Common misconceptions: "Objectified"

[BonsaiK]

Two words for this thread for the OP to consider: gay porn.

I'll do a longer response in a few hours.

Ever watched any? I have. The same gender roles are played out in a different manner. The person on the 'bottom'[footnote]Stereotyped roles, obviously.[/footnote] (being penetrated, giving head, etc) plays the female role, the submissive role, makes all the noise and is focused on. The person on 'top' (penetrating, getting head), is stoic, silent, and it's their pleasure that is focused on.

Of course, it's not "the female role" if a guy is playing it, and the willingness for feminists to trot out the "female role" stereotype to describe any role which involves submission in sex, pornography, etc is something that I find a bit worrying, because it's like feminists are confirming that females are submissive by assigning these roles to situations, even situations where there are no women. This then reconfirms the status quo of "female=weak, submissive", something which I didn't think feminists would be that interested in doing. If I'm submissive when I'm involved in gay sex (just for example, I'm not actually gay), I'm not "playing the female role", I'm just "being submissive". By not calling it what it is, it's like feminists are willfully putting a barrier in front of their own enjoyment of sex, porn etc. There's power relations of some kind of another in even the most vanilla of sexual transactions, and they can all be overanalysed to the hilt, but what does it prove? I believe power in sex is not a gender thing, it's just a human thing, and I think it's a mistake to use "dominant=male/submissive=female", bring in the whole virgin/whore thing, etc. I do understand those concepts quite well (I'm more well-read on feminism than a lot of feminists are) but I don't think they belong in the sexual arena, because once you do put them there, you can just write off any change in the program with a cynical "oh, he's being 'the woman' now because he took a cucumber in his ass" or "she's now 'the virgin' because she left her underwear on" or whatever. Maybe he just really liked the feel of the cucumber? Maybe she didn't take her underwear off because it was just a hassle?

 

[TWRule]

That may indeed be another sense of the word "objectification", but I doubt that most people, including feminists have that grammatical sense you described in mind when using the term.

Objectification doesn't have to be limited to acts of physical degradation like pornography. Any time you are reducing a complex and unquantifiable being to the state of a finite conception, you've objectified them ('object' used in the philosophical sense which can include mental objects like ideas).

In this sense, even the people you sit across from while you're taking the subway, whom you don't acknowledge or interact with, or the homeless on the street, or anyone you harbor prejudice against...they are all being objectified (not seen as the illimitable gestalt that they are, but rather a mentally manipulable concept merely).

My understanding was that feminists used the term in this sense, arguing that the entire female gender is regularly reduced to a concept by male imposition, and perhaps every individual female as well.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I generally agree with what the OP has to say, but not so much on the meaning of the word "objectify"...if most people are using it to mean something, even if it's not the technical definition of the word, then that, in context, is what it means.

However, yes, the second meaning is something pervading western culture in general, and porn in particular.

 

[Stasisesque]

Two words for this thread for the OP to consider: gay porn.

I'll do a longer response in a few hours.

Ever watched any? I have. The same gender roles are played out in a different manner. The person on the 'bottom'[footnote]Stereotyped roles, obviously.[/footnote] (being penetrated, giving head, etc) plays the female role, the submissive role, makes all the noise and is focused on. The person on 'top' (penetrating, getting head), is stoic, silent, and it's their pleasure that is focused on.

I'd humbly suggest you watch some more.

I do think you're seeing this issue where it simply does not exist. In advertising especially, the object is not the man or the woman, it's the product. A beautiful woman, lying in a bathtub full of bubbles, eating (well, fellating) a Cadbury Flake is about as far from dehumanising, submissive or weak as you can get. The same applies to Gilette commercials. Both examples sell with sex, but do so in such a way as to speak to our carnal desires - sex is what we want, this is how we get it. If anything's being demoralised here, it's sex itself. Taken out of its role as a loving union between two individuals, and sold as a product to be distributed and used by any and all (or simplified - the product is just the product, the flake or the razor).

In gay porn, again, ignore the genitalia of the individuals, and ignore the gender of the individuals. The fact they're both men is irrelevant, the fact one is the top and one is the bottom is irrelevant. There's no cuddling, no talking about their days, sharing intimate details of their personal lives - it's just sex, a product. The top is not the subject, the bottom is not the object - the top and the bottom are the subject and the orgasm is the object. And the only people dehumanising anyone are the viewers, we're the ones using them for personal gain.

It's when you take these issues into the real world that you have a problem.

 

[StevenSuffern]

I feel that too often by continuing these kinds of debates, be it on gender, race, etc., we often prolong the existence of imbalances by introducing new generations to the idea that there are imbalances. For instance, there is a tack board with a bunch or random facts about race and gender representation in video games. One statistic that I scoff at is that approximately 70-80% (something like that) of blacks in video games are portrayed as aggressive and athletic. Apparently there is supposed to be some issue with how blacks are stereotyped, assigned roles (I don't buy into it at all, obviously), which ignores the fact that a very large portion of the professional athletes, whom sports games portray, are black, and when a single sports game comes out, literally hundreds of characters are represented, and the sheer weight skews any statistic. And yet the board will remain there for months...