The correct response to cultural sexism?

[Questionable]

I feel torn on the issue of cultural sexism. For clarification, I'm referring to the commodification of women's bodies, advertising and marketing that encourages promiscuity and gives women warped ideas of what beauty is, products with sexist phrases on them, etc.

On the one hand, I do feel like these things are a big problem for women in capitalist societies because it demotes them to the role of commodities ("You have to buy our product and be beautiful so men will like you!").

On the other hand, I can't help but roll my eyes at the conservative right who are constantly criticizing these things on the dumbest grounds. They'll point to overly sexual advertising as proof that we live in a decadent, decaying society, and we need a return to good ole' Judeo-Christian values to preserve the innocence of young teenage girls.

Perhaps my initial approach is wrong? Perhaps the current level of sexual openness in Western society is really an achievement of women's struggles, and we should be defending sexual openness on these grounds?

It's a very confusing topic for me, especially as a male because I'm not directly subjected to it. Are there any comrades here, particularly female ones, who could shed some light on this area for me?

[Yuppie Grinder]

As long as women are subjugated their cultural status will reflect this, doesn't matter if they're dressed as nuns or in bikinis.
It'd take a cultural revolution do undo this.

[conmharáin]

The correct response, at least on a personal level, would be to consider how you think about women, why you may think in certain ways, and explore ways in which you might establish healthier, more respectful ways of thinking.

[o well this is ok I guess]

As long as women are subjugated their cultural status will reflect this, doesn't matter if they're dressed as nuns or in bikinis.
It'd take a cultural revolution do undo this. I think the point is that commodification and all the objects connected to it (womens magazines, plastic surgery, etc) are weapons of subjugation.

[Questionable]

The correct response, at least on a personal level, would be to consider how you think about women, why you may think in certain ways, and explore ways in which you might establish healthier, more respectful ways of thinking.

No offense but I'm looking at this issue from the societal level. Obviously I know to combat sexism in my own mind, but this doesn't really provide an answer to any of my original questions. Do conservatives who long for the days of women in dresses have a point? Or do we stand for sexual freedom?

[LOLseph Stalin]

No offense but I'm looking at this issue from the societal level. Obviously I know to combat sexism in my own mind, but this doesn't really provide an answer to any of my original questions. Do conservatives who long for the days of women in dresses have a point? Or do we stand for sexual freedom?

The conservatives do have a point to a certain extent. However, they obviously take it too far since they would have all women back in the kitchen and subservient if they had their way.

Naturally as an asexual I don't have a positive view on sex and feel that things like porn can be objectifying. Women's liberation has to come from giving them economic equality first and foremost.

[Sidagma]

The problem is that we (women) don't have any cultural capital of our own. It's not an issue of which way we dress or anything of that sort; the nature of sexism in the USA has changed a lot in the last half-century in that the role of women has changed. Rather than when we were mens' prized possessions to be protected and looked after we've become an expendable object. I don't know that one situation is necessarily better than the other; there are women who like not wearing a lot of clothes and there are women like myself who dress very modestly because we want to. it's just the same old white dudes having way too much control over how men see women and how women see ourselves.

Why can't we have both? Women have every bit as much diversity between us as men do but in pop culture especially features of men such as fashion choices and body shape mark difference without any implied value judgement. With women, it's a game of who's better, because women can only be one way, or something.

Things like this are fiercely debated between women, but because men have an effective monopoly on the means of cultural production just like they do everywhere else, we can't have these conversations publicly.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I feel torn on the issue of cultural sexism. For clarification, I'm referring to the commodification of women's bodies, advertising and marketing that encourages promiscuity and gives women warped ideas of what beauty is, products with sexist phrases on them, etc.

On the one hand, I do feel like these things are a big problem for women in capitalist societies because it demotes them to the role of commodities ("You have to buy our product and be beautiful so men will like you!").

On the other hand, I can't help but roll my eyes at the conservative right who are constantly criticizing these things on the dumbest grounds. They'll point to overly sexual advertising as proof that we live in a decadent, decaying society, and we need a return to good ole' Judeo-Christian values to preserve the innocence of young teenage girls.

Perhaps my initial approach is wrong? Perhaps the current level of sexual openness in Western society is really an achievement of women's struggles, and we should be defending sexual openness on these grounds?

It's a very confusing topic for me, especially as a male because I'm not directly subjected to it. Are there any comrades here, particularly female ones, who could shed some light on this area for me?

Well these sorts of things are a reflection to bigger issues like some others have mentioned. Really it's the sort of deflection of some of the effects of the women's liberation movement: women were able to fight for some sexual liberation, but without a movement driving this, this "empowerment" has been partially redirected towards things that capitalism finds useful. Ideologically it becomes this wierd logic where society says, "Ok, you can dress as you like and express sexuality, but you will also still be repressed and if you are sexually assaulted we will blame it on more openess in sexuality".

At any rate, marketing can sell women as sex objects or as a-sexual children/unpaid-daycare as in other historical times in modern capitalism; this kind of sexism in marketing and culture then is just a reflection of the form that sexism takes in society.

Not to say there is no use in movements against some of this. A particularly degrading ad campaign or overtly sexist show can become the "straw that broke the camel's back" and be a rallying point for more general anger at sexism that's less identifyable and more subterranian. But in the abstract, I don't think such an approach would be the tactic of choice for organizing a fight against sexism. In fact it can lead to a misunderstanding of sexism where it becomes the sum of the surface features of sexism while the root of sexism is ignored. It can also lead to strange politics such as a few prominent feminists who allied with right-wingers to push for censorship.

So ultimately, I think to shift culture away from this it would take a broader social change much like 70s feminism changed the views of women as "natural" homemakers or the views of rape being only violent stranger-rape (although there have been incomplete backlashes against both of these changes in wider attitudes). The best way for this to happen from a class perspective would be to fight sexism in employment - though this is by far not the only way a fight could begin or the most likely. But in winning parody to male workers in the workforce, larger issues of social responcibility for daily upkeep will be raised (if it's not an unspoken cultural assumption that women will provide free upkeep for families) and with it questions about daycare at work, more flexibility in working hours to accomodate childcare, more healthcare, etc. It would also mean equality in wages which would begin to errode the cultural devaluation of "women's work" as being "extra" or "by choice" and less valuable then "men's work". This would raise general working class living standards and probably take a movement of men and women against sexism. But short of a revolution, I think to make some ground on general sexist attitudes and cultural manifestations, it will take a broad movement not unlike the women's movements of the past that also changed cultural assumptions and expectations.

[Comrade #138672]

Why would it be either this or that? Women should have complete sexual freedom. But when their bodies are commodified, they no longer have any sexual freedom.