objectification!

[dadof2ofthem]

ok, this is a serious question
i was talking to a female friend of mine recently, she's educated and emancipated etc, i said "i dont get the 'objectification' argument, i've never once been aroused by an object"

she laughed and told me "it's object as apposed to subject " "ahhhh" i said as though it had just dawned on me what she ment.

if your objective your inpartial, well thats my understanding anyway, and subjective meants your subject to some other force , influencing your opinion.

maybe one of you can fill the gaps for me ?

Yes, I'm saying that being an 'object' as in the object of attention, of desire etc is not necessarily bad, or damaging. Being 'objectified' is different as it means being seen as only an object - so removing the human/person aspect and reducing a woman to tits/holes.

dadof2, I think you've got that the wrong way round, but no, it's probably not always better to be the subject. It's definitely not better to always be the object is the point we're making here.

I draw the line at a person being reduced to the sum of their parts Dadof2, rather than a whole human being.

Where do you draw the line? Or don't you?

objectification is bad.

Objectifying someone (reducing them to an object) is bad.

Using porn is bad.

See? Simple!

I don't know the answer to the question but here's a real life example

Leamington lap dancing club loses licence

Quote: ?We don?t want Leamington to have even a small element of the seedy culture where women are treated as sex objects.?

HerbeX i'm not sure where i draw the line , problem is i dont regard any sexualised image as being dehumanized . i certainly draw the line at consent, buts thats something else that objectification.
from peoples responses here i am concluding that it is my attitude to an image that makes the suject of that image objectified. if i see the subject as a rounded human being that possibly has an exhibisionist streak then i do not objectify her?
i have the feeling your not going to let me off the hook that easily .

tribpot, thanx for the link

just re-reading what i said, and it came our wrong...clearly there are dehumaizing images out there , i meant images that i personaly might find 'interesting'.

If you look at pornographic images and watch porn how do you know its consensual? Very few women participate in porn cos they just love the sex. If you tell yourself she is a well rounded human that wants to share her body with the world is that not appeasing your guilt at getting aroused by it?

Take Katie Price for example. She claims shes an exhibitionist blah blah blah but when I see her being interviewed or on tv I think there are some major issues that she has including possibly body dysmorphia/self esteem.

Has anyone seen this? It seems very detailed & comprehensive

Feminist Perspectives on Objectification

I would be interested to know whether people here think it does justice to the feminist case against porn for example

Why would you see someone you are not personally acquainted with, as someone who is fully human with an exhibitionist streak? Why should you assume that someone you don't know has an exhibitionist streak, particularly when you know that she has taken her clothes off, because she has been paid to do so - assuming she has an exhibitionist streak, is attributing a characteristic to her that you don't know she has, in order to disguise the fact that she's got no clothes on because someone has paid her to take her clothes off because men like you provide a market for other men to make money out of making women like her wank-fodder. What other characteristics do you attribute to these unknown women? Generosity? Meanness? Good organisational skills? Excellent analysis skills? In short, any skill or characteristic you choose because you're not interracting with them as human beings, you're wanking over your version of who and what they are.

LilBB & HerBex yes ok, i cant argue with either of you on those points.

i have a better idea of what consitutes objectification now anyway.
i dont think i can give up porn i'm afraid, and i really dont think the images i look at degrade or dehumanize women. is it wrong to be excited by a naked body? is it wrong to be aroused by consentual adults who post their naked pictures on the web?

i accept that it is hard to proove consent, this is difficult for me , but, well take the 'voyeurweb' for example if those people who post either themselves or their partners on there are all being forced against their will then the're very good actors.

i agree with your last points LilBB & HerBeX i just thought i'd found a loophole lol.

dadof2ofthem

I'm sure it's hard for you to understand because you obviously mean no harm to women but when you are a woman you are affected by the ubiquity of the images around us. If there were a few it would be ok but there are everywhere and they affect us.

Look at the lads mags on the top shelf and imagine that you are a 14 year old girl looking at them. What does that tell you? That men aren't interested in your brains, your personality or individual achievements but in your body. Your body is an object, to be admired, or in some countries to be hidden and as girls we are told in a myriad of ways that it is our most important asset.

From another angle it is also to do with lack of agency. Look at the Disney fodder that is fed to young girls. So many of the story lines have the hero (active = subject) rescuing the helpless female (passive = object) and it gives us the message that the most we can do is look pretty and wait for someone to rescue us. For those of us who do not want to fit into that mold there are a cornucopia of derogatory remarks waiting to put us down.

Look at the gendered adverts of toys for kids. The ones for boys (lego mechanics, etc) are active and constructive, whilst the ones for girls are passive (princess, sparkle sparkle look at me) and tell girls there are there to be looked at, an object to be decorated.

I'm sure there are women who are happy in the industry of porn (and beauty) because they are making money while they can, but what they put out affects the rest of us adversely because of the pressure it creates.

You ask again if it's wrong to be excited by a naked body. We've already covered that, why are you coming back to that.

Your conscience is your affair.

joaninha i agree with you totaly, i dont have daughters but if i did i would tell them it's nice to be beautiful, but be the beautiful doctor or the beautiful lawyer , not the beautiful girl who gets off on pretty dresses, i cant stand programs like 'americas next top model' where self-obsessed girls talk about themselves for hours.
as for disney well, there old fairy tales , girls have some great role modles these days , from angela merckel to sandi toxvig, disney profits from fairy tales so that will set them back a few hundred years .
toys are gendered but both my boys would play with boyish toys automaticaly just like they get excited by a digger catapillaring past and girls dont, i dont think gender stereotyping could have affected them so young.

What if she isn't beautiful?

My dd loves playing a variety of toys. She has dolls, kitchen, cars, building blocks, diggers etc and she plays with them all. She doesn't gravitate towards the 'girly' ones. Do your sons have dolls and other toys typically associated with girls?

What if your daughter wanted to work in porn?

Dadof2ofthem-

You say that you don't think you can give up porn.

Don't you mean that you choose not to give up porn?

Despite knowing that a large part of the population finds it degrading?

Or are you one of those poor, helpless men, who has no control over his sexual urges in the face of wonton women flaunting themselves?

Watch the film Hardcore Dadof2.

Do you want to give up porn?

Or are you looking for loopholes, excuses etc., to tell yourself that it's actually morally OK to participate in an industry that relies on slavery and abuse in order to function?

Watch Hardcore and then see if you still have the stomach for porn. Read Pornland and see if you still fancy a wank over possibly enslaved women. And if you do, fine, that's your free choice -but you won't be able to kid yourself that you're not helping to prop up a hideous industry which gives the women in it very few choices. Still, your choice to have a wank eh, that's got to be the priority here.

dadof2ofthem. Thanks - it's nice to be agreed with! But it's interesting what you say about the "beautiful doctor or the beautiful lawyer" because the message the (mostly Hollywood) media seems to send us these days is that yes, women can be top lawyers now but that they must still be beautiful.

It's just so tiring this beauty requirement....

Re. the toys issue, you'd be surprised how kids pick up on external cues. My little boy used to love pink until he went to school and promptly discarded it as a "girl colour". When I was kid I loved airports and planes, so my parents bought me an "I am an air stewardess" badge which I loved because it never occurred to me that I could be a pilot as it was something I'd never seen in real life.

As for innate versus nature, it's impossible to know for sure. If you look at it from a scientific point of view, the first principle of any experiment is that of a "fair trial", ie. no external factors. Until we have removed all those external factors (adverts, peer pressure, parental and social expectations, etc) we will never be able to know for sure the innate differences between boys and girls.

dadof2 if you literally can't give up porn why are you wasting people's time having an argument about objectification? If you really are dependent on it that means you'd still have to carry on using it regardless of what people said.

And how do you know you can't give it up? Have you tried? Would you die if your supply of porn was cut off? I don't think so