No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Feminists of nearly all stripes are always blathering about the “objectification” of women, as if society, the media, the magical “male gaze” or whatever had the power to literally transform women into inanimate objects like the aliens in a certain memorable episode of Star Trek. To any reasonable person, the very idea is absurd; women are not passive “things” and cannot be transformed into such by any process known to modern science, nor are humans machines to be programmed by “society” or “The Patriarchy” (or whatever other devil one cares to conjure) into treating other humans in any particular way. To be sure, the weak-minded are subject to considerable social pressure which colors their thinking about others, but only the most completely brainwashed (who are and always have been a small minority) are wholly unable to see individuals as individual.
This is why the process of demonization works so well in maintaining hostility toward minority groups; the average person doesn’t deal with members of any given minority nearly as often as with members of the majority, and if hate or fear toward that group can be maintained he isn’t likely to have an intimate enough relationship with any of its members to learn that the prejudice and propaganda are false. If black people or Jews are segregated into ghettos and prohibited from frequent interaction with the majority, members of that majority don’t get the opportunity to learn the truth about them; and if homosexuals and whores are criminalized they are afraid to expose themselves to the majority. But women are not a minority; we are, in fact, a slight majority, and it’s a rare human who is not on intimate terms with at least one of us. Contrary to feminist propaganda, it is impossible to truly convince a majority of the population that women are something other than we are, because most of the population are women and the majority of the men are in the position to observe plenty of examples of individual female behavior.
The word “objectification” derives from the concept of a “sex object”. But sexual desire is transitive; it requires an object. The word “object” in the phrase “sex object” is therefore used in the sense of “object of the preposition” or “object of one’s affection”, not in the sense of “inanimate object”. Women ARE sex objects for heterosexual men, and anyone who doesn’t like it needs to take it up with Nature (and find another way for us to reproduce). Furthermore, the human body is an object in the concrete sense; it’s a physical thing which can be touched, takes up space, etc. Only the will or spirit animates it, and even then the body is merely a vehicle for the self. So I have a lot of trouble with people who decry the “objectification” of something which is already an object, in both senses of the word. I reckon what radical feminists are trying to get at is that men or “society” ignore women’s personalities, but that is nonsense; the fabric of society is largely woven and maintained by women, and (outside of some extreme areas of BDSM) the personality of a female “sex object” is just as important to the average male observer as her body is, despite what some feminists would like to believe.
OK, so what about graphic art? Women are a popular subject for both male and female creators and beholders of visual imagery, and even moderate feminists often decry the “sexualized images” of women they perceive as increasingly common. But what is an image? It’s a collection of tiny dots (electronic or paint) on a surface, which the human mind chooses to shape into something familiar. But the image is not the thing; this is what Magritte is telling us when he paints a pipe and labels it, “This is not a pipe”. It isn’t; it’s a picture of a pipe. And images of women – whether in advertising, porn, “feminist” art, medical illustrations or paintings by Flemish masters – are just that, images. Any “message”, sexual or otherwise, exists in the mind of the observer, and judging by some of the sexual “interpretations” I’ve heard applied by some feminists to pictures I see as innocuous, their minds are very dirty indeed (if not highly disturbed). I’m not trying to be difficult or facetious here, but rather to help you recognize that the “sexiness” of an image really is in the eye of the beholder. Would you be turned on by a photo of two dogs coupling? How about two monkeys? Two chimpanzees? Two really repulsive people? How about a poorly-drawn sketch of a nude woman? An artistic nude painting? A black-and-white photo of a nude woman wholly without sexual context? What if it was a nude man without an erection? A photo of a clothed man in some situation that appeals to a kink you don’t share? Some modern fanatics want to keep people from taking photos of fully-clothed children in public for fear that pedophiles might masturbate to them, and overzealous Victorians draped the legs of tables to avoid arousing the easily-aroused.
What I’m getting at is, people tend to see in a picture whatever it is they’re predisposed to see; I wouldn’t call a picture of a cop beating a man “sexual”, but an extremely sadistic or masochistic gay man with a uniform fetish might conceivably find it so. Pictures, like attitudes, are powerless to “objectify” women; that can only happen in the mind of individuals, and even then only in those who are predisposed to perceive such content everywhere they look.
One Year Ago Today
“January Q & A” answers questions about oral sex, electrolysis and the “Video Vigilante”.
This time I beg to differ – it IS possible to convince people that the larger portion of the population are things. Theocratic Islamic societies like Saudi Arabia and the Taliban give us perfect examples of that happening. They are also an example of the term “minority” as a group which holds the minority of the power in a society, and not simply as a group minor in pure numbers.
I was really thinking of the sort of large, relatively free societies where “feminists” live. But you’re right; in a small totalitarian society; I think it is probably possible to mentally cripple a big portion of the population…though still not everyone.
Well, the fact is that all societies used to be pretty much like this. The Middle East was the cradle of human civilization once… but things there didnt really change quite much since 3000 years ago.
I think you make the mistake of seeing the present situation that you describe (large, relatively free societies where “feminists” live) as the normal once, while in reality they are more of a historical exception. We should wander not why other societies are different, but rather why this one (western civilization at this moment) happened to become so exceptionally better. I’m not saying its because of the feminists, but they and people like them have a role in developing the society for what it is.
I believe that feminists – real ones – had a large role in creating free society. But like so many other institutions, they became a solution in search of a problem once their work was done, and now they actually threaten the society the first feminists helped build, by demanding censorship and thought control which they self-justify with philosophically-bankrupt nonsense like “objectification of women”. Even in the societies you’re talking about, lower-class men were “objectified” as much as lower-class women were, and so were children of both sexes. But the “feminists” find that an inconvenient fact, so they ignore it.
оh yeah, I agree with that completely. I have too wrote about the modern feminist movement and its abandonment of its core principles…
“The Middle East was the cradle of human civilization once… but things there didnt really change quite much since 3000 years ago.”
I know this comment is a bit off topic, but the fact is the Middle East DID change a lot in that time, in fact, much of the foundation of modern culture and science comes from there. This regression to the Middle Age thinking, historically speaking, is very recent.
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe” sums up my stand on lolicon images, shotacon images, twenty-two-year-olds portraying fifteen-year-olds in movies, violent sexual drawings, etc. A drawing or painting of a cute little girl with an axe in her crotch disgusts me and will turn me OFF if I were aroused before seeing it, but when you get down to it, no real child has been harmed. And drawings don’t have rights, so “her” rights are not violated by the artist drawing that axe. The artist has rights, so the image can’t be used without her permission. But the drawing itself is a piece of paper or celluloid with ink on it.
“Ceci n’est pas une fille”
I’m glad you wrote this Maggie, as I was thinking about the whole “sex object” label the other day and how deceptively similar it is to the phrase … “sells her body”.
They’re both very shallow descriptions of a deeper concept – yet they are designed to STOP the mind from thinking any deeper than the slanderous phrase.
Mother Nature (a woman!) designed things so that it took men and women to reproduce the species. When one of her little gnome helpers, who happened to be a social engineer, questioned her design, she simply told him that the male and female would “get together” and that action would produce offspring. Soooo, the little gnome engineer was curious about exactly how that happened – so he asked Mother Nature … “Well, this female thing here – what’s her role?” And Mother Nature told him … “Well her role is simply to attract the male so that he wants to get together with her”.
“Oh yeah?” said the gnome … “well what if the male decides he DOESN’T want to get together with her? You know – the brain thing you’ve put in both of them is pretty complicated!”
“I’ve given the men another brain” she said … “and it’s stupider, and will OVERRIDE the main brain. Him rejecting her is not a possibility because he’s going to be as high as a kite during this whole affair and won’t think of anything but HER!”
“Even if she’s got a big ass?” said the gnome.
“Especially if she’s got a big ass!” said Mother Nature.
The gnome said … “Okay, I understand that – but did you give the woman a second brain to dumb her down during all this too?”
“No” said Mother Nature – “the brain I gave her is just fine and someone has to be able to THINK while all this is going on!”
“Hey, just as a joke – you should make it where she can tell him ‘no’!” Said the gnome.
And, Mother nature got a sly smile on her face and said to the gnome … “Oh, you better fuckin’ believe I put that in too this is going to be hilarious!!”
Great title and funny story!
I agree with Maggie that the image is not the individual or the group, and what the artist intended to express isn’t necessarily what the observer is required to interpret. But when the educational system keeps people as uninformed and incompetent as possible, they will be easily led by the nose through the careful propaganda (news, advertising) they are bombarded with.
Corporate bureaucracies go through a lot of trouble and expense to cultivate markets. Although some highly intelligent citizens like Maggie may be immune to the mass media, the rest of the citizenry are driven like sheep. Where feminists go wrong is to blame the media for humanity’s sexual interests, rather than questioning why their own parents mentally castrated them when they were little girls.
http://sexhysteria.wordpress.com/
“I’m not trying to be difficult or facetious here, but rather to help you recognize that the “sexiness” of an image really is in the eye of the beholder.”
Oh I don’t know about that. I think some images are universally recognized as sexy. Just look at Barbara Bouchet in that episode. She had guys from two different galaxies fighting over her.
Recognizing that others find an image sexy and finding it sexy oneself aren’t the same thing, though. For example, those pictures of male-strippers, all oiled up in a sort of effeminate pose with a kind of creepy look on their faces; I find those repellent in the extreme, but I recognize that many gay men and some hetero women find them sexy.
Wait! What? Most women don’t like the oiled up male stripper look? Damn – that’s a look I’ve tried to cultivate for YEARS!! 😛
I’m afraid not. 😉
Facepalm. Really? You are so at risk of losing your nerd card.
I knew you were joking, silly. But I still figured there was a point to be made. 😉
I’m still calling a yellow card nerd violation on that one. And Barbara Bouchet in her prime, yum.
LOL. 😀
How ’bout if I tell you my absolute favorite Star Trek babe was Sherry Jackson as Andrea in “What are Little Girls Made Of?” Second place goes to Louise Sorel as Rayna in “Requiem for Methuselah”.
And no mention of Yvonne Craig as the green-skinned slavegirl.
**Krulac shakes head …
Sad.
All excellent choices. I also liked Barbara Anderson in “The Conscience of the King.” I thought she looked adorable. And really, on hair points alone how can we overlook Angelique Pettyjohn.
I think I’ll win my nerd points back in 16 days. 😉
Yvonne Craig was only the second Orion slave girl. The first was Susan Oliver.
Wow. I didn’t recognize Batgirl. I’d say I’m slipping in my old age, but I wasn’t old yet.
@Sailor
I read that in certain countries, it’s illegal to portray an “under-aged” character having sex (especially with a fully adult character), even if the actor playing the under-aged character is an adult.
When the most recent film of “Lolita” was made and edited, the producer had a lawyer present to make sure no one was breaking the law. This what it’s come to. Personally, if the actors are all adults, then there is no real under-aged person involved here, only an imaginary one.
Just how legal it is here in the US seems to be a contentious point. As I understand it, it’s a as legal as the day is long, but a grandstanding prosecutor can drag the case out to the point that, unless you’re filthy rich (merely rich won’t be enough) you won’t be able to keep fighting and will accept a plea. Thus giving him another notch on his political-advancement belt and you a lingering reputation as a child pornographer who “got off on a technicality,” even though you didn’t get off and the “technicality” was that you were innocent.
But hey, I’m not a lawyer. How do I know what’s legal?
Hi Maggie,
try reading the HATRED we have to put up with. If DEMANDING that men DIE for the benefit of the women and children because women are “worth more” is not objectification of men as disposable drones? I do not know what is.
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/does-sheila-gregoire-think-her-own-life-is-worth-more-than-yours-2/
In the big picture, aren’t we “disposable drones”?
I’ve read that women have faster reflexes, and their senses (sight, hearing, smell, etc) are more advanced than men’s are.
So, if a big lion comes up on the tribe … the chicks hear and see it FIRST, grab the little ones and run. This leaves us “disposable drones” there to fight the lion while the more reproductively valuable females get away. With one woman, and unlimited men – you could reproduce at a rate of about 1 per year. But with unlimited women – one man could father a hundred or more in a year (uhm yeah – this thought turns me on! 🙂 )
Anyway, as a man – we can’t have the best of EVERYTHING. I kind of think that equality between the sexes is a natural thing because each sex has a weakness in an area that the other sex excels at. This forces us to rely on each other for survival.
Isn’t there some kind of female spider that devours the male after copulating? See, a lot of people think that kind of sucks – me, if I were that male spider … I think I would be “cool” with it.
Maybe that’s just me though! 😛
It’s been calculated that the male population of a culture can be reduced to 1/30 of normal without affecting its birth rate, though of course genetic diversity and economic strength would be proportionately reduced. If you were planning a “survival group” for repopulating a world quickly and could control for genetic diversity and useful skills, the optimum ratio for fastest repopulation for the available resources is about six women per man.
The idea that “Men Are the Expendable Gender” goes way back.
For the record, the world doesn’t need repopulating and the female population could be reduced a lot before we’d be in any danger. Despite this, I have a tendency to think less of men who save themselves while leaving others in danger than of women who do the same.
Unless she caused the danger, of course. Then she’s evil and I hope the lion eats her first.
HTF do you know this stuff? 😛
I’ve read that women have faster reflexes, and their senses (sight, hearing, smell, etc) are more advanced than men’s are.
Females also have a stronger immune system on average.
I think it’s less possible that women are “sex objects” than in times past, when women’s roles and possibilities were so totally circumscribed. Then, a women was usually allowed only to be a wife and mother, a nun or professional virgin, or a whore. All had to do with sex, and women as defined by men.
Since feminism, and other social changes, women have other possibilities, and men less power in declaring the boundaries of a woman’s world.
As pointed out above, this is not true in places under the thumb of superstition.
If you’ve done porn, or prostitution, it’s a very healthy thing to learn the difference between image and reality, and that we are not the sum of the images of us. While I may appear to be a sex object at that moment, may be a sex object at that moment, it’s not all of who I am, only an aspect, a role I am playing at the moment.
But the image is not the thing; this is what Magritte is telling us when he paints a pipe and labels it, “This is not a pipe”. It isn’t; it’s a picture of a pipe. And images of women – whether in advertising, porn, “feminist” art, medical illustrations or paintings by Flemish masters – are just that, images.
This is a major topic of discussion in academic art history circles. My methodology class had to read a particularly long, boring, and (in my opinion) pedantic essay about how, essentially, all art is dehumanizing and objectifying because it is merely a representation and whether or not this was “fair”. And no, wasn’t written by a feminist of any stripe. I’m pretty sure my eyes made an audible rolling sound in class.
Yikes. Talk about a missive issued forth from an ivory tower; sounds like a good candidate for the “B” Ark.
A “pipe” is also French slang for a BJ.
Thanks to the context of this post, Magritte’s painting just took on a new meaning for me.
I have thought a lot about the concept of objectification and at this point I consider it to be nothing more than a social control mechanism to shame human beings for natural human desires. Human beings lust after other human beings and neofeminists and conservatives both want us to believe it is wrong. So they invent language that equates lusting after and desiring another human being with dehumanization. A belief that only makes since if you believe that human sexual desire itself is wrong and that humans should just become sexless robots.
Another problem with their nonsense is that it assumes that only women are ever considered sex objects and that only men ever “objectify”. I consider that bs. When I see a man I find attractive I lust after him or as they would say I “objectify” him. And I know I am not the only women. This became evident to me when I became a fan of jpop and visual kei. Boy bands produced by Johnny’s entertainment are infamous for the fact that they aren’t famous for their talent but their ability to make women horny. And many Japanese male music artist like Gackt and Hyde pander to their female fans in ways that would get female artists like Britney Spears and Beyonce in trouble. I’ve seen things like guys simulating sex on stage or asking their fans “Do you want to F**** me”. And their fan girls love this behavior.
Exactly right. The neofeminist rationalization for that is that only women can be “objectified” because men have all the “power” (as they define it). Lesbians therefore can’t “objectify” other women (one of the things that demonstrates neofeminists are all about the politics is that they deny that abuse exists in lesbian relationships, when anyone who’s ever known more than two lesbians knows that’s total bullshit).
The whole “it takes power to be a sexist” nonsense is the exact same garbage as the Afrocentrist “black people can’t be racist” doctrine, which has largely fallen into disfavor.
At this point it’s probably expected (by Laura if nobody else) that I’ll have something to say on the matter, or at least that I’ll link to some music video.
So I will.
I have always wondered why, if ‘objectification’ of women (or men, come to that) is so prevalent in society, necrophilia isn’t more common. Death is surely more effective in reducing people to objects than ad campaigns, porn, or even more extreme forms of BDSM, as you put it. And the average corpse certainly has a distinct price advantage over the average ho!
I tried to get my head around Wiki’s definition of ‘objectification’ once, it seems to be some kind of stage that people, esp women, go through, but I can’t see any way of stopping them going through it so I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. Maybe the neo-fems suffer from arrested development?
I think that’s a given.
It meseems that “objectificaton,” when it is regarded in tandem with the cardinal sin of “lookism”, means that we men are specifically forbidden from any possible, putative, or speculative awareness that things-with-cunts are in any way different from things-with-cocks!
Sorry, Maggie, I’m incapacitated by too much brandy. In the current rules, I have been disabled by alcohol to the point that I am no longer legally competent to be responsible for my own behavior.
Isn’t that congruent with the “feminine” side of the FBI/NCIC definition of “date-rape” in the Federal Register? Even though I’m male?
“Objectification Overruled.”
I love the title of this post; it gave me a real chuckle.
It’s impressive how calmly you go about your eviscerations — I could never write about these everyday infamies without my tone being curdled by disgust.
You would make an excellent judge, Maggie, even though you’re at odds with the law. 😉
Thank you! 🙂
I’m not at odds with the concept of law, though; I’m just opposed to unjust laws or those which have no function other than to give certain people or groups power over others.
And God bless you for that!
That’s actually a myth about the Victorians and table legs. They covered them because they didn’t want them to get scuffed if children kicked them.
One learns something new every day. Thanks for busting that myth for us, Dr. Sarah; the more I read about the Victorians, the more I learn that our present culture is far more prudish than they were (with the possible exception of bathing machines, but those were invented in 1750).
[…] Objectification Overruled (The Honest Courtesan – 31 Jan 2012) … I’ve been looking for a fit excuse to bring Maggie McNeill into the mix, and this article is a great “counterpoint” to my perspective on the problem of objectification. […]
Good piece.
Everyone objectifies, all the time. When you’re walking along a busy pavement, you do not see the crowds of people coming towards you as individuals: they are just things in the way. Even if you speak to one, you probably won’t even see what they look like.
Car drivers see other cars, not the person driving them, or the people sitting in the other seats.
We are not adapted to deal with the number of people we see, as individuals; until very recently – a few thousand years ago – most humans wouldn’t see more than a few other humans all their lives; we can’t handle more than a few people at any one time.
As the Great Mark E Smith said: “There are twelve people in the world; the rest are paste.”
Hi Maggie. I was wandering if you had any thoughts on this Ted Talk on ‘objectification’?
Only the essay above.
That was kind of dumb. Sexiness is put in advertising not because it makes anybody money, but to, um… brainwash little girls? Because who would want to make money?
yes there are some stupidities in there for sure. but some of the points she makes re women continually monitoring their own appearance in a way most men never would, the ‘cognitive burden’ associated with such activity, are interesting and I don’t think they should be outright dismissed. This talk is very popular and I can kind of see why. Her ‘plan of action’ at the end though is ludicrous…
[…] to consume pornography. No wonder some women feel the word is overused or that objectification doesn’t exist. But the irony is that for all the rage against the sex machine, radical feminists are less vocal […]
[…] to consume pornography. No wonder some women feel the word is overused or that objectification doesn’t exist. But the irony is that for all the rage against the sex machine, radical feminists are less vocal […]