Female objectification

[G-Max]

You're sitting in a dentist's waiting room for a root-canal. There are two magazines lying on the table in front of you. One has Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (your choice) on the cover. The other magazine has Milton Friedman, Mr. Charles Windsor, or Pope Benedict XVI on it.

Assuming you're heterosexual with no female significant others present, which magazine do you pick-up first?

Milton Friedman. I want to know what he has to say about the impending dollar crisis.

Charles Windsor and Pope Benedict can suck on it, I don't know who Kim Kardashian is, and I can watch Michael Bay's pathetic excuses for Transformers movies if i want to see the other two.

So are we just supposed to assume that you're cool with rape, or...?

Being okay with human objectification does not mean I'm cool with violating people's rights.

Troll harder.

 

[Traitorfish]

Being okay with human objectification does not mean I'm cool with violating people's rights.

No, that's precisely what it means. Objects can't have rights. Only subjects can have rights. Objectification is the process of turning a subject into an object, which means stripping them of their rights. I don't really understand you could not know that, unless you simply don't have any idea what "objectification" actually means.

 

[G-Max]

That definition of objectification is not the one that is being used in this thread, or really in any discussion about sexual objectification.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well, the theory of sexual objectification derives from de Beauvoir, who as an existentialist used the term in precisely the sense I am using. So that doesn't really seem obvious.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

If objectification is to judge people based on outward appearance and initial impression, then we are all equally subject to it, and all equally guilty of the practice.

 

[Dachs]

You're sitting in a dentist's waiting room for a root-canal. There are two magazines lying on the table in front of you. One has Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (your choice) on the cover. The other magazine has Milton Friedman, Mr. Charles Windsor, or Pope Benedict XVI on it.

Assuming you're heterosexual with no female significant others present, which magazine do you pick-up first?

My iPod. Solitaire + metal's more fun than both.

 

[Borachio]

If objectification is to judge people based on outward appearance and initial impression, then we are all equally subject to it, and all equally guilty of the practice.

this.

 

[Uncle Anton]

No, that's precisely what it means. Objects can't have rights. Only subjects can have rights. Objectification is the process of turning a subject into an object, which means stripping them of their rights. I don't really understand you could not know that, unless you simply don't have any idea what "objectification" actually means.

Look just so I get a sense of where you're coming from here.... are you equating the act or even habitual act of perving at a given woman (or man) with raping them?

 

[Borachio]

I am not suggesting anything, sir. I would humbly beg you to consider the evidence and reach your own conclusion.




edit: does subject=object sometimes?

 

[Traitorfish]

Look just so I get a sense of where you're coming from here.... are you equating the act or even habitual act of perving at a given woman (or man) with raping them?

Um, no?

 

[Link]

Well, the theory of sexual objectification derives from de Beauvoir, who as an existentialist used the term in precisely the sense I am using. So that doesn't really seem obvious.

If you're accused of objectifying women, usually it means viewing them only for their physical appearance, and I imagine everyone is thinking along those lines. So, are you arguing over semantics here, or are you equating that with rape?

 

[Traitorfish]

I think that if you reduce a human being to nothing more than an object then, yes, you're implicitly accepting rape. After all, how can one rape an object? However, I don't think that "perving" necessarily implies that sort of reduction; that any such connection is culturally specific, rather than universal.

 

[Hygro]

Yes women are far too objectified in society. This has numerous harmful ramifications that lead women to have to overcome various obstacles that men don't. However it's important that feminists also understand that male sexuality is (probably) intrinsically objectifying and as a society we need to see how to fit that in while reducing or eliminating the harm from objectification.

This article, by Ashley Judd replying to comments on her "puffy faced" appearance sheds light on it. The Cracked article about how men are trained to hate women points out that during discussion of Elena Kagan, there was a huge amount of discourse devoted to her looks.

Wut?

Like all Supreme Court justices she's old, and academic, and not going to be the world's hottest anything. Well, anything but a qualified legal scholar that is. Seriously, I don't remember Samuel Alito getting a ton of comments on his looks, and rightly so. So why were so many people focused on hers?

Now imagine what happens when the conversation isn't about an aged judge but about a younger woman. Maybe she's trying to make it in the corporate world or politics, but everywhere she goes and whatever she does, people are going to talk and think about her looks rather than her abilities in the field.

Both men and women will do it. They will reduce her person and her worth to something subhuman, and it's awful.

But again, objectification is part of male sexuality so when we build the ideal society, we need to make it work with, not against human nature. It's a complicated road ahead but the first thing we can do is not tolerate the public obsession with women's looks that occurs no matter what the concept.

You're sitting in a dentist's waiting room for a root-canal. There are two magazines lying on the table in front of you. One has Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (your choice) on the cover. The other magazine has Milton Friedman, Mr. Charles Windsor, or Pope Benedict XVI on it.

Assuming you're heterosexual with no female significant others present, which magazine do you pick-up first?

The one with Milton Friedman. The other magazines are boring. Except Cosmo. I love Cosmo for all the worst reasons. It's all about getting women to please their boyfriends more. Beside's the one with those interesting men will either be awesome like The Economist, useful like Time, or chalk full of ads with half naked women anyway (like some other important-people magazines). Now, if you asked the same question and put comparable women like Hillary Clinton, Hannah Arendt, or Christina Romer, I might go that route.

 

[Uncle Anton]

Um, no?

Was gonna say...

 

[Disgustipated]

Yes women are far too objectified in society. This has numerous harmful ramifications that lead women to have to overcome various obstacles that men don't. However it's important that feminists also understand that male sexuality is (probably) intrinsically objectifying and as a society we need to see how to fit that in while reducing or eliminating the harm from objectification.

This article, by Ashley Judd replying to comments on her "puffy faced" appearance sheds light on it. The Cracked article about how men are trained to hate women points out that during discussion of Elena Kagan, there was a huge amount of discourse devoted to her looks.

Wut?

Like all Supreme Court justices she's old, and academic, and not going to be the world's hottest anything. Well, anything but a qualified legal scholar that is. Seriously, I don't remember Samuel Alito getting a ton of comments on his looks, and rightly so. So why were so many people focused on hers?

Now imagine what happens when the conversation isn't about an aged judge but about a younger woman. Maybe she's trying to make it in the corporate world or politics, but everywhere she goes and whatever she does, people are going to talk and think about her looks rather than her abilities in the field.

Both men and women will do it. They will reduce her person and her worth to something subhuman, and it's awful.

But again, objectification is part of male sexuality so when we build the ideal society, we need to make it work with, not against human nature. It's a complicated road ahead but the first thing we can do is not tolerate the public obsession with women's looks that occurs no matter what the concept.



The one with Milton Friedman. The other magazines are boring. Except Cosmo. I love Cosmo for all the worst reasons. It's all about getting women to please their boyfriends more. Beside's the one with those interesting men will either be awesome like The Economist, useful like Time, or chalk full of ads with half naked women anyway (like some other important-people magazines). Now, if you asked the same question and put comparable women like Hillary Clinton, Hannah Arendt, or Christina Romer, I might go that route.

I actually respect women more if they aren't too good looking. If we had a Supreme court judge that looked like Kim Kardashian, I'd be pretty worried about her qualifications as a judge.

That's an extreme example, but I admit I have trouble believing really good looking women can be competent at anything, including less positions such as a trial lawyer or prosecutor.

 

[Hygro]

I actually respect women more if they aren't too good looking. If we had a Supreme court judge that looked like Kim Kardashian, I'd be pretty worried about her qualifications as a judge.

That's an extreme example, but I admit I have trouble believing really good looking women can be competent at anything, including less positions such as a trial lawyer or prosecutor.

Well, that's somewhat unfair in of itself, but more important, you bring up respect. It's not that anyone thought she deserved less respect as a judge for not being up to their standards of female beauty, it's that they didn't respect her as a person for making that their primary criterion of judgement. So yeah, big ups on respecting women for their accomplishments, though.

 

[G-Max]

Yes women are far too objectified in society. This has numerous harmful ramifications that lead women to have to overcome various obstacles that men don't. However it's important that feminists also understand that male sexuality is (probably) intrinsically objectifying and as a society we need to see how to fit that in while reducing or eliminating the harm from objectification.

This article, by Ashley Judd replying to comments on her "puffy faced" appearance sheds light on it. The Cracked article about how men are trained to hate women points out that during discussion of Elena Kagan, there was a huge amount of discourse devoted to her looks.

Wut?

Like all Supreme Court justices she's old, and academic, and not going to be the world's hottest anything. Well, anything but a qualified legal scholar that is. Seriously, I don't remember Samuel Alito getting a ton of comments on his looks, and rightly so. So why were so many people focused on hers?

Now imagine what happens when the conversation isn't about an aged judge but about a younger woman. Maybe she's trying to make it in the corporate world or politics, but everywhere she goes and whatever she does, people are going to talk and think about her looks rather than her abilities in the field.

Both men and women will do it. They will reduce her person and her worth to something subhuman, and it's awful.

But again, objectification is part of male sexuality so when we build the ideal society, we need to make it work with, not against human nature. It's a complicated road ahead but the first thing we can do is not tolerate the public obsession with women's looks that occurs no matter what the concept.

I will see your point, and raise you one Sarah Palin. Everyone was like "damn, she's pretty good-looking for a politician"... until she opened her mouth. After that, it was all about Down's Syndrome babies, how many newspapers she could name, her alleged ability to see Russia from her house, and how close McCain was to dropping dead from old age. Meanwhile, Obama was gaining popularity, not because of his ideas (or lack thereof), but because of his youth, charisma, and... skin color. If he had been some old white guy with no legislative accomplishments yammering on about "hope and change", we'd have the Clintons back in the white house right now.

Speaking of youth and charisma, you've probably heard the story about the first Presidential debate to ever be televised. You know, the one where people who saw it on TV thought that Kennedy won, and those who listened to the radio thought that Nixon won. I'm betting that horny housewives made up the bulk of that discrepancy.

You do raise a valid point in that, although men and women are equally objectified, we tend to publicly comment on women's appearances much more than those of men, and that's pretty unfair. This does not necessitate, however, that we "not tolerate the public obsession with women's looks". There's nothing wrong with publicly saying what everyone else is thinking. On the contrary; I'd prefer that women were more open with their opinions on how men look. Michael Moore might suddenly find his ego a bit deflated, Mittens would be known as the guy who only became a Republican front-runner because "he looks like the guy who plays the President in every Hollywood movie", and we'd see just how much of Obama's appeal is really in his policies.

 

[Hygro]

True, we should be cognizant of looks into account, because they do affect our thinking. But there's a big difference with promoting looks as our chosen judgement of a person's character (in which women get this worse than men do), and acknowledging looks and our own biases. So it does necessitate that we don't tolerate public obsession with looks. What it does not necessitate is censoring the talk of appearance from discourse.

Your Michael Moore example is perfect of how we don't put men's looks first. And rather than "deflating his ego", you're simply making the point that his ability to communicate in spite of his appearance is highly effective. His looks work against him, so he's got even more to brag about

You could make the case that Obama beat Clinton in part of his appearance, though his speechcraft is better still. But I don't think you can make the case that Obama beat McCain because of appearance. Obama was clearly the better educated, more intelligent, more politically and economically consistent of the two. He handled the campaign trail far better (with the exception of McCain's magic comeback, which was impressive, though predictable). His ideas simply were better than McCains. And his ideas were to many better than Clinton's--specifically some of the foreign policy differences and some of differences on how to address partisanship. Of course, history showed us that Clinton was right and Obama was wrong there. Sigh.

 

[warpus]

people are objectified as commodities by corporations.

They are, but the only reason that stuff sells is because people keep eating that crap up. If people stopped buying those magazines and stopped watching those TV shows, you'd see less objectification.

But there is a huge demand for that sort of stuff, so it continues. People get what they want

 

[G-Max]

I don't think you can make the case that Obama beat McCain because of appearance.

Of course not. Obama beat McCain because everyone was afraid of Miss Teen South Carolina being one heart attack away from the nuclear codes.