General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: For those women who think objectifying women as sex objects is OK [View all]Tumbulu
(6,268 posts)I am not at your level, writing wise, but I would like to express a few things that came to my mind reading your well articulated post.
We have a dichotomy among women. I would say over half of us have been victims of male violence and that violence is generally associated with sex, or at least due to the fact that we are women, and violence was directed towards us for that reason only. The stats say one in four of us have been raped, but in my life, I have observed numbers much higher than that at least in terms of the fear of male violence. Perhaps that is because for every woman injured, a whole circle of other women learns about it, sees the perpetrator get away with it again and again, and thus the message is clear to us, that our safety does not matter, and it is the price of being attractive in any way to a man. It is our fault that we are somehow attractive.
Most men seem to have this idea that women enjoy being paid attention to by them, most men seem to think that women care a lot about what men think of them. I do think that there are some women like this, but not the lion's share, by any means. Most women that I know really want men to leave them be. They may want the men that they like or love to notice them or pay attention to them, but strange men? Most absolutely do not want this sort of attention. Too many of us have been hurt by men, we only want the one(s) that we have a good and or safe relationship to interact with us.
So, the idea that men should tell us that we should find all the objectifying images as OK, or fun, or whatever is plain out of bounds. It is not for men to tell us what we feel comfortable about. Clearly most women do not appreciate the endless objectifying of women in the media. We do not find it anything but oppressive and reminds us of the fact that we live limited lives due to this objectifying that somehow we are supposed to be finding liberating....liberated to be raped? Liberated from the
patriarchy? Liberated to be used up in 3 months as a porn star? All terrible sorrows for any of us to know about or watch happen to others.
I really do not think that most of the men understand how this almost constant objectifying effects all of us for the worse. And working as a laborer can indeed be exploitative if not properly compensated for money-wise, although this is why we have labor unions, etc. And being on a democratic site, I would imagine that we are all for the end of objectification and exploitation of all people. Not only for laborers, but for us all.