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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?
I suspect this stems from a pre-existing contradiction in certain predatory strains of male sexuality/sexual behavior (note, emphatically not all all male sexuality! Normal gents who want to honorably date a nice smart girl, enjoy common interests and glance appreciatively at her ass from time to time, not describing you).
The contradiction: Among certain predators, on the one hand, you get the objectifying impulse that says "this girl only exists in relation to my sexual desire, the only important parts of her are the physical parts that make me hard or that I envision fucking."
On the other hand, you get the aggression and post-coital disgust impulse that underlies the whole body-count discourse: My erection is so meaningful that being able to fuck this collection of holes and bulges is the most important thing in the world. But once I cum, these parts are disgusting, destroyed, degraded, and the body/mind attached to them should be cast out of my sight.
In its most extreme cases, this is the standard serial-killer's repeated torture, rape then kill/discard scenario. For prostitution and porn, it comes out in aggressive disgust/rejection impulses to prostitutes and female performers. Today, that's the folks who thought Riley Reid shouldn't be able to get married to a cool, successful athlete because all the penis contact made her gross. Historically, it was the consensus that once a woman had been traumatized or desperate enough to have sex with men for money, or let a man take pictures of her body for cash, she (but NOT he) should be expelled from normal society and untouchable by anyone but criminals, with no valid life course but exile, increasing degradation, then suicide.
So some feminists respond by saying, OK, objectification is bad, but even worse is the destructive disgust impulse after. So emphasize that women retain human value and agency even after being fucked over, establish that they are reasoning people who responded to the circumstances they were in, and that could include conditional compliance with predators wanting to reduce them to a collection of body parts.
And some feminists respond to the upstream objectification impulse by saying, nope, we need a system where women aren't reduced to a collection of body parts, period.
It's basically the Danegeld or Poland 1939 question: compromise with clear terms, or open resistance? But those are two different strategic approaches to a common problem, not really internally contradictory.
I feel like your depiction of historical prostitution is a little exaggerated. Obviously there's a whole category of high ranking courtesans who could do pretty well even without being actual wives of their clients. But even regular prostitutes were sometimes able to retire into respectability.
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