The way feminists use "sexual objectification" is usually as hyperbole

A man masturbated on the tube next to me once. For example.

Oh but it is, because as I said, harrassment is a result of objectification. Besides, when you see someone as potential f*** material, the way you treat them changes.
Don't get me wrong, everybody objectifies people in one way or another, it's part of human nature to do so to a certain extent, but sometimes this is done in a way that is toxic and is harmful to the person on the receiving end. I know it can't be stopped fully, but something can be done to lessen the extent to which it happens, especially to women. (Men are also objectified and this is very harmful to them too, but not quite as much as women)

But a better, more definitive term for that incident would be "sexual harrassment". Forget the concept of "objectification".



What do you mean by "objectification" here? I think men harass women due to Freudian problems with their mother, or because they have some kind of sadistic desire for power. I don't think this comes from looking at Playboy.

What do you mean by "objectification" here? I think men harass women due to Freudian problems with their mother, or because they have some kind of sadistic desire for power. I don't think this comes from looking at Playboy.

My definition of sexual objectification was a man wanting a woman purely for sex. I think this applies here. I certainly felt objectified when the ****ing pervert was rubbing my hip.

But for a person to only want to have sex with someone is not an inherently bad thing. A man jerking off over a picture of a girl modelling erotically is not doing anyone any harm. It's all consensual. The problem with your experience was that he was harrassing you and showing no respect for you, as it was all without your consent. So to call those two things "sexual objectification", and to then go on to say that all sexual objectification is bad, seems very disingenuous.

Objectification as in "I want to have sex with this person, the only thing I want them for is sex, as they're nice to look at but I don't give a s*** about anything else about them" etc.
Ah but it does link to looking at porn. Porn gives people a skewed perception of the real world - it tends to cause them to come to the conclusion that all women (and men - porn also often objectifies men) are sexually available at any time, and they'll constantly compare them to the pornstars and models they see, and if they don't look like that false image then they're not interested, and they'll pursue people who have assets associated with pornstars (a built body for men, for example, or big boobs for women) solely for the purpose of having sex with them - objectification. Don't even get me started on how porn skews people's ideas of sex.

I didn't say all sexual objectification was bad. Indeed, I said quite the opposite; that I have even objectified myself. However, I did indicate that some of my own experiences of sexual objectification have been destructive as they have resulted in me becoming suspicious of men.

Do you have any evidence to prove that porn drives men to harass women? Also, won't men look for porn stars that are of the type of women which they already find attractive? It's not like they start watching porn, and that makes them find certain women attractive, and then they want women who look like them. It's that they look for porn with the kinds of women they find attractive in. Otherwise you wouldn't have porn with all different kinds of body types. Nothing happens in porn that men wouldn't fantasize about anyway.


I already refuted most of the rest of your argument in my OP:
The other way people think of "sexual objectification" is that it relates to the word "objective", as in someone is being viewed as a sexual objective. A man masturbating over the thought of a women is only thinking about the objective of having sex with her. This is not inane, but I hardly see why -if this is what the term describes- it needs to exist. Focusing on one aspect of a person is not particularly problematic or extraordinary. We do this all the time. With a waiter in a restaurant we see them and only wish they'd bring us food on time. With the postman we only wish he'd deliver our letters. It's not a problem; although we do this, unless we're psychopathic, we're still able to comprehend that the waitress is not simply a food carrying automaton, just as much as the Playboy model is not just a sex machine. It's not problematic, it's perfectly natural. We can't be expected to try to consider the entire persona of anyone and everyone we benefit from.

Some might argue that the problem is that women are objectified more, so that leads men to think of all women as being nothing more than something for them to have sex with. If the only women a man ever saw were in images in Playboy, then this would make sense. But women make up half the population and we all have mothers, daughters, nieces, sisters and wives. As it stands, saying that sexualized images of women makes men think of them as sex objects is equivalent to saying that when you watch football you are only able to think of the players as football playing machines, and are unable to comprehend that they are actually human beings with their own lives. But not only that, it's also like saying that because their is vastly more public interest in watching men playing football than women, that means that any women who watches football must think that all men are football playing machines.

I would read the argument if it was shorter. I'm not going to waste my time on something I know is going to be bull - I got everything I needed to know from the first paragraph.
I talk about things I've encountered from myself and other girls I've met because I can't exactly talk for someone in a completely different situation than me, and I never said I had it worse than them. The context for OP's argument is the Western world (the bit that I read anyway) so I'm going to respond in a way that links back to that, buddy. And actually not once, it happens on a regular basis and you can't tell me it's just "someone finding me attractive" because you have no idea what it's like to have to walk home with your keys in your hand posed as a weapon in case you need to protect yourself. From, let me repeat, the age of 12.
It's not dirty or disrespectful because I wasn't relating my problems to 3rd world problems, don't put words in my mouth and jump to conclusions from something that isn't even in my reply. The fact that people have it 100% worse than me is something I am well aware of, however it doesn't mean that women in the 1st world have it easy. If you want to talk about 3rd world problems I can do that too.

EDIT: also I love how you overlooked the part about getting sexually assaulted, which is something that happens to approximately 1 in 4 women in the western world, because even you know that's fu**** up.

That's fair enough but would it not be better to use the term more definitively? I think to say what you experienced was "sexual objectification" is very appropriate, but to give Playboy the same name is hyperbole.

Nice try, but I didn't say porn causes men to harrass women.

And not necessarily, as yes, there are many body types available in porn, but they live in the shadow of the image of the stereotypical busty blonde with long legs, tanned skin and a tiny waist.

Also if you add the fact most people start watching porn at a stage in their lives where they're very impressionable, they begin to build up an idea in their heads that this is the kind of woman they should be pursuing if they want an exciting life full of wild sex.

And that's true, but fantasising about it and actually seeing it happen on a video are different things - it makes them feel like it's normal to then go out and do the things they're fantasising about to real women, especially with the rise of a new porn category where it's staged to make it seem like the women are not actresses.

Also to respond to what you said before, specifically the football metaphor, it's flawed in my opinion because a lot of the time the people you see on TV are not people that you imagine as being normal human beings, and footballers are not viewed as regular people, but, well, footballers. Most people don't take into consideration what the footballer does in their spare time, what food they like, whether they're introverted or extroverted etc etc etc. They just see them as, for lack of a better phrase, "football playing machines."

Nice try, but I didn't say porn causes men to harrass women. And not necessarily, as yes, there are many body types available in porn, but they live in the shadow of the image of the stereotypical busty blonde with long legs, tanned skin and a tiny waist. Also if you add the fact most people start watching porn at a stage in their lives where they're very impressionable, they begin to build up an idea in their heads that this is the kind of woman they should be pursuing if they want an exciting life full of wild sex. And that's true, but fantasising about it and actually seeing it happen on a video are different things - it makes them feel like it's normal to then go out and do the things they're fantasising about to real women, especially with the rise of a new porn category where it's staged to make it seem like the women are not actresses.