Why "Objectification" is bull. (Pro porn rant part 3)

So earlier on I talked about how while many anti porn people talk a big game about exploitation, the primary reason always seems to come to this idea of "objectification".

I set aside this topic casue I wanted to discuss this at length cause the concept is so baffling and infuriating to me.

The notion of “objectification” is a fallacious reasoning that I personally hate. I never understood it, and I simply cannot separate it from being (male) sex-negative.

Of course, for various reasons it can be difficult to explain why it is bullshit. One difficulty in debunking “objectification” is that as a bare bones concept I can’t say it is non-existent. Because sure, it is possible to reduce a person to a sexual object, and I’m sure it has happened. My real issue is what is being LABELED as objectification.

So lets get into definitions. Here’s my idea of where the line gets drawn between attraction and objectification.

Here are some things that can count as ACTUAL objectifying thoughts and actions.

* Sexual assault

* Displaying a blatant lack of regard for another person’s comfort or boundaries.

* When you’re in a sexual encounter with someone, at least one based on some degree of mutual desire, and you don’t take their pleasure into consideration at all.

* Actually, believing that one gender has no value or worth beyond their ability to satisfy you sexually.

Now here are things that have been called “objectification” but should NOT be.

• “checking people out” (at least within a certain degree of discretion)

• Having an opinion on someone’s physical attractiveness.

• Commenting or talking about someone’s sexual attractiveness, depending on the context.

• Desiring someone in a purely physical/superficial way

• Creating or enjoying erotic imagery, wether it is softcore or hardcore porn, “pinup/cheesecake” photos, erotic dance or clothing, or “hypersexualised” characters in gaming, comics, film, etc.

• Paying for sexual services, at least in theory.

If you’re okay with these things, then this isn’t for you. If your response is somewhere along the lines of “No one’s saying they are! You’re creating a STRAWMAN!” Then you either haven’t read anything more “feminist” than Liana K, or your being purposefully disingenuous and trying to launch a motte/baily tactic. I want to adress the people who will disagree with me on wether the things I listed above (the latter list of course) have anything to do with objectification.

Let me be very clear. When a man partakes in any of these things, whe has not, in any meaningful way, reduced anyone to an object. Such things are not, in and of itself, a declaration of women as objects that exist solely for his pleasure.

The reasoning behind this seems so simple to me.

If you look at women playing hockey, assuming you enjoy a hockey game, your mind is not going to absorb their total humanity. You’re not going to focused on the goalie’s childhood or their favourite book or anything like that. At that moment you’re just thinking about who has the puck and what they will do with it and whether your team will score etc. Hockey spectators are most likely not acknowledging the athlete’s total humanity, not at the time. But does this mean that, by the very act of enjoying the hockey game, you have declared that the players are no more valuable than those plastic figures in table hockey? They’re just toys with no value or worth than their ability to flick a puck? Of course not. Who would think this way? Most hockey fans are damn well aware that the players are people. Just because you’re focusing on their athletics at the time doesn’t automatically mean you think they’re toys. Somehow radfems can’t apply this logic to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Now someone may reply, “But athletic ability is a skill that requires training, an accomplishment, something to be proud of, while drooling over a person’s body is just a base urge”. Well, the same metaphor can be applied to people doing very simple tasks like clearing your table or driving your bus. Things that aren’t grandiose accomplishments. And yet no one thinks that riding a bus is unethical because you’re objectifying the bus driver. I’m not thinking about the drivers’ thoughts and feelings. I’m not thinking about his aspirations or his family. I know they are there, but they are not in the forefront of my mind. At the moment he is just someone to make the bus take me from point A to point B. But hardly anyone seems to argue that there is something intrinsically dehumanizing about this. I mean, of course I ought to treat him with respect. But treating him with respect does not require I not get on the bus. We understand that dehumanizing him doesn’t start just because I momentarily focused on one trait about him. But why can’t we apply the same logic if I happen to notice a fellow passenger has a "nice rack”?

What people label as “objectification” the “reducing a person to a thing”, can more accurately be described as, to paraphrase Alan Soble: “emphasizing for a while the beauty of only one aspect of a person’s existence.” And this is something that humans do all the time, probably every day, in many ways that are non-sexual. It is only in the context of sexual desire, particularly that of straight men towards women, that this normal thought process gets interpreted in a different way. A swimsuit photo, apparently, does not simply say “this woman is sexy” it APPARENTLY says, “this woman and by extension all women have, in a profound philosophical and ethical way, no value but their sexiness, their sexiness defines them”. And I don’t get why its being interpreted like this. For years unto this day, I never understood.

There is a huge chasm between “nice ass” and “soulless fuckhole”, between “women are good for sex” and “women are only good for sex”, but where I see this chasm (not all) feminists insist there’s this unextractable connection, and this has baffled me to madness.

I mean lets go back to sports …look at bodybuilding! The person just stands there and shows off their body and people just stare at it and make comments on the various parts and then rate it! But no one has a problem with it. But put the bodybuilder in fetish clothing and have it be a video for someone to jerk off to, and in some peoples minds he goes from “respected athlete” to “degraded piece of meat.” But what really, from a secular perspective, is the great moral difference? At the end of the day his body is being focused on. So he’s a either a degraded piece of meat in both scenarios or he is in neither. The ONLY fundamental difference I see between the two is that the one of them, the one that supposedly “degrades” him, involves sexual desire. So when you see people staring and gawking at a person on stage and say this is respecting them, but when such gawking in a softcore porn video suddenly transforms it into degradation, can you not see how this implies that sex is degrading?

And I’m well aware that sex can be something more intimate than just bodies and bodily pleasure. I guess the emphasis there is CAN BE. I’m not denying that you can be attracted to more than just a persons looks and body. I know that sex encounters, especially in reality, often do involve more human connection and intimacy, and is often and act of love. But while I by no means think there is anything wrong or inauthentic or even boring about love or intimacy or deep human bonds…I do not think these things are an essential component of every sexual act or feeling (certainly not in the realm of fantasy), nor are they a moral necessity. Saying that there has to be some deeper meaning in every sexual thought or action, or even that you have to earn a womans' love or even their mutual desire before you can even look at or think about their bodies in a sexual way, is little less archaic and repressive to me than saying you should only sleep with your lawfully wedded spouse. I think that this kind of thinking does more harm for love and intimacy than good. When you try too hard to make sex sacred, you turn it into something profane.

People who have an issue with porn and objectification would often say things like “women are not for your pleasure” as if they seem to take an offence that man would dare…even in fantasy….to want a woman to DO ANYTHING for him. But I will say that men do have a right do view women as “for their pleasure” because women ARE for men’s pleasure. No more or less then men are for women’s pleasure, or for fertilizing eggs. The problem is not in wanting to “use” other people or seeing them as “for” something. As I mentioned, we use other people all the time. In this world we need other people to do things for us. Of course, we ought to acknowledge people as humans as total beings and not reduce them to what they can do for us. But people who condemn “objectification” blow this principle way out of proportion. You may not have an intimate relationship with your dentist or the man who takes out the trash. But that’s not the equivalent to mistreating them or regarding them with blatant disrespect. It’s the difference between saying that anger and hate are dangerous and saying you shouldn’t get angry ever.

I refuse to admit to being a woman hater or a sexist because as a heterosexual male I thought and done “pervy things”. Yes, women and their bodies excite me. Upon seeing a woman I like, especially if they are dressed provocatively, I will try not to stare, but I generally follow the Seinfeld rule : “you get a sense of it then you look away.” And yes, I have had sexual fantasies, many of which I’m sure people would think are ridiculous. And yes, I will without shame take pleasure in erotic in depictions of women, be they hardcore or softcore porn, or burlesque or twerk videos or stuff of that nature, or the outlandishly sexualised characters in comics and videos games or “NSFW art” etc. In these ways and others, I have “used” women’s bodies, (actual women or just the representation of women) so to speak, for my sexual pleasure.

And alongside this, I have a mother and sisters. I have worked with women, worked under them. I have no qualms about voting women into positions of power. And there are plenty of fictional female characters I like that I don’t find particularly desirable, or at least their sexual desirability just isn’t a factor as to why I like them. And I know it sounds corny, but yes, some of my best friends are women. No, I do not think women are objects, no I do not regard them as solely for my sexual pleasure. And no, I don’t see anything contradictory or hypocritical between this paragraph and the former.

I’m well aware that the women I “checked out” are humans. Whatever I “ogled” is a mere part of the whole. And acknowledging the part does not diminish the whole. I know that my fantasies are just fantasies, amalgamations of my desires, and are by no means what women are or even have to be. This goes for any artwork or representation that represents, or appeals to, my desires. As for the live action version of such things. I’m well aware that the “performers” are simply actresses playing characters, so to speak. That they are actually individuals with their own lives.

Viewing and treating women as human beings does not and should not require that men never look at or think about women in a sexual way, or that it should only be in a context of a mutual relationship. Nor does it require that they abstain from any erotic depiction of women or their bodies regardless of context. To demand such from people is not just being a killjoy, it’s borderline oppressive. It basically requires close to monastery level asceticism with regards to their sexuality. And no, I don’t see why people should have to endure it because some people can’t see the very real difference between attraction and objectification, between acknowledging a trait and declaring that trait a persons only value, between seeing utility in a person and dehumanising them.

Radfems and the like will call me “entitled” but I do believe people, straight men included, should have an outlet for sexual expression. What people are less “entitled” to is living in a world where no one ever sees you or your gender as being good for or uselful for anything. If you feel degraded because someone sees your gender as good to look at or a source of sexual pleasure than the problem is your delusions. You are a means to an end. I’m a means to an end. We all are to some degree, because people need people…get over it. Your humanity does not demand my chastity.