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Notes -
Sexual Objectification
There is something that bothers me about watching progressive/feminist content on youtube, especially regarding the topic of objectification, and its particularly emphasized in this video, as follows:
To rehash for someone not familiar, objectification is defined as: the act of treating a person as an object, a commodity, or a tool, rather than as a whole human being with their own agency, feelings, and rights. The most common form, (sexual) occurs when a person is reduced to a mere object of sexual desire. It often involves judging someone solely based on their physical attributes or breaking their body into separate, "consumable" parts (e.g., focusing only on legs or a torso).
The main issue here is that this idea, at least on the surface is that it seems to be fundamentally in conflict with the the sexual revolution and sex positivity of many previous & current progressive movements. Pornography, prostitution, and strip clubs all fit the objectification bill quite neatly, and the data seems to support the authors argument that "sexual objectification" leads to or plays some role in many of these harms:
I struggle to see how these individuals may square this perspective that sex work is valid, despite fitting the bill of objectification. Perhaps there is something I'm missing?
The basic core principles of feminism are (1) more goodies (money, power, status, etc.) for women; (2) punishment and humiliation for men. Of course feminists don't like to acknowledge this to themselves or others, so instead they rely on a smorgasbord of more reasonable sounding principles such as:
(1) Women are the same as men and must be treated equally;
(2) Women are different from men and must be treated differently;
(3) Objectification of people is harmful and must be avoided; and
(4) Women are autonomous adults who should have the freedom to make their own choices in life;
(5) Women have been brainwashed by the "patriarchy" into making poor choices;
and so on.
Obviously these principles are not consistent with each other; feminists just use whatever is most convenient in the moment. If someone points out the contradiction, that person is ignored or silenced with accusations of "misogyny" or whatever.
So yeah, you are not the first person to ask "what if a woman objectifies herself"? But the reality is that feminists do not sincerely care about objectification. If objectification is perceived as beneficial (for example Taylor Swift doing a concert while wearing a slutty outfit and getting paid a million dollars), they are fine with it.
I think it's also worth noting that this idea -- that nudity should serve a purpose -- is far more flexible than it seems on its surface. For example, consider the sexy naked woman who makes an appearance in The Shining. One could certainly argue that her nudity advances the plot, since it helps to demonstrate Jack Torrance's sexual excitement and the seeming attempt to seduce him. On the other hand, one could argue that basically the same thing could have been accomplished without nudity, for example by implying that the woman is naked without actually showing it. Or by putting her in a seductive dress.
It seems to me that you can pretty much always argue it one way or another. And for feminists, it will almost certainly come down to the following: If feminists don't like it, then it doesn't serve any purpose. If feminists do like it, then it does serve a purpose.
Stop saying "women" when you mean "feminists". (Incidentally, advice which most people should think about most of the time.) Feminism isn't a pure grift - individual feminists genuinely want other feminists to get more gibmedats and not just themselves - but the point isn't to uplift women as a whole, it's to subsidise a particular female life script (see Obama's notorious Life of Julia ad, but the critical point is that women who seek to have children in actually-committed relationships with men are SOL) with the goal of changing female behaviour such that a large enough pool of able women pursue meritocratic competition that they can achieve a 50-50 power elite by affirmative action without promoting obvious numpties.
I'll stop when self-proclaimed conservative women in positions of political power don't consistently fall back on feminist rhetoric the moment they feel cornered for their own actions.
As long as our conservative female defence minister here in Austria proudly asserts that mandatory military service should remain an exclusive male burden and that women can't be expected to share this obligation because "they still suffer from systemic injustice in other domains such as a housework or the gender pay gap" (her actual reasoning), I will continue to assume that feminism is mainly a in-group cudgel for women to wield against men and society for virtually any reason that they see fit in helping them get ahead.
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I'm not sure what you mean by the word "grift." To me, if a group of allied people work in informal concert to grab resources, it's still potentially what I would call a "grift."
In any event, I don't see much point in distinguishing between "women" and "feminists." If a traditional stay-at-home non-feminist wife is having a dispute with her husband (for example suppose they are getting divorced as a result of her infidelity and the woman stands to get very little alimony) I'm pretty confident most feminists would NOT say "Well that's what you get for being a stay-at-home-wife and cheating on your husband. You should have been a good feminist, gotten a marketable degree, and stayed in the workforce." Rather, they would strongly support the woman.
The thing is, most women have strong in-group bias. And that's all feminism really is -- partisan support of women, right or wrong.
To be sure, women's interests are not all perfectly aligned. What is good for a upper middle class secular careerist woman in the West is not necessarily what is good for other women in the world. And this tension surely informs the goals of feminists. Especially given that Western feminists are part of a larger coalition with some very non-feminist members.
Nevertheless, "more goodies (money, power, status, etc.) for women" is a reasonable approximation of the core goals of feminism.
I would say an activist movement is a grift if the primary goal is to transfer other people's money to the activists and their immediate social network, but not a grift if the goal is to transfer money to the group the activists claim to be speaking for. The organised BLM movement, for example, turns out to be a grift on this definition - they raised a lot of donations and mostly kept the money. The traditional Black urban political machines are not pure grifts on this model - although they take a lot off the top, they spend more taxpayer money on their constituents than they do on themselves.
Well you are free to define the word "grift" any way you like for purposes of discussion. Regardless, feminism is what it is: An ideology of avarice and hate which pretends to be about equality and basic rights. Grift or not.
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