Trouble understanding the term 'Sexual Objectification'

[johncarew]

Hi,

I am new to feminism. I've started reading Greer's 'the whole woman' and I've run into trouble understanding the term 'Sexual Objectification'.

In an article entitled 'A Feminist Defense of Pornography', Wendy McElroy writes:

"If taken literally, it means nothing because objects don't have sexuality; only beings do."

A shoe can be a 'Sex-Object' to a shoe fetishist, but Person A cannot be a Sex-Object to Person B because Person A is a Person not an object.

If taken to mean 'the object of lust', why do so many feminists have a problem with it? Being the object of lust is a perfectly human thing, and is often desirable; Particularly when having sex.

If Person A sees a sexy stranger at a bus-stop (let's call the sexy stranger Person B) and goes home to masturbate about that person, where is the inherent harm in this?

I can only conclude that 'Sexual Objectification' is an inaccurate term for what it is trying to describe. It gives a negative connotation to a broad range of activities and behaviours, many of which are perfectly human. The term may be provocative by design, but I believe this only serves to confuse and to weaken credibility, and is unproductive.

Perhaps a solution would be to create two new terms (Term A and Term B) and to file all harmful incidences of sexual objectification under Term A, and all non-harmful incidences under Term B.

That way you don't have people like me defending their right to find their girlfriend sexy and vice versa.

Thanks,

Any response would be much appreciated

JC

[Book O'Dead]

I'm not sure about your references as I haven't read them but I understand sexual objectification as a form of abstract depersonalization. That is, the object of our sexual attraction is reduced in our minds to a throbbing penis or a moist vagina or a set of idealized breasts or an attractive ass, etc., with little regard to the whole person that excites these imaginary reductions.


If Person A sees a sexy stranger at a bus-stop (let's call the sexy stranger Person B) and goes home to masturbate about that person, where is the inherent harm in this?


He will surely go blind.

Just kidding.


I can only conclude that 'Sexual Objectification' is an inaccurate term for what it is trying to describe. It gives a negative connotation to a broad range of activities and behaviours, many of which are perfectly human. The term may be provocative by design, but I believe this only serves to confuse and to weaken credibility, and is unproductive.


The term, which probably describes accurately an ancient psychological phenomenon, has acquired a pejorative meaning thanks, probably, to bourgeois Feminism.

[Rjevan]

A recent discussion on sexual objectification you might want to look into: http://www.revleft.com/vb/sexual-objectification-t151604/index.html

[unfriendly]

If taken to mean 'the object of lust', why do so many feminists have a problem with it? Being the object of lust is a perfectly human thing, and is often desirable; Particularly when having sex.


I think this is the part you're missing; "often" is pretty subjective, and if you look "like a woman" (whatever that means, gendered language can be really problematic but that's a subject for another topic) most of your sexual attention won't come from consensual sex, it will come from street harassment and sexual assault. No, it isn't "often" desirable to me. Getting sexual attention I actually want is a rare and cherished occasion.

That said, it's beautiful, and consent is great. Since in your post you mention feeling the need to defend yourself for feeling sexually attracted to your girlfriend, and that sucks, so I'd trust your heart and educate yourself more on consenty things so that you feel more confident in your ability to do it in a way that's loving and consensual rather than sexually objectifying and patriarchal.

It's cool, being raised in this society gives us a ton of baggage to un-learn, nobody's perfect and we all grow up with it.

Here's a really good zine on the subject. (http://zinelibrary.info/learning-good-consent)

I'm not saying for sure that you are expressing your sexual attraction in a non-consensual way, just suggesting that if you're interested in learning more about your role in patriarchy and how you can combat it in your own relationship here's a good place to start.


If Person A sees a sexy stranger at a bus-stop (let's call the sexy stranger Person B) and goes home to masturbate about that person, where is the inherent harm in this?

The problem is that that isn't what it looks like on the ground. http://www.ihollaback.org/ is a good site full of stories about what sexually objectification really looks like to us.


I can only conclude that 'Sexual Objectification' is an inaccurate term for what it is trying to describe. It gives a negative connotation to a broad range of activities and behaviours, many of which are perfectly human. The term may be provocative by design, but I believe this only serves to confuse and to weaken credibility, and is unproductive.

With all due respect, I don't think that you know enough about the issue to draw any conclusions. It's okay to not know things, especially when it comes to matters involving your own privilege.

It isn't "provocative by design", it describes a process in which finding someone sexually attractive is a perfectly good reason to erase our humanity. When someone at the bus stop is staring at my chest it isn't because they're interested in my personality, or my reasonably developed anti-oppression analysis, or my interest in dead languages or any of the other things that could make it enjoyable for us to be near each other. They're just staring at my chest.

The problem is that it's extremely common and at points in my life it's been by far my most common form of human interaction. It's a combined problem; it is bad to be sexualized as often as I am because most of the people who talk to me are not interested in who I am as a person and as a result most of the people I talk to are harmful to me, but they want to have sex with me anyway.

That isn't okay. The message being re-enforced to me not just by them but by the rest of the patriarchy is that an ideal relationship with me consists of people who don't give a crap about me having sex with me.

So the way I talk about that isn't supposed to make you feel any certain way. I talk about it the way I do because it hurts and I'm angry about it.

[Zealot]

I think this kind of misunderstands what the term "Sex-Object" is meant to conjure up in the mind. We usually think of objects as not having feelings or soul, something dispensable. A woman may feel that being judged as an object of lust rather than by her ideas etc as being "Objectified". A rapist may try to convince himself that rape isn't bad since the person is nothing other than an object.