Prostitution

angelica wrote:

No one said objectification is inherently evil. However, objectification remains objectification.

When you say this:

"It's great to appreciate someone's beauty! I do this all the time, male or female. As long as you see them as human beings with feelings, and attempt to connect with their thoughts, feelings and intuitions as well."

You are conditioning "acceptable" attraction upon all this hippy stuff and implying that attraction without the latter sentence is wrong.

angelica wrote:

has anyone read Linda Lovelace's book? Where she recounts the control and abuse, inluding threat by weapons she endured during the era she made movies such as "Deep throat"?

Has anyone read Tracy Lord's book, which details the sexual assault she experienced as a child, and the other painful issues that brought her to the porn industry as an underaged girl? Of her then drug abuse as an adult porn star, and relationships with abusive men? All that is a little less "sexy" to acknowledge....

I've not read either book, but I've read plenty of stories. One star I was partial to said porn ruined her life, she's some sort of reformed Jesus freak now. More power to her. No, it's not cool. Nobody should have to suffer that kind of treatment. But all of the acts you mentioned are illegal in and of themselves and happen outside of the porn world. In addition, I think one star (can't recall the name) has built her own company run by and for women and it has been enormously successful. That is a good development.

Traci Lords' life is sad, to be sure, but she suffered the abuse before porn and statistically speaking, she's just as likely to have had abusive relationship and drug abuse whether or not she ended up in porn, as so many such victims do. Her career just made it easy to meet those people. Furthermore, it gave her the money and fame to turn her life around and speak out about abuse. It's quite likely had she not done this, she could have been living in the streets prostituting herself at the same age with no hope of ever getting out. I'm not saying porn is a great thing that saved her life, I'm just saying that none of this is black and white or simple. For every path, there are better and worse potential outcomes and the fact that she took one that had negative consequences doesn't make the path itself inherently wrong or bad and mean we should make it illegal.

i certainly agree that objectification is objectification, and assignments of right or wrong in that is entirely subjective and based on one's own personal moral code. there are social parameters of such, but again, social constructs alone do not make something right or wrong specifically for you. i can at times see objectification as perfectly acceptible and at other times terrible....like most things, depends on context and perspective.

also why i can view pornography, prostitution, etc.....as perfectly acceptible, and both should be entirely legal, professions and past-times. individual 'bad' experiences, alone...do not make an entire life-choice bad for all.

unifiedscene wrote:

I'm just saying that none of this is black and white or simple. For every path, there are better and worse potential outcomes and the fact that she took one that had negative consequences doesn't make the path itself inherently wrong or bad and mean we should make it illegal.

well stated.

Saturnal wrote:

I don't think anyone's saying you should be ashamed for objectifying a person. But you should be honest with yourself, accept the fact that you're objectifying, and think about if that's ok or not. Most people won't do this. They'll just pass it off as "oh well, that's just part of being a guy/girl"....maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't think it is. I think it's just the result of being trained that way. You can un-train yourself. I know I have to a certain degree.

I think the point is just that our conscious self should drive our overall thinking about people (even hot women).

I disagree. I don't think me seeing an attractive women and having a feeling of desire is objectification. I still respect her as a person, I don't see her as some sexual object there for my enjoyment to be discarded at my leisure. Yes there are plenty of people who think that way and that is objectification but simply having a desire for someone because you find them attractive is normal human behavior.

mammasan wrote:

I disagree. I don't think me seeing an attractive women and having a feeling of desire is objectification. I still respect her as a person, I don't see her as some sexual object there for my enjoyment to be discarded at my leisure. Yes there are plenty of people who think that way and that is objectification but simply having a desire for someone because you find them attractive is normal human behavior.

i personally believes it all depends on how deeply into the meaning of 'objectification' you get into, and if you inherently believe it to encompass 'bad' connotations. personally, walking down the street and seeing someone very attractive, looking in a magazine and appreciating someone as hot/sexy, etc....i personally believe IS objectification. you are looking and judging based on appearances only, not knowing or considering the 'person' within, just their outward appearance. i also believe there is NOTHING WRONG with that. a picture is meant to be looked at, and if it is of some thing/one beautiful, we are meant to appreciate the said aesthetic beauty. if a person is passing in the street, again, it is not necessary to go beyond 'surfaces' unless one wants to. objectification, in and of itself, is not 'wrong'......it is, imo, when one is involved to some degree with a person and still objectifies them, that then i see 'wrong.' without interaction, i see neutrality with objectification. personal perspective tho, of course.

decides2dream wrote:

i personally believes it all depends on how deeply into the meaning of 'objectification' you get into, and if you inherently believe it to encompass 'bad' connotations. personally, walking down the street and seeing someone very attractive, looking in a magazine and appreciating someone as hot/sexy, etc....i personally believe IS objectification. you are looking and judging based on appearances only, not knowing or considering the 'person' within, just their outward appearance. i also believe there is NOTHING WRONG with that. a picture is meant to be looked at, and if it is of some thing/one beautiful, we are meant to appreciate the said aesthetic beauty. if a person is passing in the street, again, it is not necessary to go beyond 'surfaces' unless one wants to. objectification, in and of itself, is not 'wrong'......it is, imo, when one is involved to some degree with a person and still objectifies them, that then i see 'wrong.' without interaction, i see neutrality with objectification. personal perspective tho, of course.

But you have to admit that the word objectification does carry a negative association with it in our society. What you are saying is true but society tells us that objectification of women is bad, it's wrong, forcing men to some how be ashamed of themselves for even eyeing an attractive female. No offense to women, or the feminists on the board, but that negative association of objectification has largely been forced by the feminist movement.

Collin wrote:

What about the example I gave earlier. Everytime I go out to a party I have to pay. Girls get in for free.

Injustice based on gender.

you're choosing to go to that party. choosing. it's a party. and the idea behind girls getting in for free, i'm guessing, is so they can get drunk and taken advantage of. that's the assumption behind free drinks---just look at this thread. yeah that's a GREAT deal for women!

women in the united states do not choose to make about 70 cents to the dollar (diff amounts for white women and women of color).

these are not the same things.

VictoryGin wrote:

you're choosing to go to that party. choosing. it's a party. and the idea behind girls getting in for free, i'm guessing, is so they can get drunk and taken advantage of. that's the assumption behind free drinks---just look at this thread. yeah that's a GREAT deal for women!

women in the united states do not choose to make about 70 cents to the dollar (diff amounts for white women and women of color).

these are not the same things.

It's still unfair. A woman and a man choose to work the same job, one makes less. A woman and a man choose to go to the same party, one has to pay more. Still unfair, thus, under your definition earlier, it is oppression.

VictoryGin wrote:

women in the united states do not choose to make about 70 cents to the dollar (diff amounts for white women and women of color).

I think I read somewhere that that whole concept of women making less then men accross the board was more of a myth than anything else. If it was true you would see more business that have all woman employees because business owners could pay them less. I think it comes from if you compare the average wage of a man with the average wage of a woman. But the average wage of a man is skewed higher because for example a man in his 50s will more than likely not have taken any time off from his job to raise kids so he will have more job experience then a woman of the exact same age. It is also skewed higher because men are more likely to take more dangerous and therefore higher paying jobs (deep sea fisherman, off shore oil rig worker).

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/GiveMeABreak/story?id=797045&page=1

mammasan wrote:

But you have to admit that the word objectification does carry a negative association with it in our society. What you are saying is true but society tells us that objectification of women is bad, it's wrong, forcing men to some how be ashamed of themselves for even eyeing an attractive female. No offense to women, or the feminists on the board, but that negative association of objectification has largely been forced by the feminist movement.

i do admit that, but that doesn't mean i agree with it. and i don't 'blame' the feminist movement for it at all. drawing attention to the negative consequences of objectification is a good thing. taking that and then creating the idea that objectification, in and of itself, is a 'bad' thing....we as a society chose to do. either way, i disagree with it. to me, it's one's own personal morality to use as a compass. i objectify many things and people at times, and it is not 'bad.' we need to personally take ownership of our correct word usage and not just accept that 'society' or any one group tells us is 'right' or 'wrong.'



btw i always love sentence that begin with 'no offense to.......' b/c you just KNOW it is going to be followed with something that may be offensive (although that certainly wasn't)...so it's like asking for a *free pass* to be offensive. hahaha. the only thing i may take light 'offense' to is the use of the word force. but i think we've argued enough semantics the past couple days, so i'll let it go.

mammasan wrote:

Exactly. So in a sense we are all objectified by someone at some point in time.

right. and there is nothing inherently wrong with it, either. it's all context.