NSFW objectification
 

I was watching Bones the other day and during one ep the following was said:

"...I objectify myself every time I put on lipstick."

Question posed:

Is all sexulazation objectification?

OR

Can one exist as a sexual being and not objectify?

Does there exist other forms of objectifcation that desexualize a person.
If true are they equally wrong?

How is this NSFW?

Maybe she wants us to post examples.

You first..;)

Wait, Toranokaze is a she? I thought Toranokaze was a he.

me too!

I also

It is a human sexuality thread I figured I should throw up the tag just in case.




Yes I am a HE NOT a she.

I think Ani di Franco expresses a similar sentiment in her song Fuel.

Sexuality is a large part of who 'we' are, who 'I' am. But if it's the seemingly ONLY part of who you are, or the only part that people take the time to see about you, that is objectification.

Which is pretty much what I've said over and over, over the years.

Is all sexualization objectification? Yes

Fashion is also objectification. It just addresses a different crowd.

Well that depends what sort of fashion you're talking about really. ;)

I read a great article a while back, the Economist or Atlantic, can't remember, written by a woman, who said that most women dress to impress and compete with other women, not look good for men. Made sense.

I just dress in whatever currently fits :(

I hear ya. I tend to dress according to what my skin can take.

I dress according to what's ironed.

I rarely iron. Creases drop out when worn :p Maybe once or twice a month I might need to iron something.

Yebbut, you have a definite personal style.
You never look like you bought things from eBay just because they were in your size and budget.

ETA, sorry - that sounds really waa-waa-waaa. It was supposed to be a compliment!

*grins*

I'll take it is the compliment it was meant to be honey :)

That's ironic

We objectify people every time we describe them to someone. I know that when I'm described/pointed out to someone, it's not "that guy", it's "that fat guy", or "that guy with the pony tail", or "that guy with the joint in his mouth", just like "that girl with the big tits", or "that girl with the moles".

I think when you add a descriptor to a person, that person is automatically objectified.

And I think it's impossible to not do that.

This is where this thread crosses over into the political correctness thread. Gravdigr's post uses a number of words to describe people which in a PC environment would be rephrased (i.e. big tits-well endowed, fat-well built etc...).

This made me think of an afternoon years ago when I'd swapped classrooms with another staff member in the uni who I didn't know and was unlikely to set eyes on again (and haven't). As said staff member's students went up the stairs, I said to them (being quite sure that the students who were late would either not bother to read the note I had left on the board or not compute if they did) if you see any Asian students looking lost, send them down here. The Caucasian students going up the stairs responded "that's racist". To me it was a statement of fact, was the easiest way of identifying the students in question and had no ill connotations attached so their response struck me as highlighting an intention that wasn't there so after writing out this spiel, my question would be: 1). at what point does the objectification start and 2) at what stage does it become a problem?

Meh, ran into the same thing at work a couple of years ago.

Gave directions to someone looking for S. I gave general directions, but the whole office was a maze. S was the only black woman in the building, so I mentioned it.

What? Was I supposed to say something else? If she'd been a white with bright red hair or unusual glasses I'd have pointed it out.

The stupid thing was that the woman I "shocked" was seriously bigoted. She used unpleasant words and had rather unpleasant opinions (imho). So she crowed about my "slip-up". Yeah, fuck you bitch. I'll wake up tomorrow morning and still be under forty.*

* I never said this to her because it's not big or clever or even relevant. But she hated ageing. And so saying it now is a sly dig; but maybe it's so far behind her back it will circumnavigate the globe and touch both her faces.

Slap! Slap!
Years ago but you deserve it.
Slap! Slap!

Know what you mean.

Now that I'm somewhere where I stand out (sure, there's loads of foreigners from everywhere around the world, but we still stand out), I think that really there's no getting around it. I'm Caucasian-I look different to everyone else (except for the other people of the same extraction) and no amount of words are going to disguise it.

I will not believe that all mention of race is automatically racist

We, as human beings, have a natural tendency to categorise other human beings. We use visual shorthand to navigate our world.

If someone is the only black person, or the only chinese person in an office then that is likely to be the defining feature you remember, and how you identify them if trying to describe them. If they're the only redhead, or the only one in a wheelchair, likewise. Perfectly natural.

@ Casi: there's no difference between what you were saying, and one of the organisers of the International Students Open Day saying to the helpers, if you see a foreign student direct them our way.



People get very het up about this sort of stuff, but couldn't give a flying fuck that young black lads are more likely to be unemployed or in prison than white lads, or that certain professional fields have an invisible wall barring entry to anyone with a brown face.

FTFY

agreed.

It seems to me that there is a distinct difference between the shorthand we use to manage our worlds and objectification. Describing someone by their most identifiable feature can be very useful, as in the instances given by Sundae and Casi. It is when that feature is used to apply a set of other characteristics which are unrelated (frequently to do with intelligence, behaviour, or other non-physical characteristics) that it becomes "objectification".

Objects.

It has certainly become that way, esp in politics. We should stop calling it a "race card" and call it an "Obama card".

Troll.

Why in the world would you say that?

Maybe I misinterpreted but when you state "we should call it an "Obama card" instead of a "race card", it makes it seem that Obama always plays the race card, something I have never seen. Other people sometimes talk about race with Obama but when the hell has he really used it? I have no idea where that came from so it I assumed you were just trying to get a reaction out of people, hence trolling.

Actually I can't think of a time that he ever played a race card, other than his associations with some of the radical political players during the run up to the election. I think he has done a really good job of down playing race issues. We will see, the next election is just around the corner. I was stating what I believe to be an honest observation that now if anyone is critical of him in any manner his supporters, usually other people of color, will throw it down as the source of the root cause of why people disagree with him and that is total bullshit.

I agree it's bullshit but I guess we will see if that happens.

Happens everyday on FB, political sites and blogs.

Oh and in Congress!

PH45, that didn't take long did it?

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...ckson_lee.html



And here:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...ed-rick-perry/

that's a stretch mercy.

She's got some serious sensitivities, that's clear. But I read your first link... there's nothing there. and you seem to be contradicting yourself, actually, your articles make contradicting arguments. in one context, they complain that racism is being inferred and then in the next context they say that the attack is invalid because it is merely innuendo. So... I'm left to conclude that innuendo is only inappropriate when it is unfavorable. That's pretty weak.

If you think it's a charge of racism, call it out. But the innuendo angle is weak.

The military tries to desexualize -- and to objectify the serving individual into the impersonal soldier. The disciplined hair, the uniform, these are just the outermost manifestations. This is not a D&S exercise, it is a psychological coping mechanism for performing one's difficult tasks while in that environment of humans being most dangerous.

What personalizes sexualization is friendship -- and its extreme form, love. We start from an objectifying viewpoint -- the excitement of perceiving a potential mate. "I wanna get some of that." If we're nice people, we move on from there. If we for some reason are not fixing to move on from there -- we cruise folks. Come on -- nobody here has not done that.

The wrong or the right dwells in the doing, not the instinctual interest.