Everybody Objectifies Everyone – And We Have To
While I’m sure media, sexual objectification and society’s attitudes do all intersect, I think that those who rail carte blanche against objectification have got it wrong, and this will likely be my most heretical point.
The truth is, every day, we interact with and pass far more humans than we could ever actually maintain active relationships with due to society now operating at scales our primate brains didn’t evolve to deal with. Objectification is how we simplify the world to make sense of it and conserve mental resources. When people watch football, they see “footballing objects” and “opposing team objects” and “goddamned crooked referee objects”. They know deep down that these are people, but in the stimulated moment, the brain converts them into objects for ease of use and focuses on the game.
For every porn star that anti-visual pleasure proponents will condemn, how often have they condemned the following?
These are all people too, but their significance to us is on the level of objects. And there’s nothing wrong with that so long as we understand they are people and afford them respect and dignity befitting anyone else. If a girl enjoys being looked at, or filmed while having sex, or dressing in full battle armour, then it is not objectifying all women, so much as it is that woman doing what she enjoys. That woman or the artist of a sexy design has shared something they find personally appealing in a creative way. At most, it is objectifying that individual in a way they’ve consented to, and she and the audience derive pleasure from viewing and being viewed. Barring sociopathy, how anyone can “forget” that this is still a real human person is beyond me.
Saying that; douchebag audiences on the internet could pipe down once in a while. Nobody needs the cruelty and bullying that infests every comments section in the world; all it takes is a little class.
