More objectification
From April of last year:
Had this moment of epiphany, if you will, on the bus home this evening, watching a young man stare at a cute young woman for 30 min straight.
See, the worst thing about objectification, in my mind, is the fact that it corrupts the reality of what happens between a man and a woman (or between any two people who might be attracted to each other).
Attraction is, at its heart, the beginning of a story. Something catches your eye. You look, and something inside you wants to keep on looking. You're drawn to this person, for whatever reason. And that attraction is the seed of a story.
Who knows what road it could lead down? Maybe they'll be attracted to you, and the story becomes more complex, with two characters instead of one.
Maybe they won't, but you'll still have had the experience of that story, that kernel of hope for more. The potential that healthy attraction represents can/should be a beautiful thing.
Objectification isn't a story.
It's a monologue.
There's no room for another character in your inner monologue. There's only you, your attraction to this single thing, not this person or their reaction to your attraction. It is purely selfish. Upskirt photos, staring at a woman to the point where you're making her uncomfortable, leering, catcalling... all that shit is a refusal to acknowledge this other human beings part in your story. It is purely, wholly self centered.
And it's sad. It is so, so sad that this selfish bullshit is a staple of life for most people. Because this young woman represents a physical ideal, she has to tolerate the constant monologuing of boring, selfish people. They tell their stories on her body, through their eyes, and she has absolutely no role to play, no action to take. She can glare, she can walk away in a huff, she can yell or scream or cry. But the nature of a monologue means that nothing she does will have any affect on what she's experiencing.
I don't get angry at objectification because it sexualizes women. Nor do I think that noticing beauty is objectification. I get angry at it because, without the humanity inherent in a potential story, it is a giant fucking waste of the human experience.
In response to a question about how I could tell he was objectifying her:
I have no way of knowing what he was thinking about, of course. She might have been starring in his bondage fantasy, or she might have been Mrs Brady making him tuna sandwiches. What he was thinking about doesn't matter. He was objectifying her because he sat there for 30 min, staring at her, in spite of her obvious and growing discomfort. I watched her go from ignoring the first couple of looks he gave her, to shifting in her seat as he looked for longer periods of time, to hiding her face with her hair as he started openly staring. She glanced deliberately away, staring out the window. She hunched her shoulders forward, she squirmed in her seat. All this time, as far as I could tell, they never actually made eye contact.
There is a sense, I think, of sympathy for guys who can't read body language. I think that's complete and utter bullshit (for most of them. There are some genuine conditions that seriously impede someones ability to relate to another human. I feel bad for those folks). There are subtle signals that I can understand guys not getting. Distress is not a subtle signal. It's universally recognized. We can see it in animals, we can see it in other humans we're not directly interacting with. When someone doesn't notice increasingly obvious signals of distress, it's a sign that they aren't LOOKING at the person they're interacting with. They're not paying attention to their cues because their cues don't matter. That's objectification.
Had this moment of epiphany, if you will, on the bus home this evening, watching a young man stare at a cute young woman for 30 min straight.
See, the worst thing about objectification, in my mind, is the fact that it corrupts the reality of what happens between a man and a woman (or between any two people who might be attracted to each other).
Attraction is, at its heart, the beginning of a story. Something catches your eye. You look, and something inside you wants to keep on looking. You're drawn to this person, for whatever reason. And that attraction is the seed of a story.
Who knows what road it could lead down? Maybe they'll be attracted to you, and the story becomes more complex, with two characters instead of one.
Maybe they won't, but you'll still have had the experience of that story, that kernel of hope for more. The potential that healthy attraction represents can/should be a beautiful thing.
Objectification isn't a story.
It's a monologue.
There's no room for another character in your inner monologue. There's only you, your attraction to this single thing, not this person or their reaction to your attraction. It is purely selfish. Upskirt photos, staring at a woman to the point where you're making her uncomfortable, leering, catcalling... all that shit is a refusal to acknowledge this other human beings part in your story. It is purely, wholly self centered.
And it's sad. It is so, so sad that this selfish bullshit is a staple of life for most people. Because this young woman represents a physical ideal, she has to tolerate the constant monologuing of boring, selfish people. They tell their stories on her body, through their eyes, and she has absolutely no role to play, no action to take. She can glare, she can walk away in a huff, she can yell or scream or cry. But the nature of a monologue means that nothing she does will have any affect on what she's experiencing.
I don't get angry at objectification because it sexualizes women. Nor do I think that noticing beauty is objectification. I get angry at it because, without the humanity inherent in a potential story, it is a giant fucking waste of the human experience.
In response to a question about how I could tell he was objectifying her:
I have no way of knowing what he was thinking about, of course. She might have been starring in his bondage fantasy, or she might have been Mrs Brady making him tuna sandwiches. What he was thinking about doesn't matter. He was objectifying her because he sat there for 30 min, staring at her, in spite of her obvious and growing discomfort. I watched her go from ignoring the first couple of looks he gave her, to shifting in her seat as he looked for longer periods of time, to hiding her face with her hair as he started openly staring. She glanced deliberately away, staring out the window. She hunched her shoulders forward, she squirmed in her seat. All this time, as far as I could tell, they never actually made eye contact.
There is a sense, I think, of sympathy for guys who can't read body language. I think that's complete and utter bullshit (for most of them. There are some genuine conditions that seriously impede someones ability to relate to another human. I feel bad for those folks). There are subtle signals that I can understand guys not getting. Distress is not a subtle signal. It's universally recognized. We can see it in animals, we can see it in other humans we're not directly interacting with. When someone doesn't notice increasingly obvious signals of distress, it's a sign that they aren't LOOKING at the person they're interacting with. They're not paying attention to their cues because their cues don't matter. That's objectification.
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