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Originally posted by Malacasta
Oh, I don't know... how 'bout the whole 'objectification of women' thing?

If you don't know what this means or what the implications are then I suggest you do a bit of reading.

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And yet despite this objectification that has gone on since the dawn of time, women have never been better off. With the internet, women have never been more objectified, and yet women are better off now than ever before in history. Kinda ruins the theory that objectification of women harms women's rights.

Crying about objectification of women is much ado about nothing. People objectify other people constantly. The ethics or morality of this are ultimately irrelevant. In business, work, and many social situations all people have time and energy to worry about is what they can get from someone else. Whether it is a sales contract, a promotion, directions to a restaurant, or sex, people USE people all the time. And the reality is that for the most part people don't mind being used. It is like a social contract - I'll let you use me because I plan to use someone later, and in the end we are all better off.

There are a host of very negative social effects from things like strip clubs, porn, etc. but it is not the objectification of women. The criminalization, mass drug abuse, etc. are the problems in those industries, not the product itself.

Having worked in a women's room before where women were recovering from rape and assault on campus, and being subject to violence myself in attacks that were clearly based upon my value as a sexual object and not my value as a human of equal worth, I am convinced that if you encourage the belief that women are sex objects, or objects of physical value, then this has obvious, violent consequences.

Also, objectification of women can lead to self harm in terms of eating disorders, depression etc.

I can't type easily atm but I just want to quickly get out that the theory is more nuanced than it was in perhaps the 70's and 80's, and there's some argument that women's liberation has had some negative influence in terms of objectification. There are a lot of feminists these days who appreciate and participate in some aspects of raunch/burlesque culture and they sometimes argue that it's about women taking back their sexuality (I don't think I'm convinced by their argument).

Anyways, please excuse the ramble, but the 'objectification of women' is a real part of moderns society, and just because various different forms of women's oppression have occurred historically, doesn't mean that modern society hasn't created its own monsters.

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Originally posted by Malacasta
I am convinced that if you encourage the belief that women are sex objects, or objects of physical value, then this has obvious, violent consequences.

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I disagree. Violent acts are committed by violent people, whether it's a sexual crime or otherwise. I don't think suppressing a woman's sexuality or sexual prowess has anything to do with saving them from becoming victims of crimes that may or may not happen. I don't agree with putting sexual behavior down as a "you asked for it" type of tsk tsk oppression and I don't think that women should abide by some standard that keeps them from feeling good about themselves.

I think women are just as sexual today as men, and should not be led to believe that being so makes them a more viable target for sexual abuse and violent crimes.

Empowering women by letting them know that violence is violence no matter what act is perpetrated is a better route than oppressing behaviors that tend to give pleasure to both parties involved in any sort of mutual exchange of a sexual nature.

If you use sexual prowess of women against them in this sort of oppressive way, you are taking away their power, not saving them from harms way.

Pyrosama, I don't disagree with anything you've said, but it's got nothing much to do with the objectification of women.

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Originally posted by Malacasta
Pyrosama, I don't disagree with anything you've said, but it's got nothing much to do with the objectification of women.

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I understand that. But when I'm in a strip club, appreciating a lovely stripper, I'm not DEvaluing the other aspects of her personality and/or intellect. What I'm saying is that I'm appreciating HER work at the moment, don't really give a hoot about her personality and/or intellect, family ties, history. That is NOT what I'm there for and that's definitely not what she's there for.

If I were to intrude on her personal life and expect to capitalize off her friendliness during a lapdance by trying to "hookup" with a phone number...that's then crossing the line and is not okay in any way. I would say that yes, that would be devaluing the person by associating their acts with their personal being and that's wrong.

The objectification of women is about separating sexuality from the other valuable aspects of a woman's being/person when you should be accepting the total package. In the case of being in a strip club, you're accepting (or should be accepting) their competence as a stripper ONLY. If I objectify anyone, it's because they went there first. Mutual respect and interaction.

I know the difference I think. I would never want to be devalued at my workplace, so I would never do that to another woman, ever. No matter where she works. :biglove

I have never seen any research that equated rape with the objectification of women. Rape tends to be about power, and the twisted, mental illness of the rapist. It has little or nothing to do with seeing women as a sex object. In fact, most rape has nothing to do with sexual urges. It is a sick power play.

I'm with Pyrosama on this one, and as I said, I think the whole "objectification" claim is a myth. People objectify people all the time. It is a part of our social contract.

Suppressing sexual urges is actually more unhealthy than celebrating or admitting them and then finding a healthy, legal outlet.

I do think that there has been research done on the link between objectification and violence (or other negatives) against women. It is quite difficult to find sources I can link to since many of these arguments occur in books or research papers that are not available on the net.

But here’s a for example about pornography:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._75959819/pg_2

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… Nonviolent pornography has been shown to increase the perception of rape victims as worthless, facilitate male callousness toward women, increase the trivialization of rape, and diminish support for the women's liberation movement (Zillmann & Bryant, 1982). In a careful experimental test of the effects of viewing sexually explicit materials that contain scenes that degrad e women on men's perceptions of women, Jansma, Linz, Mulac, and Imrich (1997) found that sex-typed men who viewed the sexually degrading films rated their female partner's intellectual competence significantly lower than did the non-sex-typed men. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that such degrading portrayals of women contribute to men's objectification of them.

…Consistent with these results, Check and Guloien (1989) reported that frequent pornography users exposed to nonviolent but dehumanizing pornography were especially likely to report that they might rape, were more sexually callous, and reported more frequent acts of sexual aggression compared to those exposed to violent pornography and erotica. Further, research suggests that sexually explicit stimuli that portray men and women in equal power relations with mutual respect for each other do not increase misogynist responses and may actually reduce them (Baron & Bell, 1977).

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This is a short essay without sources which points to some of the arguments made by leading feminists such as Susan Faludi.
http://medialiteracy.suite101.com/ar...ation_of_women

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… the issue of objectification isn’t just about individual women’s decisions. It’s about the impact of this kind of representation on society. That is, a woman may choose to model for Playboy – but once her image is in the magazine, the issue isn’t just her choice anymore. It’s about how that representation of women affects the world. Put it another way, a woman might choose to model in Playboy – but all women collectively did not choose to be represented in this manner.

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The consequences of objectification are not easy to measure. There is no way to link dangerous behavious such as eating disorders or crimes such as rape directly to media objectification - and it would be irresponsible and inaccurate to do so. However, we live in a world filled with the objectification of women, and this objectification [i]contributes] to social problems. These problems include:
-sexual violence and other violence against women…
-eating disorders and negative self image…
-backlash…
-pressure on teens and young women to dress and behave more sexually…

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Note that I quoted the ‘irresponsible and inaccurate’ because I wanted to indicate that I felt I overstated the link when I didn’t have the research at hand. I do think it’s difficult to work out what’s causal and what’s not. I do think that the women’s movement from when I was at uni is quite different to today’s movements – for example, none of my friends back then would have considered going to a strip joint, the whole industry was so obviously sexist, where as now, there are quite complex and involved debates on places like Larvartus Prodeo about burlesque etc.

The section highlighted by this url also has some interesting comment and history on the contradiction between the desire to liberate women sexually, and the need to stop violence against women (which often involves paternalistic intervention of the state etc). http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...result#PPP8,M1

Some of the quotes you used, Malacasta, said that men who are more often exposed to pornography are more likely to objectify and mistreat women. I do not think that this is accurate.

One of the quotes mentioned studying men who regularly watched nonviolent pornography where a woman was dehumanized. These men were said to be more likely to treat women worse than men exposed to violent pornography.

I would say that this has more to do with the fact that men who watch certain types of pornography tend to be certain types of men.

I do not know how this experiment was set up. Did they recruit subjects at random and then regularly expose them to various types of pornography? Or did they recruit men who already watch a lot of a certain type of porno and question them? If it was the latter, then what I just said in the previous paragraph would definitely be a factor and probably skew the results.

I am at work and don't have time to read this. It looks like the original article
http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=...Mf2rhH15xMgx3Y

(If my sources contain references, then it's pretty easy to look up the reference to see whether you think it was carried out in a scientific manner).

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Originally posted by Jyn


I would say that this has more to do with the fact that men who watch certain types of pornography tend to be certain types of men.

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Yeah, that was some seriously shoddy research.

I just don't see any logical connection, and I've never read reputable, serious scientific study of this beyond crappy little samples that involved little more than asking the subjects their opinions. For something like this, you need to study it over decades and look at actual crime statistics, prevalence of certain types of porn/strip clubs, etc.

I have actually seen and read such research that does prove the opposite. That while the sex industry has grown enormously in the past few decades, crimes against women have gone down, and overall conditions for women (as long as you don't live in a Muslim country) continue to improve.

Getting some people, showing them porn, and then asking them "so chix are dumb whores, right?" is not scientific in the slightest.