Tag: objectification?

and if seeing part of a boob short circuits your brain to the point where you can’t actually think about what someone is saying or treat them with the most basic forms of human decency?  You’re on a par with a fucking poorly trained dog when it comes to self-control.

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

John Berger – Ways Of Seeing

I think I want most of all to observe as well as to be observed. I desire a partner who revels in being desirable to me as well as desiring me… revels not only in my desire but in the knowledge of their own desirability. They watch and watch themselves being watched. A lot of fem dom iconography is based upon the idea that women should get off on the power of being desired… and that feminine power resides in passively being desired rather than pursuing the objects of one’s own desire. I don’t think enjoying one’s own desirability is inherently a problem, enjoying being watched and desired… I think the fact desire for another and the desire to be desired are fractured and separated from one another is the problem. I think that one of the reasons I’m a sub is because I want a partner who wants to be worshipped for their desirability, who doesn’t see that as a weakness, while also desiring me. I don’t sexually enjoy being worshipped, because if I am a deity, what does some mortal have to offer me? I am reduced to the role of a statue of Venus. I also do not want to have to “be the man” in that I am to desire without being physically desired. I think perhaps I like the bimbofication/transformation scenarios I do because in a certain way it’s me going “okay, I desire this person, what can I do to make myself desirable to them, to make myself an appealing object of observation to them?” because someone interested in having me turn myself into their ideal lust object specifically due to their erotic appeal is initially aroused by being desired (as displayed in the willingness to modify my appearance extensively, suffer pain and humiliation *for* them) but then desires me once I’ve made myself into the thing they desire, if that makes sense.

So a dude accused me of “using my body to get what I want and then complaining about nonexistent objectification and misogyny” when I’d been talking about misogyny in genres of music where I did the groupie thing.  Like is using your physical sex appeal specifically to get sex not like the ONE time where “using your body to get what you want” is considered totally normal? 

Which is not to say complaints of women using sex appeal for say… career advancement aren’t utter bullshit too, but like literally what other quality would I have used in that situation?  I don’t think my experience with adobe photoshop or how many WPM I type are really applicable to getting casual sex.

I think it amounts to dudes not understanding that finding someone sexy is not the same as objectifying them.

Like I Don’t Think You Can Really Tell If A Woman Is Being Objectified By Looking At The Behavior Of The Woman

And I don’t think you can stop women being objectified by changing women’s behavior, like there isn’t a way to behave that will make men treat you as a real person on an individual level.

Like you can tell if men are objectifying a woman, and then like the issue isn’t making her stop doing whatever so they stop objectifying her, the issue is making them stop objectifying her.

Which is why I get so mad when sex worker exterminatory reactionary feminists see men making nasty comments about like Sasha Grey or whatever and are like “This is why choice rhetoric is bullshit, men will objectify you anyway” but like here’s the thing, in a patriarchal society men will objectify women whether or not there’s hardcore gangbang porn, the existence of Sasha Grey isn’t the reason men are making shitty gross misogynist comments about women.  If you shift societal modesty standards towards something more conservative, that won’t eliminate patriarchy.  If the most erotic piece of media you can get is the Eileen Fisher catalogue they’ll just make horrible comments about the models in that.

You can’t change men’s behavior by changing women’s to comply with whatever shitty standards they set in order for you to be treated like a person, they’ll just shift the goal posts, all you can do is fight them head on.

Musings On Rockstars And Sex Workers

I think one of the reasons male rock musicians and sex workers get along (and we do, believe you me, rock dudes have historically been the demographic proven to be happiest to go out with me after I tell them what I do, other artists being a close second) is that if they’re to any degree successful (I’m not talking chart topping, I’m talking like “tours nationally”) and attractive they understand the peculiarity of people falling in love with this marketable decontextualized idea of you.

Male rock musicians are often times objectified by their fans, by groupies.  I don’t think it does them as much harm as it does women, living in a patriarchal society and all, but I think they have a sense of the discomfort that comes with being the object of desire when that desire is alienated from your actual identity, which means that they relate to the experience of doing sex work significantly better than most dudes.

I think one of the reasons a lot of rockstars haven’t been terribly kind to their groupies is that they feel objectified.  They’re in a position of power, and yet they are also without question in these cases an object of desire for the consumption of the female gaze.  They don’t have the language or cultural context to explain what’s going on and they lash out like we’d do if we weren’t afraid of our street harassers, like we do when men send us lewd shit on the internet… but they sleep with the groupies anyway, I suspect because cultural norms about masculinity make it shameful for a man to decline sex with an attractive woman based on her behavior. 

Which isn’t to excuse their behavior, it’s still fucking fucked up, but I think it shows some interesting things about objectification