Objectification of women.

[Copperknickers II]

Oh please, working hard and competing in an air-conditioned office, is as much as an artificial "male lifestyle" as it is an artificial "female lifestyle": there's no such thing as male/female-lifestyles anymore, we're not living out in the Serengeti with our cocks and boobs flappin about wrestling polar bears and kangaroos: sexual dimorphism is, in a very very practical sense: meaningless (outside sports and the military obviously). What you've said is utter tosh, I don't even know what tosh is, but it sounds bad, that's how bad what you've said is, it's made me use a word I heard a drunk Scotsman say once while rocking a gondola in Venice. That's like, pretty bad bro.

Just fyi, working in an air-conditioned office is indeed a very artificial lifestyle, which is partly why it contributes to many health problems such as obesity, stress, burnout etc. Albeit humans did spend much of our 300,000 year pre-civilisation era sitting in caves whittling stone tools and making carvings, they didn't just go out and fight lions all day. I don't think differences between the sexes are meaningless at all though. Notwithstanding physical differences, the average woman has different skills and different requirements than the average man due to neurological differences:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Brain Size & Brain Connections: Women’s brains are 8% smaller than men’s, but have more interconnections. Women perform better at “bigger picture” & situational thinking while men do better on more specific spatial thinking (problem solving, and pattern prediction involving objects and their spatial relationships).
Multi-tasking: Men tend to be better at learning and performing a single task, like cycling or navigating, and women are better at juggling different tasks at once.
Social Context: Women are better at social thinking & interactions than men, while men are more abstract and task-orientated. This is why women are normally better at communication while men more often prefer relying on themselves to get things done.
Emotions: Women typically have a larger limbic system than men, which makes them more in touch and expressive with their emotions. Women are usually more empathic and comprehensive in thinking, while men focus on exact issues and disregard impertinent information. Men have a difficult time understanding emotions not explicitly verbalized but can think more logically, while women have a more wholesome view of thinking & understanding but their emotions can sometimes influence decisions.
Math Skills: A brain area called the “Inferior-Parietal Lobule (IPL)” is normally larger in men than women. This area is thought to control mathematical processes, which explains why men typically can perform mathematical tasks better than women.
Pain: Women tend to perceive pain more intensely than men. The Amygdala is the brain area activated when pain is felt. The right Amygdala is activated for men and the left Amygdala is activated for women. The right Amygdala has more connections with external functions while the left Amygdala has more connections with internal functions.
Coordination & Movement: Men are generally better with coordination, controlling their movements, and have faster reaction times.
Language: Women are more attuned to words and sounds and are normally better at learning languages. This is also why men tend to have a harder time expressing emotions verbally.
Memory: Women generally have better memory than men. They have greater activity in the brain’s hippocampus, which is part of the brain that helps store memories. Studies have shown women are generally better at recalling words, names, faces, pictures, objects, and everyday events.
Sense of Direction: Men has shown to have better visual-spatial & geographic memory and thinking, meaning they tend to have a better sense of direction and remembering where locations and areas are.
Risks & Rewards: Men has a brain wired for risk-taking more than women. Male brains get a bigger burst of endorphins, sensation of pleasure, when faced with a risky or challenging situation. And the bigger the reward is, the more likely a man will take a risk.
Senses & Sex: Men focus more on their visual sense, among other senses of perception; while women tend to use multiple senses. In terms of sexual activity, men are prevalently turned on by what they see, whereas women are turned on by multiple sources: ambience, touch, scent, as well as visual perception.

http://www.fitbrains.com/blog/women-men-brains/

[Himster]

Just fyi, working in an air-conditioned office is indeed a very artificial lifestyle, which is partly why it contributes to many health problems such as obesity, stress, burnout etc. Albeit humans did spend much of our 300,000 year pre-civilisation era sitting in caves whittling stone tools and making carvings, they didn't just go out and fight lions all day. I don't think differences between the sexes are meaningless at all though. Notwithstanding physical differences, the average woman has different skills and different requirements than the average man due to neurological differences:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Brain Size & Brain Connections: Women’s brains are 8% smaller than men’s, but have more interconnections. Women perform better at “bigger picture” & situational thinking while men do better on more specific spatial thinking (problem solving, and pattern prediction involving objects and their spatial relationships).
Multi-tasking: Men tend to be better at learning and performing a single task, like cycling or navigating, and women are better at juggling different tasks at once.
Social Context: Women are better at social thinking & interactions than men, while men are more abstract and task-orientated. This is why women are normally better at communication while men more often prefer relying on themselves to get things done.
Emotions: Women typically have a larger limbic system than men, which makes them more in touch and expressive with their emotions. Women are usually more empathic and comprehensive in thinking, while men focus on exact issues and disregard impertinent information. Men have a difficult time understanding emotions not explicitly verbalized but can think more logically, while women have a more wholesome view of thinking & understanding but their emotions can sometimes influence decisions.
Math Skills: A brain area called the “Inferior-Parietal Lobule (IPL)” is normally larger in men than women. This area is thought to control mathematical processes, which explains why men typically can perform mathematical tasks better than women.
Pain: Women tend to perceive pain more intensely than men. The Amygdala is the brain area activated when pain is felt. The right Amygdala is activated for men and the left Amygdala is activated for women. The right Amygdala has more connections with external functions while the left Amygdala has more connections with internal functions.
Coordination & Movement: Men are generally better with coordination, controlling their movements, and have faster reaction times.
Language: Women are more attuned to words and sounds and are normally better at learning languages. This is also why men tend to have a harder time expressing emotions verbally.
Memory: Women generally have better memory than men. They have greater activity in the brain’s hippocampus, which is part of the brain that helps store memories. Studies have shown women are generally better at recalling words, names, faces, pictures, objects, and everyday events.
Sense of Direction: Men has shown to have better visual-spatial & geographic memory and thinking, meaning they tend to have a better sense of direction and remembering where locations and areas are.
Risks & Rewards: Men has a brain wired for risk-taking more than women. Male brains get a bigger burst of endorphins, sensation of pleasure, when faced with a risky or challenging situation. And the bigger the reward is, the more likely a man will take a risk.
Senses & Sex: Men focus more on their visual sense, among other senses of perception; while women tend to use multiple senses. In terms of sexual activity, men are prevalently turned on by what they see, whereas women are turned on by multiple sources: ambience, touch, scent, as well as visual perception.

http://www.fitbrains.com/blog/women-men-brains/

Still: a marginal difference.
As a consequence, I call them practically meaningless over-generalizations (that do more harm than help in implementation), you disagree, I'll disagree right back, you'll disagree back at me and I'll retort with a witty disagreement. Then I'll get bored and make a cucumber sandwich, I've never had one of those before, it'll make a nice change.

[Copperknickers II]

Still: a marginal difference.
As a consequence, I call them practically meaningless over-generalizations (that do more harm than help in implementation), you disagree, I'll disagree right back, you'll disagree back at me and I'll retort with a witty disagreement. Then I'll get bored and make a cucumber sandwich, I've never had one of those before, it'll make a nice change.

I'm not suggesting we should discriminate against all women on the basis that some women might have lower spacial awareness/maths skills/whatever than men. I'm just saying that in seeking to understand why men and women tend to behave in certain ways, it is legitimate to use gender as a filter in the same way as we use ethnicity or income as filters in devising ethnic minority and income level quotas and support programmes, and, on a more relevant note, as heuristics in our social relationships, when individualised knowledge is not available.

[Himster]

I'm not suggesting we should discriminate against all women on the basis that some women might have lower spacial awareness/maths skills/whatever than men. I'm just saying that in seeking to understand why men and women tend to behave in certain ways, it is legitimate to use gender as a filter in the same way as we use ethnicity or income as filters in devising ethnic minority and income level quotas and support programmes, and, on a more relevant note, as heuristics in our social relationships, when individualised knowledge is not available.

Okay, I almost entirely agree.
I like how we skipped so many steps just there. It's like we're growing as people.

[chriscase]

Speaking of sexual dimorphism, there is research that suggests such "traditional" behaviors as father-child affiliative bonding and male provisioning are part and parcel of the canid analogue, which includes a relative lack of sexual dimorphism (in comparison with closer evolutionary cousins, e.g. Great Apes).

[fkizz]

Well Tradicionalism earned its name for a reason. If it was genetic wired impulsive-behaviour, it would have some other name. That said, the fact that Women have their offspring for 9 months inside their body gives them an insight that is harder for males to understand I'd say.

[chriscase]

Mother-child affiliate bonds are much more universal than father-child or mate bonds. The canid analogue points out that humans share more affiliate bond features with canids than we do with other apes. Coincidentally, we also exhibit a lesser degree of sexual dimorphism than our ape cousins generally do, something else that is true of canids.

[sumskilz]

Coincidentally, we also exhibit a lesser degree of sexual dimorphism than our ape cousins generally do, something else that is true of canids.

This is relatively recent, associated with behavioral modernity.

~80,000 BP male vs modern male:



Also:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[chriscase]

Do you think our more-dimorphic ancestors might have resembled the apes more in their affiliate bonds as well? I wonder there's any way to tell.

[sumskilz]

Do you think our more-dimorphic ancestors might have resembled the apes more in their affiliate bonds as well? I wonder there's any way to tell.

I think it's hard to tell, but we're talking more like chimp level dimorphism rather than gorilla. Males being more robust implies greater competition between males for mates, but it seems early modern males probably had to provide for pregnant females, so it's hard to imagine they could support more than two or three "wives". Even that doesn't really answer the question considering that serial monogamy is sort of new within historical time. Plus, it could be that social structure didn't change much for hunter-gatherers over that period and that males only became less robust due to more efficient weapons, which made the extra bulk more a cost than a benefit.

[Elfdude]

The idea that hunter-gatherers were providing for any more than 1 wife is silly furthermore most tribal cultures depend on females who gather as much if not more food than the males and they tend to exist in mostly monogamous relationships with only the rare male claiming more than 1 wife.

[chriscase]

The domestication of the dog also sits somewhere on that timeline. I have to wonder if we learned something from our canine friends.

[sumskilz]

The idea that hunter-gatherers were providing for any more than 1 wife is silly furthermore most tribal cultures depend on females who gather as much if not more food than the males and they tend to exist in mostly monogamous relationships with only the rare male claiming more than 1 wife.

Nice feminist anthropology there. Not entirely wrong, but comes off that way due to unwarranted certainty.

Low level polygyny does exist in today's hunter-gatherers, and the thing about today's hunter-gatherers is that they retain their way of life only because they live on land nobody else wants. That potentially changes a lot. Not to mention that they aren't actually living fossils. Males and females gather about the same amount of calories in some modern hunter-gatherer societies, but it's also not clear how that translates, especially considering the evidence that implies greater violent competition for mates (as compared to today's foragers) which may have limited women's ability to go out on their own. Although these sorts of methodological concerns don't seem to trouble a lot of ideologically-minded sociocultural anthropologists. I'm assuming that you haven't observed any pre-Holocene societies directly nor read anything by someone who has.

Some references:

Variation in Male Reproductive Longevity across Traditional Societies
Means, variances, and ranges in reproductive success: comparative evidence
The Mating System of Foragers in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample
Evolutionary History of Hunter-Gatherer Marriage Practices
Sexual Dimorphism

It's an interesting tangent, but headed nowhere in the direction of back toward the topic, that I can see anyway.

[The Holy Pilgrim]

Hey guys,

Remember to stay on-topic and to keep personal references out of this thread.

Thank you,
The Holy Pilgrim

[Stario]

I'm not suggesting we should discriminate against all women on the basis that some women might have lower spacial awareness/maths skills/whatever than men. I'm just saying that in seeking to understand why men and women tend to behave in certain ways, it is legitimate to use gender as a filter in the same way as we use ethnicity or income as filters in devising ethnic minority and income level quotas and support programmes, and, on a more relevant note, as heuristics in our social relationships, when individualised knowledge is not available.

My missus once held the street directory upside down (this is pre-GPS era). Last time she was navigator, HAHAHA (true story).

[Copperknickers II]

It's OK to objectify women who want to be objectified.

I wasn't sure where to begin, so I went back to the first page. The above is, I think, exactly wrong. Mores respecting individuals aren't crafted to fit the scenario, they're principals for society to live by, and they should be stronger than our own lusts.

I think we need to have a basic definition of objectification here. Here's one from Wikipedia:

'Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person as an instrument of sexual pleasure. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals.'

So objectification means allowing someone's sexual appeal, i.e. their appearance, to outweigh their personality or worth as a human being. I agree that in principle, we should always aspire to treat women fairly as human beings with intrinsic dignity and worth, and also as people with brains and skills/knowledge. However, I think we have to differentiate between actual objectification and appreciation, and also practicality.

1. True objectification is judging people on one aspect without regard to other aspects purely as a value judgement ("pretty girls are good eye candy and potential sexual partners, and that's it. Plain girls meanwhile should be sidelined.")

2. Appreciation is merely highlighting a woman's appearance, not taking it as all-important but just recognising it and commenting on it, as ever man is expected to do by their female partners and as women do every day to their friends and daughters and mothers. I don't think that low level appreciation is ever controversial when it comes from women or from a man to his partner (high level fixation is a different matter of course). It only becomes a problem when it happens between a man and a woman whom he doesn't know very well. Catcalling, flirting, etc, can all be intimidating if overdone or done in an inappropriate context such as in a workplace. Some feminists would like to outlaw verbalised appreciation of beauty altogether from men who are not in a relationship with a given woman. I agree with Phier that most women actively want to be complimented on their appearance. I don't think doing so has anything to do with lust, nor does it constitute actual objectification since it's not disregarding or devaluing their other traits: what devalues their other traits is focussing solely on their appearance and never commenting on other aspects such as intelligence or work ethic etc.

There is a cultural imbalance between men and women, as many women feel that their appearance genuinely is their most important characteristic. This is obviously a harmful belief since it leads to all kinds of problems with dysmorphic disorders, anorexia, bulimia, and others. Partly this is indeed due to traditional 'patriarchal' culture dictating that men are leaders and women are their inferiors and so men should concentrate on breadwinning and pursuing their ambitions whereas women should concentrate on keeping a good home and maintaining her own appearance as a reward for the husband's hard work. It's also due to capitalism, which has stripped away many of the traditional values which existed before: if you go to a traditional society like Afghanistan or India, women are expected to work hard on their appearance, yes, but they are also expected to provide male children, to manage the house, to carry out activities of a religious nature and to educate the daughters in the art of being a good wife. Whereas in Western society, children, housekeeping, religion and education have all been outsourced or done away with, leaving only appearance left. With the effect that our imperfect 'feminist' society is actually more appearance fixated than many traditional societies. This is why traditional gender roles are, if not desirable, at least act as checks and balances on each other and thus prevent women from being objectified. The status of women in, say, fundamentalist Muslim societies, is certainly oppressive not to say evil, but it's difficult to see it as objectification per se.

At any rate, if traditional values are imperfect then we have to ask what they should be replaced with: feminism would like us to replace them with total equality between the sexes: women being paid the same as men, engineering faculties and business supervisory boards being 50% female, no value whatsoever being placed on idealised appearance even in advertising or informal conversations among men, etc. But heaps of research suggest that, even if we were able to change culture: women would still get pregnant and have their careers disrupted by having children, as children need their mothers more than they need their fathers and many women will always feel the need to sacrifice their career for their children; many gay men are nothing if not 'forward' in their attitude towards attractive men, so one has to question whether the feminist idea that women should not be approached or spoken to by men they do not know is 'equality' or rather an admission of the fact that women have a different role in courtship to men for ingrained psychological reasons and so deserve special treatment (and whether the treatment they prescribe is sensible); and finally, what is the role of women in society to be in the future, if it comes out that actually, even stripping away antiquated cultural mores prevailing among women from 'patriarchal' times, many women still value their appearance and want to be complimented, and prefer less competitive people-centred careers rather than technical, competitive ones? Isn't it better to have a society where women are allowed to do what they want, rather than one in which women are pressured into doing what they don't want?

3. And finally you have practicalities. Is it really so immoral to advertise using pictures of 'idealised' women with 'unrealistic' body shapes? Is this a problem of objectification of women, or is it a problem of general human biases? I think the main problem is Western society's fixation on aesthetics and celebrity culture. I do think advertising can do harm especially to girls (but increasingly to boys too), but I also think it's possible to have a society where we can still have supermodels and sex symbol singers and movie stars without these people having a status akin to gods and goddesses.

In conclusion, the real key to objectification is differentiating between harmful fixation on appearance, and highlighting of appearance for a specific purpose. The latter can be done in a way that does not devalue women as human beings or harm our societal perception of them, and when this happens, it is not sensible to call it 'objectification.'

[Elfdude]

I think we need to have a basic definition of objectification here. Here's one from Wikipedia:

'Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person as an instrument of sexual pleasure. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals.'

You mean like I did in this post:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post15228531

I even used the same wiki page you did to come up with my common definition. However I find it odd that you've added the definition of sexual objectification to the question of objectification of women. You immediately turned your discussion towards a specific end despite the qualifier of sexual objectification being absent in the topic of this thread.

So objectification means allowing someone's sexual appeal, i.e. their appearance, to outweigh their personality or worth as a human being. I agree that in principle, we should always aspire to treat women fairly as human beings with intrinsic dignity and worth, and also as people with brains and skills/knowledge. However, I think we have to differentiate between actual objectification and appreciation, and also practicality.

Reducing someone to their practical or apparent traits is objectification... So while I get you used poor words here and I think you're trying to say and individual trait can be appreciated without diminishing the overall value of the person, and that something can have practical realities associated with it without doing the same your rhetoric is still just ever-so-slightly off the mark. You're making value statements about someone's worth. You're objectifying them while trying to explain objectification. Now don't get me wrong objectification when it's not applied to someone's gender or race is of a drastically different nature. Objectification is something we do consistently when making a variety of claims. I objectify dogs are better than cats and I have a series of arguments as to why that's the case. I objectify Mt Dew as the best flavored soda and Pearls as being valuable in their rarity. All of these statements I make in preference for a trait that I objectified as desirable. Hell the reason you got mad at me earlier is because you seemed to perceive that my statements about elitism was objectifying you as worth less than me.

So yes, I agree with you, it's possible to appreciate beauty without diminishing the ugly but only insofar as you decouple the beauty from the person you're looking at. As soon as it's tied to character and character judgements it becomes objectifying. I.E. I like pretty girls, implies you have a fondness for pretty girls and not ugly girls just as the value of pearls devalues the dirt. You can take the high road and get academic and describe the principals of beauty which you are fond of, symmetry, proportionality, smoothness, curve, etc. but when you apply those standards to a person, you are objectifying them. Just as I can talk about the lofty difficulties of one degree over another but as soon as I apply them to a person (you) I'm objectifying you. Inherently the problem is making character judgements. Now don't get me wrong, we make all sorts of character judgements and I think many are totally fine. For example, I don't think murderers make good company. Yes I'm depreciating murderers and objectifying those who have murdered by judging them by reducing them to the trait of having murdered. Of course a rational person knows that it's rare (perhaps entirely impossible) for one act to define a person. I might get more and more specific with my rhetoric to narrow down the type of person I mean and when I'm specific about the fact that I don't like murderers who betray the trust of others in cold-blood and guiltlessly condone the harm of others regardless of their innocence I get closer to an objectification that I might consider absolute. Even this statement might be fraught with difficulties in assessment. However I find it strange that you can recognize and get indignant about your interpretation of my words as objectifying you by your wealth and education when you can't seem to recognize the indignation that comes with objectifying you by your appearance.

The reason I would say this is true is because it's probably likely that you have been objectified by your wealth and education but only rarely (if at all) been objectified by your appearance. For most men it's unlikely to be something that comes up often and like a river which only rarely floods down a ravine hasn't cut you deep yet.

1. True objectification is judging people on one aspect without regard to other aspects purely as a value judgement ("pretty girls are good eye candy and potential sexual partners, and that's it. Plain girls meanwhile should be sidelined.")

However, you've left open the tacit implication that you can judge someone appropriately if you can just narrow down the lurking variables without realizing the oxymoronic nature of that sentiment. It's paradoxic to solve objectification by objectifying every trait about someone. If you want to value something, value something which really matters, if you're shallow and like great tits because you can't help your impulses own up to it and enjoy your tits but don't defend the act as not objectification. It clearly is.

2. Appreciation is merely highlighting a woman's appearance, not taking it as all-important but just recognising it and commenting on it, as ever man is expected to do by their female partners and as women do every day to their friends and daughters and mothers.

Making a compliment to strangers has different implications to complimenting those you know well. However I have little doubt that appreciating someone does cross into objectification when you fail to recognize other traits positively as well. This is the sort of objectification I talk about at a societal level. On the other hand, I do think education, and knowledge are genuinely good traits to judge on. I think we should enhance them, and I do think we should perceive negatively those who don't have them. However I also know that for example, going to college is not something everyone has the choice to do. While I think it would be exhausting to describe all of the specifics of what I mean and the exceptions to it I do believe in general that yes we should objectify people by their knowledge. I also think we should objectify people by their compassion. I don't think we should objectify people on their appearance. Don't get me wrong, I love me a pretty lady, but I'm not about to post on an online forum how it's dumb that I can't cat-call someone without them getting angry when they were clearly "asking for it", personally I believe that in the absence of society women would desire to be objectified on their appearance about as much as men do. I can't think of many of my friends who want to be objectified that way.

I don't think that low level appreciation is ever controversial when it comes from women or from a man to his partner (high level fixation is a different matter of course). It only becomes a problem when it happens between a man and a woman whom he doesn't know very well. Catcalling, flirting, etc, can all be intimidating if overdone or done in an inappropriate context such as in a workplace.

You're saying the right words when you go into detail. You could've saved a lot of typing if you had bothered to be so specific in the first place.

Some feminists would like to outlaw verbalised appreciation of beauty altogether from men who are not in a relationship with a given woman.

I think this is an odd exaggeration. It's probably as accurate as the idea that some feminists are lesbians and it would be equally as silly to judge all feminists by the standard of feminist lesbians.

I agree with Phier that most women actively want to be complimented on their appearance.

This I feel like is societally driven and created and something we're still breaking out of. For the longest time objectifying women by their appearance was what we did in society. The value of a woman was down to their appearance. They most certainly weren't allowed to work. They most certainly weren't allowed to own land. They most certainly didn't lead armies. They most certainly didn't graduate from prestigious universities. I'm sure there's a couple of noble women or rich ladies who rebuked that from time to time in history but for the vast majority of people that was reality. In a similar way I might have grown up to value compassion and knowledge, many women grew up listening to both an overt and an implicit message that their value was determined by their appearance. I think that's problematic and I think that sort of messaging abounds throughout our society both implicitly and explicitly. Phier has implied as much with his post about club-wear.

I don't think doing so has anything to do with lust, nor does it constitute actual objectification since it's not disregarding or devaluing their other traits: what devalues their other traits is focussing solely on their appearance and never commenting on other aspects such as intelligence or work ethic etc.

Yeah, sometimes people want to be seen as attractive, even I do from time to time.

There is a cultural imbalance between men and women, as many women feel that their appearance genuinely is their most important characteristic. This is obviously a harmful belief since it leads to all kinds of problems with dysmorphic disorders, anorexia, bulimia, and others. Partly this is indeed due to traditional 'patriarchal' culture dictating that men are leaders and women are their inferiors and so men should concentrate on breadwinning and pursuing their ambitions whereas women should concentrate on keeping a good home and maintaining her own appearance as a reward for the husband's hard work.

Feminist theory described in a nutshell.

It's also due to capitalism, which has stripped away many of the traditional values which existed before: if you go to a traditional society like Afghanistan or India, women are expected to work hard on their appearance, yes, but they are also expected to provide male children, to manage the house, to carry out activities of a religious nature and to educate the daughters in the art of being a good wife.

Although it's a precious rarity in any culture of historic time where women were expected to accrue and judged on their intelligence, their power, their wealth. In fact a lot of our negative terms for women revolve around women with exactly these things.

Whereas in Western society, children, housekeeping, religion and education have all been outsourced or done away with, leaving only appearance left.

I mean, you got halfway there then you just flatly turned your back. Apparently men can be valued in all of these ways and knowledge and education and power and wealth and etc. You admittedly made your pool of objectivism slightly bigger but you're still critically missing the point that women should be free to define themselves and their roles and what is appreciated about them. Sure a powerful woman might not have kids or even want them, your perspective still implies to her that she's less of a woman because she doesn't. It's exactly the same idea as different degrees, except you've deigned that women can achieve social science degrees, whereas men can do both social sciences and natural sciences.

With the effect that our imperfect 'feminist' society is actually more appearance fixated than many traditional societies.

I really must challenge this belief. Do you truly believe we are more appearance fixated that traditional societies? This is dead wrong copper and may explain some of the inversions in your perspectives. Our modern 'feminist' society is less appearance fixated than any society ever before.

This is why traditional gender roles are, if not desirable, at least act as checks and balances on each other and thus prevent women from being objectified. The status of women in, say, fundamentalist Muslim societies, is certainly oppressive not to say evil, but it's difficult to see it as objectification per se.

And you lost me.

At any rate, if traditional values are imperfect then we have to ask what they should be replaced with: feminism would like us to replace them with total equality between the sexes: women being paid the same as men, engineering faculties and business supervisory boards being 50% female, no value whatsoever being placed on idealised appearance even in advertising or informal conversations among men, etc.

Feminism isn't the concept that value of someone can't be determined by appearance, but rather that it shouldn't only be determined by appearance and someone should be able to choose how their value in society is determined. You literally spelled it out and now you've taken like 3 steps back.

But heaps of research suggest that, even if we were able to change culture: women would still get pregnant and have their careers disrupted by having children, as children need their mothers more than they need their fathers and many women will always feel the need to sacrifice their career for their children

>_<

Women. Work. More. Than. Men. On. Average. Even the basic facts are disagreeing with you now as you hamfisted try to shove what was such a great sentiment into a cart which is clearly before the horse.

many gay men are nothing if not 'forward' in their attitude towards attractive men, so one has to question whether the feminist idea that women should not be approached or spoken to by men they do not know is 'equality' or rather an admission of the fact that women have a different role in courtship to men for ingrained psychological reasons and so deserve special treatment (and whether the treatment they prescribe is sensible)

Wait, women are the same as gay men now? First off, not every gay man is an adonus and objectification of gay men by appearance is HUUUGE problem in the gay community, secondly, gay men who choose to be objectified by their appearance are still choosing that. A porn star (potentially bad example but from the perspective of a woman who chooses freely to become one) wants to be defined by her appearance. A business executive might not want to be defined by hers. The business exec woman doesn't have that choice like a man does, regardless of his orientation.

and finally, what is the role of women in society to be in the future, if it comes out that actually, even stripping away antiquated cultural mores prevailing among women from 'patriarchal' times, many women still value their appearance and want to be complimented, and prefer less competitive people-centred careers rather than technical, competitive ones? Isn't it better to have a society where women are allowed to do what they want, rather than one in which women are pressured into doing what they don't want?

So like literally you get the concept of society objectifying people and defining the way that people see those people in turn but you can't seem to understand the concept that your free choice is being biased by what you call patriarchy and objectification by reducing women to their appearance in turn reinforcing the need to care about appearance in turn reinforcing the messaging about appearance and so on and so forth? Yes. A woman should be able to choose what she wants and how she wants. No feminist is going to second guess your individual choice to have a baby. They may assert that the choice itself was biased because you grew up believing that having a baby was your most valuable trait. Significant difference here and the sad thing is you stated it verbatim. I don't understand why you just like did a 180 here.

3. And finally you have practicalities. Is it really so immoral to advertise using pictures of 'idealised' women with 'unrealistic' body shapes? Is this a problem of objectification of women, or is it a problem of general human biases?

It's marketing. Objectification is good for marketing. Marketing works by distilling the value of ANYTHING down to a certain few traits and then leveraging the fact that you're missing those traits. Whether it's a commercial for viagra, a commercial for a state university, a commercial for cereal or a commercial for the latest gadget you've never heard about all of them are oriented with creating a void where one did not necessarily exist in order to capitalize on a desire which itself did not necessarily exist. If you didn't know about cereal you would never necessarily wake up craving it.

Again, I don't know why you don't want to call it objectification when it plainly is.

I think the main problem is Western society's fixation on aesthetics and celebrity culture.

The western society's fixation on aesthetics and celebrity culture is driven and heightened by marketing which again is established through objectification. The traits which makes celebrities celebrities are the crack cocaine to marketing precisely because they evoke attributes that many of us want to evoke ourselves. Aesthetics itself arises out of objectification. It doesn't make objectifying entire groups of people with broad strokes any better.

[QUOTE=Copperknickers II;15253705]I do think advertising can do harm especially to girls (but increasingly to boys too), but I also think it's possible to have a society where we can still have supermodels and sex symbol singers and movie stars without these people having a status akin to gods and goddesses.[/quote

If a sex symbol wants to be defined as a sex symbol more power to them. The problem is when someone doesn't want to be defined that way and is defined that way anyways. Hell just look at the sorts of questions media which was supposedly on HRC's (and don't get me wrong I hate her) side asked her. They asked one of the most powerful women in the world about her make-up and hair style. That's what happens when the messaging pearance is important is so pervasive even the people on your side don't realize how objectifying it is, how one-sided it is. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that 50 years ago the questions would've been about whether her husband had let her out of the house, but should we really be proud about that fact? Is it really wrong of me to see a future as ideal where society has limited to no influence on whether or not someone chooses to be a home-maker versus porn-star versus scientist?

In conclusion, the real key to objectification is differentiating between harmful fixation on appearance, and highlighting of appearance for a specific purpose. The latter can be done in a way that does not devalue women as human beings or harm our societal perception of them, and when this happens, it is not sensible to call it 'objectification.'

It literally still is objectification, it's just objectification you feel is appropriate. That's like saying a preference for pretty girls isn't a bias. It is. Objectification of women is bad because it paints a group of people in a way that erases their individuality and self determination. Or to quote you back at yourself: True objectification is judging people on one aspect without regard to other aspects purely as a value judgement. Catcalling, flirting, etc, can all be intimidating if overdone or done in an inappropriate context such as in a workplace.

[Diamat]

It literally still is objectification, it's just objectification you feel is appropriate. That's like saying a preference for pretty girls isn't a bias. It is. Objectification of women is bad because it paints a group of people in a way that erases their individuality and self determination. Or to quote you back at yourself: True objectification is judging people on one aspect without regard to other aspects purely as a value judgement.

I think you've got it the wrong way around. Individuality is shaped by the very process of objectification, if we really want to use this term. And even in a society where women are looked at in the way you seem to think, self-determination does not disappear. It's not correct to say that their individuality is erased. It's like saying that their individuality is wrong. It's like telling women that they shouldn't be such individuals. It's as if you are telling women that they should be individuals in accordance with your ideals. As if only then, and only then, they have self-determination. As if only once they strive for your utopian visions of gender equality they become self-determining beings. As if their individuality and self-determination depended on an ideal that you have established.

Suffice it to say, this is a ridiculous notion. It approaches the words of Mephisto in Goethe's Faust: "Ich bin ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft. Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!" Indeed, such words resemble "the spirit that always negates," attempting to tear down social norms with supposedly good intentions that in the end lead to nothing but destruction, the end of freedom, and mass murder.

[Elfdude]

I think you've got it the wrong way around. Individuality is shaped by the very process of objectification, if we really want to use this term.

Said this.

And even in a society where women are looked at in the way you seem to think, self-determination does not disappear.

Didn't say it did. I literally said it becomes burried under the influence of society. People lose some of their free-expression of self-determination to the imposition that is placed upon them by the wider culture.

It's not correct to say that their individuality is erased.

Didn't say that.

It's like saying that their individuality is wrong.

Specifically stated I was against that.

It's like telling women that they shouldn't be such individuals.

Specifically told them to be individuals.

It's as if you are telling women that they should be individuals in accordance with your ideals.

Specifically was against that.

As if only then, and only then, they have self-determination.

Strawman?

As if only once they strive for your utopian visions of gender equality they become self-determining beings.

No, there's just fewer barriers to their self-determination. Although the gross exaggeration is noted. For someone who's usually good at philosophical discussions you kind of phoned this one in didn't you?

As if their individuality and self-determination depended on an ideal that you have established.

You mean, my imposing my philosophical view on someone else and defining them by my view it's objectification? Didn't I say exactly that? Wow. So prophetic.

Suffice it to say, this is a ridiculous notion.

Agreed. Probably why I didn't say it.

It approaches the words of Mephisto in Goethe's Faust: "Ich bin ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft. Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!"

Random quote for no apparent reason or context. I bet you've been waiting to use that one.

Indeed, such words resemble "the spirit that always negates," attempting to tear down social norms with supposedly good intentions that in the end lead to nothing but destruction, the end of freedom, and mass murder.

Because the freedom to determine who and what you are is fascist anarchy. No one is tearing down social norms. You've just outofcontext'd a huge post and willfully ignored what I did say. I have to say Diamat, it's been awhile since I've been this disappointed in one of your posts.

[Diamat]

Elfdude, I think you don't understand your own posts and your own arguments. It's an amazing accomplishment. For example, you literally said "Objectification of women is bad because it paints a group of people in a way that erases their individuality and self determination." Then I said, "It's not correct to say that their individuality is erased." Whereupon you said, "Didn't say that."

Or take this example. I said: "And even in a society where women are looked at in the way you seem to think, self-determination does not disappear." You responded, "Didn't say it did. I literally said it becomes burried under the influence of society. People lose some of their free-expression of self-determination to the imposition that is placed upon them by the wider culture."

I mean, you are saying, in other words, that their self-determination does indeed disappear, albeit not completely. Just because I don't use your exact words doesn't mean my depiction of your worldview isn't approximately correct. And I continue to contest this worldview, which would have me believe that self-determination disappears - oh, I'm sorry, I mean "becomes burried under the influence of society" - only for prophets like you to reveal to the oppressed the glorious path toward the full realization of their self-determination.