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 ?

It doesn't matter if you're objectifying a chubby brunette's massive bush, you're still objectifying her.

blackcurrents
it may make life harder for women, upthread someone spoke about being a 14 year old girl and trying to make sense of the images she see's , i have never been a 14 year old girl but i can imagine that could be difficult.
does all porn make women objects ? no, it doesnt. there is porn that totaly dehumanizes both sexes but i certianly dont see the women i look at as objects/peices of meat/ dehumanized, they are women, they are undressed and that excites me , sorry, but it is what it is . no amount of philosophy will change that.
i think sexuality should be glorified , glamorised even, not repressed , hidden away in shame . thats a slippery slope to the burka or covering table legs . is people are excited by non abusive erotica that makes no one an object, if they were an object no one would get aroused by it.

Then I have to disagree with you very strongly, dadof2 - I think you are extremely wrong. All porn DOES make women objects, it reduces them to things, rather than treating them like people.

I think sexuality should be glorious. I think sex should being people joy. I think sex should bring people delight.

I do NOT think it should degrade, exploit, humiliate, or harm people. And I worry for my son that his sexuality will be twisted by images of women being abused, degraded, and exploited in every day porn (and that IS what is happening) and therefore he will come to see sex - which should be celebrated and shared - as something to be forced on women, snatched or wheedled or cajoled from women, rather than enjoyed with a willing partner.

Don't try the 'if you don't like porn you're a prude' thing. That won't wash with me.

I do think the ubiquity is part of the problem.
You'd perhaps get away with that argument in a time when pornography was relatively rare and had to be sought out, dadof2. No longer. The sheer volume of pornified images of women, (unavoidable nowadays, on billboards, in the newsagents, even in ad for mouthwash fgs), versus the numbers of ordinary non sexualised women skews perceptions of what's normal.

Men like looking at naked women, of course, and there's nothing wrong with that. But even the 'ethical' consumer, such as yourself, adds to the weight of objectification.

Viz the thing that men can tell the difference between fantasy and reality and therefore aren't affected by porn, there's v. good research to show that habitual porn use affects the areas of the brain that control empathy and that habitual porn users are more likely to have mysogystic, hostile attitudes to women and are also more likely to be violent.

Given that in internet porn, almost 90% of films show something violent happening to women and whatever "harmless" porn you say you are wanking to, the majority of men accessing porn via the internet are jacking off to images of women being brutalised (because abuse is such a turn-on), your arguments are actually beginning to make me feel sick Dadof2. Particularly as I've spent much of the day reading Kat Banyard's chapter on porn, The Booty Myth. Try reading that and trying to convince yourself that porn is harmless.