Feminism and Sexual Objectification. The Sexy Lie video
The “sex wars” of the 1980s pitted radical feminists, who claimed that female sexual objectification is dehumanizing, against feminists concerned about legal and social efforts to control and repress female sexuality. Over a decade of research now shows that radical feminists were right to be highly concerned.
Caroline Heldman, PhD
Heldman explains:
Today women’s sexual objectification is celebrated as a form of female empowerment. This has enabled a new era of sexual objectification, characterized by greater exposure to advertising in general, and increased sexual explicitness in advertising, magazines, television shows, movies, video games, music videos, television news, and “reality” television.
What is sexual objectification? If objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like an object (a non-thinking thing that can be used however one likes), then sexual objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like a sex object, one that serves another’s sexual pleasure.
While most people will not feel spurred to activism, Heldman’s advice for women is sound:
1. Avoid the worst offenders in the media. Ditch Cosmo and all the other photoshopped rags.
2. Stop seeking attention for your body from strangers. Don’t compete with other women for male attention to your body. That validation is fleeting and, if anything, is inversely correlated to establishing a long-term relationship.
3. Practice viewing your body as a vehicle for moving through the world, its strength and all the things it enables you to experience other than as an object of male admiration.
4. Be in the moment during sex. No woman can have a great orgasm if she’s watching herself from above, wondering if her back is arched in such a way that her partner finds her beautiful. If you decide to have sex with a man, do it with abandon. It will be much, much better for both of you.
http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2013/02/21/politics-and-feminism/feminism-and-sexual-objectification/
this womans video on sexual objectification is very good. i know the issue. and it was good for me to hear. she really lays it out.
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