Just go ahead and bitch

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1. Anthony Kennerson
   March 19th, 2006| 2:21 pm

   Wait a minute…”Wear Clean Draws”?!?!?!? Hold up, Miz Bitch….I thought that you didn’t wear any drawers to begin with?? LOL

   Ahhh, anyways….on the post on objectification: Very impressive…especially how ewrlbecke distinguishes between objectification which she opposes and sexual attraction, which she defends as normal and human.

   My own view on sexual attraction and objectification can be best described in this portion of an essay that Nina Hartley wrote and published for Jill Nagle’s anthology Whores and Other Feminists:

   I’ve come to believe that those individuals who universalize their self-appointed victim status do so at least in part as a way of avoiding taking responsibility for their own dissatisfaction with the state of their intimate lives. I say this because I was once one of those women. I’ve since reevaluated some of my feminist analysis of sexual objectification.

   When I was growing up in the early 1970s, the received truth on sex was that men’s objectification of women was the root of all gender inequality. If men would only stop appreciating, rewarding, and wanting to fuck women because of their looks (to the exclusion of any other traits she might possess), the world would be a better place. I grew up pitying women who only felt comfortable when wearing makeup and feminine or “male-defined” clothing.

   Yet I myself loved to look at women of all types. My bisexuality made me wonder what they’d look like naked, made me want to touch them and make them come on my mouth. My feminism made me want to honor and cherish their sexual prowess, not demean them because of it. What was I to do?

   For some women, objectification was painful and humiliating. At the same time, other women suffered for never being the object of anyone’s desire. My logic told me that certain feminists threw out the baby (sex and the mating dance) out with the bathwater (male violations of women’s space and dignity). We do not need less objectification (why else does one get the courage to say “Hi” to someone at a party?) Rather, we need to make men more aware of how to act once they are next to a woman. I want women to be treated as people first and
   sexual beings second.

   Women will feel freer to say “yes” to sexual pleasure when men start honoring our “no’s”. Such a change in attitude cannot take place without men being allied in the struggle. Until and unless men as a group believe that it’s more manly to treat women respectfully instead of insensitively, not much will change. Men challenging other men on their sexism, in language that men can relate to, will be an important key.

   For all its trappings, objectification is a central part of most, if not all, human cultures. We don’t mate by scent, seasons, or instinct alone. As primates, we learn a great deal visually, by watching and imitating. Since we can’t experience most people on deeper levels, everyone is, at least initially, an object to others. Because my professional image is available on
   videotape, I am an object to most people who enjoy the fruits of my labor. I meet and entertain, on average, upwards of 20,000 men a year; none of whom know me as a real person. I don’t have the time or inclination to have all these men get to know me as a full person. I save that for my family and my private life. This split between public and private is by no means unique to the sex industry.

   Sorry for the length, but you get my drift, do you???

   I will post Nina’s full essay over at the Red Garter Club site later, then I will link it you you..it is that good.

   Anthony

   I present the image I think would be most effective in helping men to change
   their attitudes about sexual women, while at the same time not forgetting that
   my primary purpose is to [sexually] arouse; when I lose sight of that, men
   cease to pay attention. I’ve learned that if a woman is presenting a sexual,
   confident persona, men generally will listen to what she has to say. Susan
   Sarandon said it succinctly in Bull Durham [through her character Annie Savoy]
   when she tied Tim Robbins to a bed and read him poetry: “Men will listen to
   anything if they think it’s foreplay.” If she happens to underscore her point
   by encouraging/facilitating/inducing his orgasm, the point may stick for good.

2. Anthony Kennerson
   March 19th, 2006| 2:22 pm

   OOPS..lol..that last para should have been appended to the blockquote. I’m still learning this HTML thing, I guess….

   Anthony

3. Anthony Kennerson
   March 19th, 2006| 2:24 pm

   And I even managed to screw up the freakin’ link to Nina’s forum, too..arrrrgh!!!!!

   http://www.nina.com/vboard/index.php

   Anthony

4. belledame222
   March 19th, 2006| 3:28 pm

   To me, objectification just means this: you are seeing/treating the other person as an “it” rather than a “you.” There are a lot of ways to do this. A lot a lot a lot. Most of them have nothing to do with sex.

   I was gonna blog about this pretty soon anyway, but now I better get that up there, I think. For now I just think this: if you’re going to use any one framework to pin the blame on for the phenomenon, I’d go with a critique of capitalism rather than the patriarchy. Well, and: with an emphasis on the what we’ve inherited from the mechanistic worldview and the zeitgeist created by the Industrial Revolution. But I mean: if you truly believe that the problem with porn and prostitution isn’t just that you think sex is “special” or “different” or even “dirty” at some level, but rather that it’s a money transaction for an intimate, human service: well, shit, then why stop there? Why do all the other ways in which we become wage-slaves to the Man get off the hook? Is an exploited, abused worker in a garment factory not at least as “objectified” as, say, the woman who at least runs her own website and markets herself as a fetish model, if not more so? if the meaning of “objecctified” is simply “dehumanized?”
   What about an employee at Disney or some fast-food chain, who not only works for shit wages and has to perform disgusting, demeaning tasks (cleaning out deep fryers? dressing up in a forfucksake Goofy costume when you don’t even *have* a plushy fetish?) but has to do it with a toothy grin the whole time, abusive customers be damned, or lose the gig altogether?

   Seems to me that we’re all objects on this bus, to one degree or another.

5. bitchlab
   March 19th, 2006| 3:35 pm

   I may have sold it, but in a book I used to use to teach Cultural Studies, Inside the Mouse, the author documents how common it is for the people in those costumes to become ill from the heat. Because they are *not* allowed to pierce the fantasy of Disney, they can’t remove the mask, and then end up vomiting on themselves or simply passing out in the heat.

   She also talks about the deep dark secret: the number of murders, sexual assaults (on children), and kidnappings that take place there. The happy couples go there to marry and sometimes end up offing or try to off the new spouse and the place is a magnet for pedophiles.

6. belledame222
   March 19th, 2006| 9:29 pm

   I once knew someone who said he’d been thrown in the Disneyland jail (yes, there is one) for drinking while on park grounds. They let him out at the end of the day. I’d like to say an employee wearing a Minnie Mouse suit and carrying a machine gun was guarding it, but sadly, I don’t think that’s true. Surreal enough as it is, anyway.

7. the english guy
   March 20th, 2006| 7:57 am

   I’m going to hunt down that band and find some songs, and that one in particular!

   I’ve been getting hundreds and hundreds of spam comments too, lately. Do you use spam karma? It catches 99.9% of them, very useful.

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