Women as lust objects

From what I can tell, most women don't like to be seen as objects of lust. Unless you're their boyfriend... then it's an affront if you don't see them as objects of lust. Unless you don't listen to their words and only want their bodies - then it's really bad to lust.

... Could be just me, but I think this is kinda confusing.

This week, results of a study were published at the University Of Amsterdam about how internet porn affects young minds and makes them view women as lust objects. It appears that it does. My question to the Senate is....: is this bad?

 

Well, yeah! For one thing, I believe that lust is sin, but for those who don't - women in their right minds don't want to be seen merely as objects of lust. They're (or rather, we're ) people, intelligent, thinking, feeling, human beings with the same right to live free and respected as men do. (Or, as men should.)
Besides, lust can in some cases lead to rape (and in any case, porn is traumatizing to young viewers, whether it encourages lust or not. Which it does - but that's just a by the way statement, little or nothing to do with the topic at hand).

Sure, there are some women who want to be seen solely as objects of lust, but they're by far in the minority, and have no right to endanger the minds and souls of young men and the purity and safety of young women.

Also, how exactly does it confuse you?

 

I'm having a flashback to a huge debate I had on this board about the negative influence of pornography. It was ugly because there were some that REALLY disagreed with my position that porn provides nothing good to our society and only causes problems. This is just another example of what I am talking about.

 

The producers of TRANSFORMERS have released the following statement:


In light of the recent study from the Netherlands concerning lustful,
sex-craving maniacs storming from movie theaters as a result of our
films, the following cast changes are now effective:


MEGAN FOX has been sacked.


[image=http://i32.tinypic.com/2m2e7v6.jpg]


Please welcome our new TRANSFORMERS star, NANCY PELOSI.


[image=http://i43.tinypic.com/j8go0p.jpg]

 

My whole life I´ve not succeeded in understanding what it means to ´´objectify´´ a woman.

In the natural order of things men and women are attracted to each other. They want to pair up and copulate. Especially young people. Young people want to have sex all the time. Young men, in particular would do nothing but have sex all the time if it were practical.

The main way we keep young men from having sex all the time is by reminding them of the potential health consequences, by making it seem as taboo as absolutely possible, by forcing onerous requirements on it like that it be consensual and not with girls under a certain age or between people of specific age differences. Because women are the ones who get pregnant, society shoulders them with more of the burden of enforcing social taboos by spending more time indoctrinating girls about the value of withholding consent for sex.

About porn, it´s easy to build a case for it, as follows.

Masturbation is healthy
Porn facilitates masturbation
therefore, porn facilities something that is healthy.

Obviously, it´s a lot more complicated. The porn industry overlaps with all sorts of crime. Porn performers are often required to have unprotected sex, which means that sexually transmitted disease is a constant threat for people involved. Alcoholism and drug abuse are rampant throughout the industry. Internet porn harbors all sorts of credit card fraud and identity theft, etc.

 

I think you've got to know alot about women. There's signs that girls put out to let us know if it's okay to "objectify" them or not. Of course some girls send out mixed signals due to inexperience or drunkenness, but they are the very small minority of humans, both men & women.

I like to think I know women. There's a way she'll dress, walk, the attitude she'll give. I can switch up my game between Dionne Warwick or Beyonce, play it as lust or love.

We need certain women to have the freedom to be lust objects, or just hot sexy girls. This isn't the dark ages anymore where everyone's wearing black long dresses for fear that showing a little skin will ignite the next genocidal apocalypse.

 

I don't know that stats on the likelihood of pornography inducing males to view women as sexual objects or whatnot, but I believe I treat women with greater respect than most. And I would say I have have more than my share of pornographic content. I may just be an outlier, but I would speak that pornography doesn't significantly influence my perception of women in a negative way.

I actually have issues with shows like Family guy making cracks with sexual jokes. I do not prominently display images of scantily-clad women in my living spaces. And I would say I pass myself off as being intensely uninterested in sexual content.

I would say that if males are insensitive to the opposite sex, it's nothing new. Males have always regarded women as being inferior to them and it's just that our cultures have caused the situations to be as bad as they are in some places. I intensely despise how women in some Middle-eastern cultures do not have the right to go to school or cannot say 'no' to their husbands if they don't want to sleep with them. The only reason males are likely to regard women as such is because their culture is accepting, or even encourages it.

 

A joke, I hope....

Objectify: to transform a human being into an object, simple, yes? (Like some of us see Anakin towards Padme ) Anyone can objectify another, but it reduces the whole of a person to just one thing as it relates to the person "objectifying." For a somewhat extreme example, a woman in some cultures who is raped. The family kills her for sullying their honor (shouldn't they kill the rapist ?)

Less serious, and to turn the discussion on its head, how some of us females are dismissed as worthless because we "aren't cute enough" in the eyes of the beholder.

Or men, dismissed by some women for not making enough money.

Humans have many attributes, good and bad, and don't want to be judged on the basis of just one.

 

I'm not sure that effectively turns the discussion on its head, though. Don't forget, the first reply in this thread contained the denouncement of lust as sin, so we're covering a lot of ground here.

And why not men dismissed for not being cute? Or women for not making enough money. I'm sure it happens. And dismissed for what, exactly? These statements are vague and stereotypical.

I agree. But lusting for a woman is not the same as judging her just on that. Which is my point, really.

 

A joke, I hope....

Objectify: to transform a human being into an object,

no joke. I still don´t get it.

 

Pretty much my opinion on the subject. From a biological standpoint, lust promotes reproduction, and so it's going to happen regardless of what is or is not culturally acceptable. Is it wrong to judge someone based solely on appearances? In my worldview, yes, it is. But I may nonetheless find myself attracted to a woman for physical reasons. That's just a fact of life, and I can't willingly classify it as inherently good or bad.

 

I'm not sure that effectively turns the discussion on its head, though. Don't forget, the first reply in this thread contained the denouncement of lust as sin, so we're covering a lot of ground here.

Is that the discussion - lust as sin? Then I misunderstood.

 

Just saying that that's hard to top.

 

I think he's just saying that the thread is open to a fairly wide range of discussion.

'Objectification' could occur for almost any reason, some of which I'd definitely say are harmful. Being seen mostly as a sexual object can make a lot of girls uncomfortable, although I'd question the reasons for their discomfort. If a guy can't get past his sex drive to see a girl as more than her body, that's his loss...but that can lead right to her losing self-esteem, and starting to see herself in that way.

What bothers me more is the sterotyping of women, which can lead to objectification. Example: women like kids. An image of loving motherhood (and on the other hand, of paternalism) becomes ingrained in society, to the point where it is objectification of women as mothers. I have seen relationships where the woman's greatest value to her man is that she can make/raise babies. That is degrading in so many ways, and at its root is only a stereotype.

 

So now ´´objectification´´ means ´´stereotyping?´´ I don´t see how it´s possible to objectify someone (a woman) as something that´s very much not an object (mother).

 

I think that the thread is aimed at whether women are needlessly portrayed as scantily-clad sex objects more often in today's societies or if there is a point to nudity everywhere. It's not just for women; the movie 300 was an example of where you needlessly had muscular males prominently displayed when the historic battle of Thermopolea was with Spartans being heavily-armoured. That's a prominent example of needlessly adding sex appeal to add to a movie. If you were aiming to make Braveheart historically accurate, then having naked males in a war movie would have been exactly what to expect.

Look at Brittney Spears... would she have been such a hit if she didn't have such revealing costumes? That's objectifying a woman from pop culture. She probably chose to make herself like that, but that's objectifying herself I think. How many movies can you think of where the nudity could have been left out and you could expect a decent and accurate story? 'Rome' had lots of it, but it didn't really objectify women in my opinion because the main female characters have been exposed, but they rarely showed anything below the neck.

I don't think it's so much what's rated 'X' but what's rated 'R' that's the issue.

 

The thing is that porn is contrived, it's artificial. Both men and women are perceived as sex objects because that is the sole purpose of porn, to focus on sex. It's a form of fantasy. We are not encouraged nor is it the focus of the porn film to view or portray the actors as multi dimensional beings. They are there to meet, get their gear off and have sex. Personally, I consider porn to be the equivalent of a good old 80's heavy metal video clip - pure fantasy and escapism. I would have thought that the audience would recognize this on some level. Even 'reality' porn is patently contrived.

I think it is perfectly normal to objectify a person when such objectification takes place consensually in the form of entertainment or marketing. I mean, you can hardly sign up as a porn star and then complain bitterly when strangers treat you as nothing more than a sex object or become a bikini model and then complain that people only seem interested in your breasts. I mean, do women really want to sit down and have an in depth conversation with Antonio Sabato Jr? Does this mean that such women regard all men as nothing but sex objects or just those who actively and consensually cultivate that perception of themselves? Likewise for men.

 

I take it to mean seeing or portraying women as a singular characteristic--an object. It could be for sex, or for children, or for painting their nails. It idolises one aspect at the expense of the depth of a human's personality and own needs.
Or, it reduces a male's pursuit of a female to a single objective, not for her totality. And I was saying that it can often arise from stereotypes.

 

I like that definition.

While I understand the argument that porn turns women into objects, I don't agree with it. Obviously, porn highlights one aspects of a person, but it doesn't demonstrate the totality of the person, and most people are intelligent enough to take their pleasure and move on.

 

it reduces a male's pursuit of a female to a single objective

That makes sense to me as something worthy of concern.

 

From National Geographic News: "Brain scans revealed that when men are shown pictures of scantily clad women, the region of the brain associated with tool use lights up." "And in a shocking finding, Fiske noted, some of the men studied showed no activity in the part of the brain that usually responds when a person ponders another's intentions."

This is what I think of as objectifying women. They become little more than an object, a tool, to be used or acted upon with the viewer having sole control. In some cases they become completely dehumanized. While many, perhaps, are able to keep such demeaning and controlling "fantasies" within their head, I fail to see how it would not negatively affect their relationships at the very least.

And as a Christian, Christ absolutely calls this a sin (Mt. 5).

 

This discussion isn't a one way street - Men are used as lust objects as well (just look at any male underwear advertisement).

 

You could argue that porn is no better or worse than anonymous message board interactions, which focus on women's intellectual aspects but neglect to include the physical/sexual ones.

 

1. If it's a sin then you need to tell your God not to make us that way next time around.

2. You seem to have left out a very important part in order to tell us how we are all sinners:

And the men who scored higher as "hostile sexists"?those who view women as controlling and invaders of male space?didn't show brain activity that indicates they saw the women in bikinis as humans with thoughts and intentions.


In other words, though the brain activity activated is that which is activated when manipulating tools it does not mean all men view women as unthinking objects or consider then as less than human.

 

Yes it is bad.
No offence but...you are male so you could never possibly understand, which is why you have asked this crazy question.

I want my boyfriend to desire me at times, but I do not want to purely be an object of lust. The connection must go emotionally and intellectually deeper than that.

And just to steer everyone back to the original questions which is NOT porn, but that someone was confused as why objectifying women is bad.

Basically it's pointless arguing because any male has never been in the position of a women or girl who is discriminated against, or treated as less in some way purely for being female. Having never been in that position and being bombarded with media images that support the view that men are better all the time, you will NEVER GET IT. *By the way I'm not yelling I'm emphasising*
And yes there are some girls/women that propogate the image of the objectified woman, but I can gurantee you that underneath they really wanted to be respected and treated as equal. They either use the image for their career or they are too immature or naive to know anything better.