Sexual objectification of women, & why it's oppressive

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Mona Pereth
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11 Sep 2022, 8:06 pm

Here, goldfish21 and I got into a debate about sexual objectification. Here, he gave me permission to move that debate to a separate thread.

Sexual attraction, or even portraying someone in a sexualized way, is not necessarily the same thing as sexual objectification. Here is how one blogger draws the distinction:

Quote:
Merely experiencing desire upon beholding someone is not to necessarily objectify. To wit:

I’ve been objectified by men when I’ve worn frumpy sweatshirts and baggy straight jeans: my butt was groped when I was arrayed that way at a hole-in-the-wall eatery. I’ve been objectified by men while I was wearing long, loose tunics and skirts topped by carefully-draped headscarves: I was asked if I was a “total freak under that thing”, the last word punctuated by an unmistakable gesture towards my scarf. Hell, I’ve been objectified by men for being a virgin who mostly stayed at home: a much-older man online told me that he found it titillating to think about me “locked away” and insinuated that if we got together, he’d rescue me to a liberated life of constant sex and nudity at his apartment.

Notice a pattern here?

Well, besides the fact that I wasn’t dressed or positioned in the way that people assume would attract a pervert, and the fact the these men were attracted to me. Their desire alone was hardly the issue.

Nor is the problem that they expressed desire. Expressing desire in a way that treats the person like a full human being (or at the very least allows for the desired person to gracefully extricate themselves from the situation) is not objectification.

The problem was that they made their attraction to me the sole focus of their interactions with me with a sense of entitlement that precluded my full humanity. None of them considered my consent and ensured that my ability to respond was hampered. Groper never said a word to me and took advantage of the fact that I wouldn’t want to make a scene and that he had plausible deniability in the form of his female partner, a woman far more conventionally attractive and attractively-dressed than me. Freak Boy used the fact that I was clearly a wide-eyed first-year with her nose buried in a book to catch me by surprise and throw me off my guard. Wannabe Liberator knew very well that I was as young and as insecure and as inexperienced as could be, so I didn’t know how to respond.

These are micro-level examples of objectification, where I, as a female person, was reduced to being a sexual object for the sexual gratification of a man. Nothing was considered about me other than my crotch-stiffening properties, least of all my willingness to participate in their expressed desires. I wasn’t a person, I was an object of fappery (or perhaps mockery, in the case of Freak Boy, though that’s irrelevant).

Note the nonconsensuality of the above incident. I doubt that very many gay men would dare to behave like the above-described creep, although there are a rare few who do. On the other hand, young and even middle-aged women encounter behavior like the above rather often.

Regarding sexual objectification as a larger cultural phenomenon, as distinct from just sexual imagery, the following blog posts may be helpful:

- Subjectify Me: 5 Ways to Tell if an Image is Objectifying by Julie JC Peters.
- Untangling Sexualization from Objectification by Kella Hanna-Wayne.

Note: What Kella Hanna-Wayne calls "meat shots" are probably common in gay male porn too. However "meat shots" of men do NOT permeate popular culture the way "meat shots" of women do. In my opinion, the ubiquity of the latter, in popular culture, is one of the main things that make them oppressive to women.


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13 Sep 2022, 8:39 am

I must be ugly because I have to dress down to get objectfied or get pregnant. I am invisible when I dress conservatively. For some reason this pisses women off. Like they feel threatened by me being invisible to men.


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Mona Pereth
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13 Sep 2022, 12:42 pm

Different women have different experiences.

I suspect that how much objectification a woman experiences, and under what circumstances, has less to do with how "attractive" or "ugly" she is overall than with things like her breast size, especially when young. Back when I was in high school, I remember an otherwise plain-looking girl with unusually large breasts who got a huge amount of catcalling and harassment from boys, no matter how she dressed.


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13 Sep 2022, 1:41 pm

The discussion that led to me creating this thread began here, in a discussion about the controversy over terms like "people with vulvas" being used in attempts to be trans-inclusive. Later in that other thread, I posted here about finding what I hope will be a resolution to that particular issue.


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13 Sep 2022, 3:02 pm

I think you are preaching to the converted, Mona Pereth. A gay man who sexually objectifies other men and enjoys being sexually objectified who also labels almost all gay men as sexual perverts is obviously not going to comprehend what it's like for a woman and see how it is upsetting.


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13 Sep 2022, 3:05 pm

Are chippendales and women who pay to see male strippers not sexually objectifying men?. Many of these strippers are groped and leered at by older women they don`t find attractive.

Most do it for spare money only


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Last edited by The_Walrus on 13 Sep 2022, 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.: removed off-topic content

Mona Pereth
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13 Sep 2022, 3:17 pm

carlos55 wrote:
Are chippendales and women who pay to see male strippers not sexually objectifying men?.

Perhaps they are, but, just like gay male porn, this is not mainstream pop culture. Thus it is not nearly as pervasive as the sexual objectification of women.

EDIT: I intended this thread to be about objectification specifically, not oppression in general. Please discuss the other issues you raised in a separate thread, rather than here.


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carlos55
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14 Sep 2022, 3:02 am

This debate on sexual objectification of women misses two things:-

1. Men are biologically hardwired to physical attraction and the physical nature of sex if either gay or straight. Goldfish21 confirmed this when he said ( quote )“ As a gay man, we sexually objectify each other’s bodies all the time.”

2. Women objectify themselves through their own culture. Most women are interested in beauty products, fashion etc.. in ways most men are not

In the same way men are more interested in sport like football, military or power politics.

Some women will gladly pick up a fashion magazine in a doctors waiting room spend their time looking at the attractive models and Beauty articles. The same magazine most men will ignore.

Then later complain about objectifying women

So what we have is both hypocritical behavior and women at war with themselves or resenting their younger more attractive peers.


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14 Sep 2022, 8:00 am

True many women care about their looks so they dress nice, dress down to show their body, wear make up, get cosmetic work done. Women are more programmed to do these things and care about how they look. I think it have to do with mother nature to attract the guy as a way to make a baby.

Men are programmed to like women this way so they get attracted and f**k them to have a baby. But this has never left men so hence misogyny. Women want took good but don't want men's attention.

If you are attractive, you don't need to make any effort. Women who are average need to make more effort to attract men. Therefore many of us won't be bothered. If you are under 25, you are bound to get many men in your inbox until you get past age 30, then crickets. Part of it is misogyny because somehow being over are 30 means being unattractive. Plus predators like to pray on young women and older women are hard to manipulate. But when I was young, I used to get lot of creeps in my IMs and some were even minors. Minors can be creeps too and go after vulnerable adults because they are easier to manipulate.

That is why people with lower IQs are more likely to be registered sex offenders. This is anecdotal of course from the stories I have heard. People online who say they worked with adults with IDs, half of them were registered sex offenders. So if a 15 year old got an adult with the intelligence of a 10 year old to sexually expose themselves and got caught, they would be a register sex offender while the 15 year old is treated as a victim.

But anyway, I'm older now and I just block creeps now regardless of their age. No one enters my inbox anymore with creepy messages saying inappropriate stuff. I don't try to please people and I have boundaries set.


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Nades
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14 Sep 2022, 12:14 pm

League_Girl wrote:
True many women care about their looks so they dress nice, dress down to show their body, wear make up, get cosmetic work done. Women are more programmed to do these things and care about how they look. I think it have to do with mother nature to attract the guy as a way to make a baby.

Men are programmed to like women this way so they get attracted and f**k them to have a baby. But this has never left men so hence misogyny. Women want took good but don't want men's attention.

If you are attractive, you don't need to make any effort. Women who are average need to make more effort to attract men. Therefore many of us won't be bothered. If you are under 25, you are bound to get many men in your inbox until you get past age 30, then crickets. Part of it is misogyny because somehow being over are 30 means being unattractive. Plus predators like to pray on young women and older women are hard to manipulate. But when I was young, I used to get lot of creeps in my IMs and some were even minors. Minors can be creeps too and go after vulnerable adults because they are easier to manipulate.

That is why people with lower IQs are more likely to be registered sex offenders. This is anecdotal of course from the stories I have heard. People online who say they worked with adults with IDs, half of them were registered sex offenders. So if a 15 year old got an adult with the intelligence of a 10 year old to sexually expose themselves and got caught, they would be a register sex offender while the 15 year old is treated as a victim.

But anyway, I'm older now and I just block creeps now regardless of their age. No one enters my inbox anymore with creepy messages saying inappropriate stuff. I don't try to please people and I have boundaries set.


I wouldn't call basic desire for an attractive partner misogyny.



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14 Sep 2022, 12:37 pm



A Rose, A Place Where
Life Comes From A
Butterfly With Wings
So Beautiful Indeed;

A Passionate Organ
That Wants to Get Out
And Play An Instrument
Just Waiting Anticipating to Join
An Orchestra to Play A New Song;

Or Perhaps Just A Bee Buzzing Around

The Roses Again At A Dance Hall;

Yeah, Human With Vulva's

And Even Human's With Penises

Materially Reduces And Objectifies
Humans Both; However, The Consequences
For 'The Rose' to Be Abused Are Usually More

Dire Than When the 'Organ' Is Just Used Over and Over;

As A Dude, in Grade School, i Was Described As Totally Ugly;

True, i Flowered After That With Contact Lens and A Body Running Escaping
Deepest Darkest Depression Then And How Women Objectified me as Body

Parts Went Way, Way Up in Value of the Tools at Hand; Yet It Didn't Hurt my
Feelings When A Group of Older Women in A Women's League At the Bowling
Center i Worked At After College Trapped me As A Group And Groped me on

Columns
Holding
Up the Ceiling;

Nor the Day in A Bar
at 22 After the Depression
Was Over and A Woman Grabbed
my Butt And Said it Was the Nicest
One She Ever Grabbed; So Pleasantly
Surprised i Was then After all the Darkness;

Yet, if i Had Been A Woman, True, The Potential
Consequences To come next Could Have Been Much Darker then too...

We Have A Culture(s) That Materially Reduces Almost Everything to Shallow
Meaning and Purpose; When i Went to High School, i Had No Clue to the
Details of Female Genitalia Then As even the Rare Penthouse Magazine

Never Showed
All the Details AS Such...

i Suppose my Aesthetic Appreciation
of the Art of the Human Body Might Have
Been Much Different if Bombarded By Porn
From Puberty and Before on Every iPhone Search then...

We LiVE iN A World of Instant Gratification; We LiVE iN A World
Where too Much 'Steak and Ice Cream' Free Means the Younger Folks
In Japan And Other Technologically Developed Countries Are Losing Interest

In All Loving Contact With Another Human in Life As Elders Are Cleaned Up out
of Apartments in SkyScrapers With No Connections Outside of Their Rooms at all...

Will We Ever LiVE iN A World
Where We Actually Value All
Of Our Humanity As Works of Art, Again
Like Works of Fertility in Days of Old Where
New Life Meant The Survival of the Village;

i Don't Care, if the Rest of the World Wants to
Do it or Not; What i Can Control and Master is

my View of the Rest of Humanity Now; Some Folks

See Body Parts as Masturbatory Tools Only; and Others See

Works of Art

to Be Treasured

And Honored With

Every Unselfish Pleasure;

i Surely Can Understand How Some
Humans Feel Reduced As Less than
Humans When They Are Referred with
Words Like Human With A Vulva, Or even
Dude With A Penis, as i am Surely More Than What's Between my Legs...
And on Top of That More Dudes Would Enjoy Life More if they Truly

Understood

That Emotions
Turn Women
On More Than
Shadowy Predatory Instincts...

AND ACTUALLY THEM POTENTIALLY TOO;

Nope, Not All Women; Not All Men, etc; Yet Surely

Many...

Anyway, Fall Weather Like A Virgin of September
is Breezing Through Florida This Morning Best Memories
of High School Just A Dream of Holding Hands With A Girl (i Had to Wait
Until After High School) Under A Blanket at A Homecoming Game With A
Cup of Hot
Chocolate

to Share

Where Romance

Colored Life More Blooming than

A Penis or A Vulva Alone Will Ever Do;

It's Like A FRiEnD of Mine Once Shared on
A Facebook Status How Some Old Grey Haired
Poet Who Wasn't Even Singing About Human Relationships

Inspired Her to

'Pull Her Panties Down;'

True, Some Folks Still Don't

Understand Truly More Fully What

"Queen Victoria's" Secret was/is all about...

Indeed, So Many Colors of Life Left Hard, Dead, And Living Cold...

i'll Dance And Sing This Much, i'm Glad i Was Born And Raised to
Love With More Than Body Parts, So Alone So Lonely; And Yes i Have
An Extremely High Libido Yet It is Mastered With A Feather's Touch of Dance And Song in Poetry...

In This Culture(s), Most Folks Have little Clue How to Even Have an Open And Mature Discussion on
Human Sexuality

or Even

Love;

Obviously,
It Seems to me at Least, It's the way
We Are Gardened or Not With Love That's Deeper and Real...



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carlos55
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14 Sep 2022, 1:32 pm

League_Girl wrote:
Men are programmed to like women this way so they get attracted and f**k them to have a baby. But this has never left men so hence misogyny. Women want took good but don't want men's attention.


Always been a rapist cliche "she dressed like that so that means she wanted sex"

But feminists & most women will say they dressed like that for themselves or to compete with other women. The age old quest of "who`s the fairest of them all"

So its just old-fashioned female rivalry that some women like to mistakenly claim as men being misogynistic.

Here`s some male objectification:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076578/


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14 Sep 2022, 1:37 pm

All the more reason for me to look like a German soldier. Creeps would never see me, than.


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14 Sep 2022, 2:55 pm

Nades wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
True many women care about their looks so they dress nice, dress down to show their body, wear make up, get cosmetic work done. Women are more programmed to do these things and care about how they look. I think it have to do with mother nature to attract the guy as a way to make a baby.

Men are programmed to like women this way so they get attracted and f**k them to have a baby. But this has never left men so hence misogyny. Women want took good but don't want men's attention.

If you are attractive, you don't need to make any effort. Women who are average need to make more effort to attract men. Therefore many of us won't be bothered. If you are under 25, you are bound to get many men in your inbox until you get past age 30, then crickets. Part of it is misogyny because somehow being over are 30 means being unattractive. Plus predators like to pray on young women and older women are hard to manipulate. But when I was young, I used to get lot of creeps in my IMs and some were even minors. Minors can be creeps too and go after vulnerable adults because they are easier to manipulate.

That is why people with lower IQs are more likely to be registered sex offenders. This is anecdotal of course from the stories I have heard. People online who say they worked with adults with IDs, half of them were registered sex offenders. So if a 15 year old got an adult with the intelligence of a 10 year old to sexually expose themselves and got caught, they would be a register sex offender while the 15 year old is treated as a victim.

But anyway, I'm older now and I just block creeps now regardless of their age. No one enters my inbox anymore with creepy messages saying inappropriate stuff. I don't try to please people and I have boundaries set.


I wouldn't call basic desire for an attractive partner misogyny.



And often times I hear stories about men leaving their partners or trying to get them to be a certain size again because they lost their attraction. They are basically treating women like objects. They should still be attracted to her because they want to be either her, not for her body.

And there are men who will leave a woman for a younger one because of age you know.

But not all men are like this of course.


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14 Sep 2022, 3:29 pm

League_Girl wrote:
Nades wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
True many women care about their looks so they dress nice, dress down to show their body, wear make up, get cosmetic work done. Women are more programmed to do these things and care about how they look. I think it have to do with mother nature to attract the guy as a way to make a baby.

Men are programmed to like women this way so they get attracted and f**k them to have a baby. But this has never left men so hence misogyny. Women want took good but don't want men's attention.

If you are attractive, you don't need to make any effort. Women who are average need to make more effort to attract men. Therefore many of us won't be bothered. If you are under 25, you are bound to get many men in your inbox until you get past age 30, then crickets. Part of it is misogyny because somehow being over are 30 means being unattractive. Plus predators like to pray on young women and older women are hard to manipulate. But when I was young, I used to get lot of creeps in my IMs and some were even minors. Minors can be creeps too and go after vulnerable adults because they are easier to manipulate.

That is why people with lower IQs are more likely to be registered sex offenders. This is anecdotal of course from the stories I have heard. People online who say they worked with adults with IDs, half of them were registered sex offenders. So if a 15 year old got an adult with the intelligence of a 10 year old to sexually expose themselves and got caught, they would be a register sex offender while the 15 year old is treated as a victim.

But anyway, I'm older now and I just block creeps now regardless of their age. No one enters my inbox anymore with creepy messages saying inappropriate stuff. I don't try to please people and I have boundaries set.


I wouldn't call basic desire for an attractive partner misogyny.



And often times I hear stories about men leaving their partners or trying to get them to be a certain size again because they lost their attraction. They are basically treating women like objects. They should still be attracted to her because they want to be either her, not for her body.

And there are men who will leave a woman for a younger one because of age you know.

But not all men are like this of course.


I think a lot depends on the circumstances in which a partner might become overweight. Becoming overweight for the sake of becoming overweight is a bit hard to swallow for a lot of people, both male or female. Nobody wants to see gluttony for gluttony sake. There reaches a point where someone eventually loses all attraction.

As for leaving a partner because they became older, I think it doesn't happen that often.



Mona Pereth
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14 Sep 2022, 5:11 pm

carlos55 wrote:
Always been a rapist cliche "she dressed like that so that means she wanted sex"

But feminists & most women will say they dressed like that for themselves or to compete with other women. The age old quest of "who`s the fairest of them all"

So its just old-fashioned female rivalry that some women like to mistakenly claim as men being misogynistic.

I'd say that female rivalry and misogyny both are factors here, as are general social attitudes and the structure of today's society. More about this in my next post.

In any case, all the social pressure on people, especially women (though to a lesser extent men too), to put huge amounts of effort into their appearance is a bad thing for women.

More about this in my next post.


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