…
There is a UFC fighter that I don’t really like. I find him an immature acting bully, loudmouth. Tito Ortiz.
Bullies were often bullied as kids. So I am thinking perhaps he was bullied a lot at one point. Because seems really unbalanced. Most fighters hug each other after the fight, having earned each others, respect, through testing themselves against each other. Tito likes to degrade his opponent that he just beat. He gestures like he is digging their grave and burrying them.
Well anyway his wife or fiance or whatever is Jenna Jameson, who from her autobiographical accounts was raped several times before getting into porn.
They strike me as an interesting pair. The theme seems to be achieving mastery over the very thing that once caused you to feel like a victim, and not only that, but mking a living doing it and being rich and famous.
Tangentially connected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus
I think what you’re saying is good and very well thought out but the point where objectifying becomes a danger isn’t with someone who thinks things through. We objectify consumer goods like Coca-Cola and Pepsi and nobody gets hurt. I’m thinking of someone like Sen. Craig. He creates laws to harm gays because he thinks of them as objects. He misses the point that he is gay. The type of men who objectify women in a dangerous way miss the point that they are women. The type of women who prefer to work as strippers miss the point too. They objectify via money, not looks. It’s a good point about exploitation.
if we subjectify everything we become exhausted very quickly.
the process of objectification allows pre-suppositions to shape our reality and thinking becomes easier.
do you think that women don`t do this too?
if we didn`t all do this then we could “know” eachother much more easily and dating would take five seconds and we we would find our soul mates the day we decided we needed one.
strippers are sexual healers. they give a man access to what he believed to be unavailable……..and he finds that he didn`t really just want that…….and over time his confidence around “real” women grows to the point where he makes actual choices.
the embodiment of the godess……
men freak out because they have been degraded themselves.
“all men are pigs”
this is a pre-supposition in some women`s minds that degrade men.
there are more. we`ve heard a few in our travels.
hard-core porn is a reaction not an action and yes, it`s angry.
men and women are holding eachother hostage based on a list of pre-suppositions that both sexes are using in place of subjective knowledge of the other person.
so we are all objectifying eachother.
then there are the times when it works like a charm and she`s asleep in your bed and you only know her first name and it`s going to be a little uncomfortable when she wakes up…….so you make coffee and hope for the best.
awesome
Hi, I’m a man, and I like to be dominant during sex.
Those magazines aren’t making men want to be dominant; Rather, they’re reflecting the desire most men already have to be dominant. c.f. hundreds of millions of evolution.
I’m an egalitarian, and that includes all people having free access to their nature, including their fantasies.
I have invented two words: “kales” and “kekales.” Kales are the men of women’s fantasies, and Kekales are the women of men’s fantasies. They are not material entities (yet,) but they are crucial parts of our hearts.
The answer to the challenge of egalitarianism CANNOT be to suppress men’s nature, to make them ignorant of their desires (by hiding pornography away,) and telling them that sex is all about the pleasure of the woman- that what pleases a man does not count.
Kimbro,
I think you aren’t getting my point. or maybe you aren’t familiar with porn.
Not sure how graphic I want to get, but most porn has an element of degrading the woman, hurting the woman (cause the guy is so big etc.). I don’t think that is the same thing as being dominant.
Ok, I won’t get graphic but for example take the various “reality” porn sites wherre they “trick” women into having sex for money and then show them not getting the money.
Its an element that’s there in most porn.
This is really the point. Perverting sex into something unbalanced. Most men will want to be dominant and most women will want to be submissive. I don’t see that as an inbalance. The sick part can be seen when you twist things around a bit. Women have set up other women as victims of gang rapes. That has nothing to do with male/female dominance and everything to do with a warped relationship to power. When there’s no men/sex/violence involved women gang up on other women and demean them in verbal/relationship ways. Normal looking people do things to others in office settings just as nasty as the trick Ted described above. It’s the power and not the tools you use to show the power.
Julia,
Probably unbalanced sex sells better….
Yeah. You don’t see the Hallmark Channel doing porn.
No, I genuinely find BDSM-D/s-what-have-you to be a genuine turn on.
I like asstr.org, and hentai. Stories do way more for me than pictures, but can take time to get into.
I don’t think it’s the same, but I don’t think it’s not connected, either, …
Oh, you’re talking like, “Bang Bus,” or something.
And I can identify that desire, inside of myself.
I don’t know if it’s because of an evolved proclivity (I lean this way,) something of an “original sin,” in that respect, … …or if it’s just a manifestation of having a strong sex drive, but existing in a world where women are necessarily like (as one of my friends put it) “Living No Machines.” That is, every time you want sex, the answer is just: “NO.” (If it were otherwise, I’m doubtful much work could get done!) And thus, fantasies about “Well, they’re never going to give it, so if this story is going to be believable, we have to show how the woman was tricked.”
Makes a lot of sense to me, too– As a long time asstr.org reader, I will say: Porn stories that try to connect in some way with believability, generally are far more interesting.
I won’t disagree.
I don’t think it’s the perversion of sex; Rather, I think it’s pretty natural. I think that society varnishes over it, and says, “These are natural visions of sex- (light, fluffy!)”, and “These are unnatural visions of sex (dark, disturbing.)”
I think the dark visions are embarrassing and, if enacted for real, completely intolerable- And so, that causes us to socially and collectively say, “That’s a perversion.” If we mean by perversion– “unnatural form, to our genetics, to our body’s impulses,” — I think it’s really the other way around, and that it’s really the social vision that is the perversion.
Put another way: “What we call perverted, is actually natural. What we call natural, is actually perverted.” The irony is that society says “porn makes people think X,” when it’s really society that is trying to make people think things. (And it succeeds, to different degrees.)
“Probably unbalanced sex sells better….” Well, it does. Because it’s talking about something that’s in our common nature.
Have you ever read a Harlequin romance novel?
If you haven’t, you might be surprised by what you see many many many women fantasize about, … (I’m surprised by how many men *have not* read at least one.) It’s not “balanced…” And I don’t buy for a second, that it’s just the product of “social conditioning.” “Balanced sex” is utterly uninteresting, on so many levels.
I know this, because, for a good portion of my life, (let’s say, 10/cognizance through 28,) I believed in the whole “balanced sex” ideal. I/we only stumbled upon the “unbalanced = good sex” by accident…
I now have very different ideas about why so many marriages “fail” now, in terms of sex. (Google around for sexless marriage…) We struggled for about 7 years, trying everything we could think of. Then we realized… Well, that’s a private story though.
Interesting link: Transforming Sexuality; Changing the Context of Conquest.
I do not believe the answer is to go back to old mechanisms of control and dominance and subjugation. I am strictly egalitarian, and I am pro-feminist. (I have a daughter, after all, and she totally kicks ass.) But I don’t think it is to deny what is sexy, either, or to appeal to only (publicly spoken) feminine visions of sex, the socially approved visions of sex– “Intimacy,” “Foreplay,” “Respect,” — these are the key words for the socially approved version.
Those things are great… sometimes… for some people…
…but most certainly not all the time, and I would guess, even for most people.
Warped relationships to power are very sexy, for most people, I think. I couldn’t see it for so many decades, because I didn’t want that to be the case.
You’re coming from a place of self awareness and psychological maturity and I would rather see this than the Sen. Craig’s of the world but most people aren’t so fortunate. I get what you’re saying but you could do something really out there and it’s not ‘perverted’ but someone else could do something relatively normal it’s a sign of deep disturbance.
My point of view is that people are trying to avoid a person who is a human vortex of dysfunction and we use shorthand terms like pervert to identify these types of people. There are equally dysfunctional people in the world who’s dysfunctions aren’t sexual but who cause much damage but what they do isn’t sexy so we don’t talk about.
Good post. I think these conversations should really just be about objectification, which women do to men as well. Any time a young girl has the pin-up of Ricky Martin or whatever, its an objectification. She doesn’t KNOW Ricky Martin, she’s attracted to the look, the image, the commodity, the object. And that’s okay, Ricky Martin doesn’t mind being a sex symbol, its a relationship of consent - and that’s the keyword here, consent. It can be really thrilling to be treated like an object, to be some woman’s Ricky Martin, though eventually you probably want to be seen as a human being not a sex object. So there are times when its okay to be objectified. If the consent is there, if women are thrilled by thinking guys are turned on by seeing them nude, then there is no problem in my book…
Was it Robert Anton Wilson or Richard Bandler who managed to make a room full of feminists basically lose it on him, just by incessantly paying them compliments regarding their femininity? They weren’t ‘politically correct’ compliments, mind you, but they were perfectly good compliments, and I think what really made those women angry was the fact that they secretly liked it. Damn. I wish I could remember the story better or find a link to it. It was awesome!
Joe Rogan. Oh my God. He’s got to be one of my favorite people in the universe.
This bitch is pretty cool too. A little on the extreme side. Can’t say as I relate to the rape fantasies, but she makes some valid points:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007/10/05/on-objectifying-women/
Bottom line: women like being objectified - to a point. and they like being dominated - to a point. they also like to objectify and dominate men. they just go about it differently.
Brooke, you didn’t link to an article just back to Tim’s blog entry.
I think I know what link you are thinking of though.
This one?
http://www.takeninhand.com/
oh weird, how did that happen? no, not the one you’re thinking of, though I’ll check that out.
here’s what I mean to link to:
http://www.violentacres.com/archives/51/how-feminism-ruined-my-sex-life
Some damned good articles on that site, Ted. Much more thoughtful and sane than the one I linked to. ; )
Yeah, its pretty interesting. Violent Acres has its place though!
the violent acres article explains a lot of the looks i get from women when i tell them i`m a therapist……………
but seriously, i spent 14 years in a relationship with a control freak and learned to not even think about sex with her unless she was overtly interested first.
and then she blamed porn for “desensitising” me to her………..
nexus magazine had a series of articles on the neuro-chemical nature of “love” recently which basically suggested that the phase of pairbonding in a marriage lasts for two or three years, after which things cool off for most.
That’s interesting, but people can live how they want to live if they choose to do so and work at it consciously.